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UN.rOHM L,B.„.v E0,T,0.. .„,„, G„,,„ CLOTH 
SC2.50 I'EK VOLUME, 

^^GLISH LITERA~^RE. 2 vols 
ITALY, ROME, AND NAPLES 
ITALY, FLORENCE, AND VENICE 
ON INTELLIGENCE. 2 vols. 
LECTURES ON ART f;.- , c • 

LECTURES 0,V ART q=. i o • ' ■>>« 

'aining The PhilosoX of Art™ Iea1:™T, ^' 

^^f -^ O^ A^V^^A^^. wuh Portrait. 
^^Or.ffi' ON- PARIS. 

^ TOUR T2TR0UGH THE PYRFNEF'; 

' -^troo/:rroe^r,-!r "- 

T//E ANCIENT REGTUE 
rim FRENCH REVOLUriOK 3 vols. 
I "^'^^ HOLT & CO., P»Lts„.p,, 

^- ^ New York 



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HISTORY 



OF 



English Literature 



H'f A/'-'TAINE 



TRANSLATED BY 

H. VAN LAUN 

ONE OF THE MASTERS AX JHE XDINBUBQH AOADEMl 



With a Preface Prepared Expressly for this Tramlation by the Authop 



TWO VOLUMES IN ONE 




NEW YORK 
HENKY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1886 







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TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



The translator has collated almost every passage mentioned by M. 
Taine, verified every quotation, and spared no pains to render thin 
history of English literature worthy of its author and of its subject.. 
A copious Index will be found at the end of the Second Volume. 

H. VAN Laun. 

October^ 1871. 
The Academy, Edenburgh. 

Mr. van Laun is not responsible for the English rendering of the Anthor'i 
Ixitroduction. 



DEDICATION 



Even at the present day, the historian of Civilisation in Europe and in 
France is amongst us, at the head of those historical studies which he 
formerly encouraged so much. I myself have experienced his kind* 
ness, learned by his conversation, consulted his books, and profited by 
that intellectual and impartial breadth, that active and Kberal sympathy, 
with which he receives the labours and thoughts of others, even when 
these ideas are not like his own. I consider it a duty and an honour 
to inscribe tiiis work to M. Guizot. 

H. A. Taine. 



CONTENTS. 



Ihtrodtiction, 



BOOK I.— THE SOURCE. 



Chap. I.— The Saxons, . 
n.— The Nokmans, 
III. —The New Tongue, 



BOOK n.— THE RENAISSANCE, 



Chap. I.— The Pagan Renaissance, 
n. — The Theatre, 
III.— -Ben Jonson, . 
rV. — Shakspeare, . • 

v.— The Christdvn Renaissance 
VI.— Milton, 



I . BOOK III.— THE CLASSIC AGE 

Chap. I. -The Restoration, • 



1 



33 

53 

105 



141 
223 
267 
296 
353 
409 



457 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THIS TRANSLATION 



The Author of this elegant and faithful translation has thought 
that I ought to indicate to the reader what plan I kept before me 
in writing the history of English Literature. Briefly stated, it was 
this: 

A nation lives twenty, thirty centuries and longer, and a maL 
lives but sixty or seventy years. Nevertheless, a nation has a good 
many points in which it is like a man. For, in a career so long 
and almost interminable, a nation has its own character, both 
mental and moral, which m^niiests jtself at the beginning, and 
develops from epoch to epocn, preserving the same fundamental 
qualities from its origin to its decline. This is a matter of 
experience, and whoever has followed the history of a people — 
for instance, of the Greeks from Homer to the Byzantine Caesars, 
the Germans from the Nibelungen Lied to Goethe, the French 
from the first Chansons de Geste and the earliest fabliaux, dowu 
to Beranger and Alfred de Musset, cannot help recognizing in the 
life of a nation a continuity as strict as in the life of an indi- 
vidual. 

Now suppose that in the case of one of the half-dozen great 
men who have played the leading parts on the world's stage — Alex- 
ander, Napoleon, Newton, Dante, — suppose that by some extraor- 
dinary piece of good fortune we happened to have a quantity of 
authentic portraits, uninjured and fresh — water-colors, draw 
ings, sketches, full-length portraits, representing him at all 
times of life, in his various costumes, expressions, and attitudes, 
with all his surroundings, especially in his greatest deeds, and in 
the most trying crises that marked the development of his char- 
acter. 

Well, that is just the kind of memoranda which we possess 



X author's introduction to this translation. 

to-diiy to enable us to know the great being that we call a nation., 
especially when the nation has a full and original literature. Foi 
most essential purposes, each of its literary productions is a pict- 
ure in which we contemplate the nation itself. And this picture 
is really more precious than a physical portrait, for it is a 
moral one. The poem of BeoAvulf and the Canterbury Tales, 
(he dramatic works of the Renaissance and the Reformation, 
the various lines of authors in prose and verse who have 
followed each other, from Shakespeare and Bacon down to Tenny 
son, Dickens, and Carlyle, place before us all the literary forma 
and poetical images, all the variations of thought, sentiment, and 
expression, in wliich the soul of the English nation has found 
delight There we may follow the change in tastes, and the 
persistency in instincts; there we see the national character acted 
upon by circumstances, and moulded in directions determined 
partly by its own nature and partly by tradition ; but through 
all, one is conscious of a persistent individuality — the adult merely 
fulfills the promise of the youth and the child; the living figure 
of to-day still preserves the characteristic features of the earliest 
portrait. From all these portraits I have undertaken to pick out 
the most lifelike and the most faithful, to arrange them according 
to their dates and degrees of importance, to put them in appro- 
priate groups and to explain them, commenting upon them with 
admiration and sympathy, but not without freedom and candor ; 
for though one ought to feel affection for his theme, he should 
never flatter anybody. Possibly it would be better to leave my 
task to those who are at home in England ; they are apt to say 
that they know our personage better because they are of his family. 
True, but in living with a person one is not specially apt to be 
aware of his peculiarities. On the contrary, a stranger has one 
advantage — custom does not blunt his perceptions ; he is uncon- 
sciously struck by the principal characteristics, and treats the 
subject with reference to them. This, then, is my whole excuse; 
I offer it to the reader with some special confidence, because, when 
I pass in review my own ideas about France, I find many which 
have been given me by strangers, and by none more than th« 
English. 

H. A. Taine. 
Paris. October, 1871. 



INTRODTJOTiON 



Ilia liistorian might place himself for a certain time, during several ceiitm-ie€ 
or amongst a certain peojile, in the midst of the spirit of humanity. He 
might study, describe, relate all the events, the changes, the revolutioua 
which took place in the inner-man ; and when he had reached the end, 
he would possess a history of the civilisation of the nation and the 
period he selected. — Guizot, Civilisation in Europe, p. 25. 

HISTORY has been revolutionised, within a hundred years in 
Germany, within sixty years in France, and that ly the study 
of their literatures. 

It was perceived that a work of literature is not a mere play of 
imagination, a solitary caprice of a heated brain, but a transcript of 
contemporary manners, a type of a certain kind of mind. It was con- 
cluded that one might retrace, from the monuments of literature, the 
style of man's feelings and thoughts for centuries back. The attempt 
was made, and it succeeded. 

Pondering on these modes of feeling and thought, men decided that 
in them were embalmed facts of the highest kind. They saw that 
these facts bore reference to the most important occurrences, that they 
explained and were explained by them, that it was necessary thence- 
forth to give them a rank, and a most important rank, in history. This 
rank they have received, and from that moment history has undergone 
a complete change: in its subject-matter, its system, its machinery, the 
appreciation of laws and of causes. It is this change, as it has hap* 
pened and must still happen, that we shall here endeavour to exhibit. 

L 
What is your first remark on turning over the great, stiff leaves 
of a folio, the yellow sheets of a manuscript, — a poem, a code of laws, 
a declaration of I'aith ? This, you say, was not created alone. It is but 
a mould, like a fossil shell, an imprint, like one of those shapes em- 
bossed in stone by an animal which lived and perished. Under the 
shell there was an animal, and behind the document there was a man, 
Why do you study the shell, except to represent to yourself the animal? 
So do you study the document only in order to know the man. Th« 

▲ 



2 I.NTRODUCTIUiN. 

shell and t\ie document are lifeless wrecks, valuable only as a clue te 
the entire and living existence. We must reach back to this exis- 
tence, endeavour to re-create it. It is a mistake to study the docu- 
ment, as if it were isolated. This were to treat things like a simple 
pedant, to fall into the error of the bibliomaniac. Behind all, we have 
neither mytliology nor languages, but only men, who arrange words 
and itnagery according to the necessities of their organs and the 
criglnal bent of tlieir intellects. A dogma is nothing in itself; look 
at the people who have made it, — a portrait, for instance, <!'f the 
sixteenth century, the stern and energetic face of an English arch- 
bishop or martyr. Nothing exists except through some individual 
man; it is this individual with whom we must become acquainted. 
When we have established the parentage of dogmas, or the classifica- 
tion of poems, or the progress of constitutions, or the modification of 
idioms, we have only cleared the soil: genuine history is brought into 
existence only when the historian begins to unravel, across the lapse of 
time, the living man, toiling, impassioned, entrenched in his customs, 
with his voice and features, his gestures and his dress, distinct and 
complete as he from whom we have just parted in the street. Let us 
endeavour, then, to annihilate as far as possible this great interval of 
time, which prevents us from seeing man with our eyes, with the eyes 
of our head. What have we under the fair glazed pages of a modern 
poem? A modern poet, who has studied and travelled, a man like 
Alfred de Musset, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Heine, in a black coat 
and gloves, welcomed by the ladies, and making every evening his fifty 
bows and his score of bon-mots in society, reading the papers in the 
morning, lodging as a rule on the second floor ; not over gay, because 
he has nerves, and especially because, in this dense democracy where we 
choke one another, the discredit of the dignities of office has exaggerated 
his pretensions Avhile increasing his importance, and because the refine- 
ment of his feelings in general disposes him somewhat to believe him- 
self a deity. This is what we take note of under modern meditations or 
sonnets. Even so, under a tragedy of the seventeenth century we have 
a poet, like Racine for instance, elegant, staid, a courtier, a tine speaker, 
•with 1 majestic wig and ribboned shoes, at heart a royalist and a Chris- 
tian, ' having received the grace of God not to blush in any company. 
Kings nor Gospellers;' clever at entertaining the prince, and rendering 
for him into good French the *old French of Amyot;' very respectful 
to the great, always 'knowing his place;' as assiduous and reserved at 
Marly as at Versailles, amidst the regular pleasures of a polished and 
fastidious nature, amidst the salutations, graces, aiis, and fopperies of 
the braided lords, who rose early in the morning to obtain the promise 
of being appointed to some office in case of the death of the present 
holder, and amongst charming ladies who count their genealogies on 
their fingers in order to obtain the right of sitting dov>rn in the pros 
i>nceof the King or Queen. On that head consult ^-^t. Simon and tlip 



IJNTRODUCTIO^. g 

engravings of P^relle, as for the present age you have consulted Balzac 
and the water-colours of Eugene Lami. Similarly, when we read a 
Greek tragedy, our first care should be to realise to ourselves the 
Greeks, that is, the men who live half naked, in the gymnasia, or in the 
public squares, under a glowing sky, face to face with the most noble 
landscapes, bent on making their bodies nimble and strong, on con- 
versing, discussing, voting, carrying on patriotic piracies, but for the 
rest lazy and temperate, with three urns for their furniture, two an- 
chovies in a jar of oil for their food, waited on by skives, so as to give 
them leisure to cultivate their understanding and exercise tlieir limbs, 
with no desire beyond that of having the most beautiful town, the 
most beautiful processions, the most beautiful ideas, the most beautiful 
men. On this subject, a statue such as the Meleager, or the Theseus of 
the Parthenon, or still more, the sight of the Mediterranean, blue and 
lustrous as a silken tunic, and islands arising from it like masses of 
marble, and added tc> these, twenty select phrases from Plato and 
Aristophanes, will teach voii much more than a multitude of disserta- 
tions and commentaries. And so again, in order to understand an 
Indian Purana, begin by imagining to yourself the father of a family, 
who, ' having seen a son on his son's knees,' retires, according to the 
law, into solitude, witli an axe and a pitcher, under a banana tree, by 
the river-side, talks no more, adds fast to fast, dwells naked between 
four fires, and under a fifth, the terrible sun, devouring and renewing 
without end all things living; who step by step, for weeks at a time, 
fixes his imagination upon the feet of Brahma, next upon his knee, next 
upon his thigh, next upon his navel, and so on, until, beneath the strain 
of this intense meditation, hallucinations begin to appear, until all the 
forms of existence, mingled and transformed the one with the other, 
quaver before a sight dazzled and giddy, until the motionless man, 
catching in his breath, with fixed gaze, beholds the universe vanishing 
like a smoke beyond the universal and void Being into which he aspires 
to be absorbed. To this end a voyage to India would be the best 
instructor; or for want of better, the accounts of travellers, books of 
geography, botany, ethnology, will serve their turn. In each case the 
search must be the same. A language, a legislation, a catechism, is 
never more than an abstract thing : the complete thing is the man who 
acts, the man corporeal and visible, who eats, walks, fights, labours. 
Leave on one side the theory and the mechanism of constitutions, 
religions and their systems, and try to see men in their workshops, in 
their ofiices, in their fields, with their sky and earth, their houses, their 
dress, cultivations, meals, as you do when, landing in England or Italy, 
you remark faces and motions, roads and inns, a citizen taking his 
walk, a workman drinking. Our great care should be to supply as 
much as possible the want of present, personal, direct, and sensible 
ob>;ervation which we can no longer practise; for it is the only meana 
Q^' knowing men. Let us make the past present ; in order to judge o^ 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

a thiiig, it must be before us; there is no experience in respect of what 
IS absent. Doubtless this reconstruction is always incomplete ; it can 
produce only incomplete judgments; but to that we must resign our- 
selves. It is better to have an imperfect knowledge than a futile of 
false one; and there is no other means of acquainting ourselves ap- 
proximately with the events of other days, than to see approximately 
the men of other days. 

This is the first step in history: it was made in Europe at the new 
birth of imagination, toward the close of the last century, by Lessing, 
Walter Scott; a little later in France, by Chateaubriand, Augustm 
Thierry, Michelet, and others. And now for the second step. 

IL 

When you consider with your eyes the visible man, what do you 
look for ? The man invisible. The words which enter your ears, the 
gestures, the motions of his head, the clothes he wears, visible acts and 
deeds of every kind, are expressions merely ; somewhat is revealed 
beneath them, and that is a soul. An inner man is concealed beneath 
the outer man ; the second does but reveal the first. You look at hia 
house, furniture, dress ; and that in order to discover in them the marks 
of his habits and tastes, the degree of his refinement or rusticity, his 
extravagance or his economy, his stupidity or his cunning. You listen 
to his conversation, and you note the inflexions of his voice, the changes 
in his attitudes ; and that in order to judge of his intensity, his self- 
forgetfulness or his gaiety, his energy or his constraint. You consider 
his writings, his artistic productions, his business transactions or politi- 
cal ventures ; and that in order to measure the scope and limits of his 
intelligence, his inventiveness, his coolness, to find out the order, the 
description, the general force of his ideas, the mode in which he thinks 
and resolves. All these externals are but avenues converging to a 
centre ; you enter them simply in order to reach that centre ; and that 
centre is the genuine man, I mean that mass of faculties and feelings 
which are produced by the inner man. We have reached a new world, 
which is infinite, because every action which we see involves an infinite 
association of reasonings, emotions, sensations new and old, which have 
served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep-seated ia 
the ground, find in it their end and their level. This underw^orld is a 
new subject-matter, proper to the historian. If his critical education 
suffice, he can lay bare, under every detail of architecture, every stroke 
in a picture, every phrase in a writing, the special sensation whence 
detail, stroke, or phrase had issue; he is present at the drama which 
was enacted in the soul of artist or writer ; the choice of a word, the 
brevity or length of a sentence, the nature of a metaphor, the accent of 
a verse, the development of an argument — everything is a symbol to 
him ; while his eyes read the text, his soul and mind pursue the con- 
tinuous development and the everchanging succession of the emoticina 



INTRODUCTION. g 

and conceptions out of which the text has sprung : in shorty he unveils 
a psychology. If you would observe this operation, consider the 
originator and model of contemporary culture, Goethe, who, before 
writing Iphigeniay employed day after day in designing the most finished 
statues, and who at last, his eyes filled with the noble forms of ancient 
scenery, his mind penetrated by the harmonious loveliness of antique 
liie, succeeded in reproducing so exactly in himself the peculiarities of 
the Greek imagination, that he gives us almost the twin sister of the 
Antigone of Sophocles, and the goddesses of Phidias. This precise and 
proved interpretation of past sensations has given to history, in our 
days, a second birth ; hardly anything of the sort was known to the 
preceding century. They thought men of every race and century were 
all but identical ; the Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the 
Restoration, and the man of the eighteenth century, as if they had been 
turned out of a common mould; and all in conformity to a certain 
abstract conception, which served for the whole human race. They 
knew man, but not men ; they had not penetrated to the soul ; they 
had not seen the infinite diversity and marvellous complexity of souls ; 
they did not know that the moral constitution of a people or an age is 
as particular and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants 
or an order of animals. Now-a-days, history, like zoology, has found its 
anatomy; and whatever the branch of history to which you devote your- 
self, philology, linguistic lore, mythology, it is by these means you must 
strive to produce new fruit. Amid so many writers who, since the 
time of Herder, Ottfried MuUer, and Goethe, have continued and still 
improve this great method, let the reader consider only two historians 
and two works, Carlyle*s Cromwell^ and Sainte-Beuve's Port-Royal: 
he will see with what justice, exactness, depth of insight, one may 
discover a soul beneath its actions and its works ; how behind the old 
general, in place of a vulgar, hypocritical schemer, we recover a man 
travailing with the troubling reveries of a melancholic imagination, 
but with definite instincts and faculties, English to the core, strange and 
incomprehensible to one who has not studied the climate and the race ; 
how, with about a hundred meagre letters and a score of mutilated 
speeches, one may follow him from his farm and team, to the general's 
tent and to the Protector's throne, in his transmutation and develop- 
ment, in his pricks of conscience and his political conclusions, until the 
machinery of his mind and actions becomes visible, and the inner 
tragedy, ever changing and renewed, which exercised this great, dark- 
ling soul, passes, like one of Shakspeare's, through the soul of the looker 
on. He will see (in the other case) how, behind the squabbles of the 
monastery, or the contumacies of nuns, one may find a great province 
of human psychology ; how about fifty characters, that had been buried 
under the uniformity of a circumspect narrative, reappear in the light 
of day, each with its own specialty and its countless diversities ; how, 
beneath theological disquisitions and monotonous sermons, one can 



INTRODUCTION. 

unearth the beatings of ever-living hearts, the convulsions and apathies 
of monastic life, tlie unforeseen reassertions and wavy turmoil of nature, 
the inroads of surrounding worldliness, the intermittent victories of 
grace, with such a variety of overcloudings, that the most exhaustive 
description and the most elastic style can hardly gather the inexhaust^ 
ible harvest, which the critic has caused to spring up on this abandoned 
field. And so it is throughout. Germany, with its genius so pliant, 
»o liberal, so apt for transformation, so well calculated to reproduce the 
most remote and anomalous conditions of human thought ; England, 
with its intellect so precise, so well calculated to grapple closely with 
moral questions, to render them exact by figures, weights and measures, 
geography, statistics, by qaotation and by common sense ; France, with 
her Parisian culture, with her drawing-room manners, with her untiring 
analysis of characters and actions, her irony so ready to hit upon a 
weakness, her finesse so practised in the discrimination of shades of 
thought ; — all have worked the same soil, and one begins to understand 
that there is no region of history where it is not imperative to till this 
deep level, if one would see a serviceable harvest rise between the 
furrows. 

This is the second step ; we are in a fair way to its completion. It 
is the proper work of the contemporary critic. No one has done it so 
justly and grandly as Sainte-Beuve : in this respect we are all his 
pupils ; his method renews, in our days, in books, and even in news- 
papers, every kind of literary, of philosophical and religious criticism. 
From it we must set out in order to begin the further development. 

1 have more than once endeavoured to indicate this development ; there 
is here, in my mind, a new path open to history, and I will try to 
describe it more in detail 

IIL 

When you have observed and noted in man one, two, three, then a 
multitude of sensations, does this suffice, or does your knowledge appear 
complete ? Is a book of observations a psychology ? It is no psycho- 
logy, and here as elsewhere the search for causes must come after the 
collection of facts. No matter if the facts be physical or moral, they 
all have tlieir causes ; there is a cause for ambition, for courage, for 
truth, as there is for digestion, for muscular movement, for animal heat 
Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar ; and every complex 
phenomenon has its springs from other more simple phenomena on 
which ii hangs. Let us then seek the simple phenomena for moral 
qualities, as we seek them for physical qualities ; and let us take the 
first fact that presents itself: for example, religious music, that of a 
Protestant Church. There is an inner cause which has turned the 
spirit of the faithful toward these grave and monotonous melodies, a 
cause oroader than its effect; I mean the general idea of the true, 
external worship which man owes to God. It is this which hai 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

modelled the architecture of the temple, thrown down the statues, 
removed the pictures, destroyed the ornuments, curtailed the cere- 
monies, shut up the worshippers in high psws, which prevent them 
from seeing anything, and regulated the thousand details of decoration, 
posture, and the general surroundings. This itself comes from another 
more general cause, the idea of human conduct in all its comprehensive- 
ress, internal and external, prayers, actions, dispositions of every kind 
by which man is kept face to face with God; it is this which has en- 
throned doctrine and grace, lowered the clergy, transformed the sacra- 
ments, suppressed various practices, and changed religion from a 
discipline to a morality. This second idea in its turn depends upon a 
third still more general, that of moral perfection, such as is met with 
in the perfect God, the unerring judge, the stern watcher of souls, 
before whom every soul is sinful, worthy of punishment, incapable of 
virtue or salvation, except by the crisis of conscience which He pro- 
vokes, and the renewal of heart which He produces. That is the master 
idea, which consists in erecting duty into an absolute king of human 
life, and in prostrating all ideal models before a moral model. Here 
we track the root of man ; for to explain this conception it is necessary 
to consider race itself, that is, the German, the Northman, the structure 
of his character and intelligence, his general processes of thought and 
feeling, the sluggishness and coldness of sensation which prevent his 
falling easily and headlong under the sway of pleasure, the bluntness of 
his taste, the irregularity and revolutions of his conception, which arrest 
in him the birth of fair dispositions and harmonious forms, the disdain of 
appearances, the desire of truth, the attachment to bare and abstract ideas, 
which develop in him conscience, at the expense of all else. There the 
search is at an end ; we have arrived at a primitive disposition, at a trait 
proper to all sensations, to all the conceptions of a century or a race, 
at a particularity inseparable from all the motions of his intellect and 
his heart. Here lie the grand causes, for they are the universal and 
permanent causes, present at every moment and in every case, every- 
where and always acting, indestructible, and in the end infallibly 
supreme, since the accidents which thwart them, being limited and 
partial, end by yielding to the dull and incessant repetition of their 
force ; in such a manner that tha general structure of things, and the 
grantl features of events, are their work ; and religions, philosophies, 
poetries, industries, the framework of society and of families, are in fact 
only the imprints stamped by their seal. 

IV. 

There is then a system in human sentiments and ideas ; and this 
system has for its motive power certain general traits, certain marks of 
the intellect and the heart common to men of one race, age, or country. 
As in mineralogy the crystals, however diverse, spring from certain 
simple physical forms, so in history, civilisations, however diverse, arc 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

Jerired from certain simple spiritual forms. The one are explained 
by a primitive geometrical element, as the others are by a primitive 
psychological element. In order to master the classification of minera- 
logical systems, we must first consider a regular and general solid, it« 
sides and angles, and observe in this the numberless transformations of 
"which it is capable. So, if you would realise the system of historical 
varieties, consider first a human soul generally, with its. two or three 
fundamental faculties, and in this compendium you will perceive the 
principal forms which it can present. After all, this kind of ideal 
picture, geometrical as well as psychclogical, is hardly complex, and one 
speedily sees the limits of the outline in which civilisations, like crystals, 
are constrained to exist. 

What do we find, at first sight, in man? Images or representa- 
tions of things, something, that is, which floats within him, exists for a 
time, is effaced, and returns again, after he has been looking upon a 
tree, an animal, any sensible object. This is the subject-matter, the 
development whereof is double, either speculative or practical, accord- 
ing as the representations resolve themselves into a general conception 
or an active resolution. Here we have the whole of man in an abridg- 
ment ; and in this limited circle human diversities meet, sometimes in 
the womb of the primordial matter, sometimes in the twofold primordial 
development. However minute in their elements, they are enormous 
in the aggregate, and the least alteration in the factors produces vast 
alteration in the results. According as the representation is clear and 
as it were cut out by machinery or confused and faintly defined, accord- 
ing as it embraces a great or small number of the marks of the object, 
according as it is violent and accompanied by impulses, or quiet and 
surrounded by calm, all the operations and processes of the human 
machine are transformed. So, again, according as the ulterior develop- 
ment of the representation varies, the whole human development varies. 
If the general conception in which it results is a mere dry notation (in 
Chinese fashion), language becomes a sort of algebra, religion and 
poetry dwindle, philosophy is reduced to a kind of moral and practical 
common sense, science to a collection of formulas, classifications, utili- 
tarian mnemonics, and the whole intellect takes a positive bent. If, on 
the contrary, the general representation in which the conception results 
is a poetical and figurative creation, a living symbol, as among the 
Aryan races, language becomes a sort of cloudy and coloured word- 
stage, in which every word is a person, poetry and religioa assume a 
magnificent and inextinguishable grandeur, metaphysics are widely and 
subtly developed, without regard to positive applications ; the whole 
intellect, in spite of the inevitable deviations and shortcomings of its 
effort, is smitten with the beautiful and the sublime, and conceives an 
ideal capable by its nobleness and its harmony of rallying round it the 
tenderness and enthusiasm of the human race. If, again, the general 
oonception in which the representation results is poetical but not pre- 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

cisc ; if man arrives at it not by a continuous process, but by a quicfe 

intuition ; if the original operation is not a regular development, but 
a violent explosion, — then, as with the Semitic races, metaphysics are 
absent, religion conceives God only as a king solitary and devouring, 
science cannot grow, the intellect is too rigid and complete to reproduce 
the delicate operations of nature, poetry can give birth only to vehement 
and grandiose exclamations, language cannot unfold the web of argu- 
ment and of eloquence, man is reduced to a lyric enthusiasm, an un- 
checked passion, a fanatical and constrained action. In this interval 
between the particular representation and the universal conception are 
found the germs of the greatest human differences. Some races, as the 
classical, pass from the first to the second by a graduated scale of ideas, 
regularly arranged, and general by degrees ; others, as the Germanic, 
traverse the same ground by leaps, without uniformity, after vague and 
prolonged groping. Some, like the Romans and English, halt at the 
first steps ; others, like the Hindoos and Germans, mount to the last. 
If, again, after considering the passage from the representation to the 
idea, we consider that from the representation to the resolution, we 
find elementary differences of the like importance and the like order, 
according as the impression is sharp, as in southern climates, or dull, 
as in northern ; according as it results in instant action, as among bar- 
barians, or slowly, as in civilised nations ; as it is capable or not of 
growth, inequality, persistence, and connections. The whole network 
of human passions, the chances of peace and public security, the sources 
of toil and action, spring from hence. Other primordial differences 
there are : their issues embrace an entire civilisation ; and we may com- 
pare them to those algebraical formulas which, in a narrow limit, con- 
tain in advance the whole curve of which they form the law. Not that 
this law is always developed to its issue ; there are perturbing forces ; 
but when it is so, it is not that the law was false, but that its action was 
impeded. New elements become mingled with the old ; great forces 
from without counteract the primitive. The race emigrates, like the 
Aryan, and the change of climate has altered in its case the whole 
economy, intelligence, and organisation of society. The people has 
been conquered, like the Saxon nation, and a new political structure 
has imposed on it customs, capacities, and inclinations which it had not. 
The nation has installed itself in the midst of a conquered people, down- 
trodden and threatening, like the ancient Spartans; and the necessity 
of living like troops in the field has violently distorted in an unique 
direction the whole moral and social constitution. In each case, the 
mechanism of human history is the same. One continually finds, as the 
original mainspring, some very general disposition of mind aid soul, 
innate and appended by nature to the race, or acquired and produced 
by some circumstance acting upon the race. These mainsprings, oncfl 
admitted, produce their effect gradually : I mean that after some cen* 
turies they bring the nation into a new condition, religious, literary, 



10 .INTRODUCTION. 

social, economic ; a new condition which, combined with their renewed 
effort, produces another condition, sometimes good, sometimes bad, 
sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, and so forth ; so that we may 
regard the whole progress of each distinct civilisation as the effect of a 
permanent force which, at every stage, varies its operation by modify* 
iog the circumstances of its action. 

V. 

Three different sources contribute to produce this elementary moral 
itate — the racCj the surroundings^ and the epoch. What we call the race 
are the innate and hereditary dispositions which man brings with him 
to the light, and which, as a rule, are united with the marked differ- 
ences in the temperament and structure of the body. They vary with 
various peoples. There is a natural variety of men, as of oxen and 
horses, some brave and intelligent, some timid and dependent, some 
capable of superior conceptions and creations, some reduced to rudi- 
mentary ideas and inventions, some more specially fitted to special 
works, and gifted more richly with particular instincts, as we meet with 
species of dogs better favoured than others, — these for hunting, these for 
fighting, these for the chase, these again for house-dogs or shepherds' 
dogs. We have here a distinct force, — so distinct, that amidst the vast 
deviations which the other two motive forces produce in him, one can 
recognise it still ; and a race, like the old Aryans, scattered from the 
Ganges as far as the Hebrides, settled in every clime, spread over every 
grade of civilisation, transformed by thirty centuries of revolutions, 
nevertheless manifests in its tongues, religions, literatures, philosophies, 
the community of blood and of intellect which to this day binds its off- 
shoots together. Different as they are, their parentage is not oblite- 
rated; barbarism, culture and grafting, differences of sky and soil, 
fortunes good and bad, have laboured in vain : the great marks of the 
original model have remained, and we find again the two or three 
principal lineaments of the primitive imprint underneath the secondary 
imprints which time has stamped above them. There is nothing aston- 
ishing in this extraordinary tenacity. Although the vastness of the 
distance lets us but half perceive — and by a doubtful light— the 
origin of species,^ the events of history sufficiently illumine the events 
anterior to history, to explain the almost immovable stedfastnei's 
of the primordial marks. When we meet with them, fifteen, twenty, 
thirty centuries before our era, in an Aryan, an Egyptian, a Chinese, 
they represent the work of several myriads of centuries. For as soon 
as an animal begins to exist, it has to reconcile itself with its surround- 
ings ; it breathes after a new fashion, renews itself, is differently 
affected according to the new changes in air, food, temperature. Dif- 
ferent climate and situation bring it various needs, and consequently 

' Darwin, The Origin of Species. Prosper Lucas, de VHcreditL 



IJS'JiJODUCTlON. 1] 

a diffeient course of actions; and this, again, a different «et of habits; 
«nd still again, a different set of aptitudes and instincts. Man, forced to 
accommodate himself to circumstances, contracts a temperament and a 
character corresponding to them ; and his character, like his tempera 
ment, is so much more stable, as the external impression is made upon 
him by more numerous repetitions, and is transmitted to his progeny 
by a more ancient descent. So that at any moment we may consider 
the character of a people as an abridgment of all its preceding actions 
and sensations ; that is, as a quantity and as a weight, not infinite,* 
since everything in nature is finite, but disproportioned to the rest, and 
almost impossible to lift, since every moment of an almost infinite past 
has contributed to increase it, and because, in order to raise the scale, 
one must place in the opposite scale a still greater number of actions 
and sensations. Such is the first and richest source of these master- 
faculties from which historical events take their rise ; and one sees at 
the outset, that if it be powerful, it is because this is no simple spring, 
but a kind of lake, a deep reservoir wherein other springs have, for a 
multitude of centuries, discharged their several streams. 

Having thus outlined the interior structure of a race, we must con- 
sider the surroundings in which it exists. For man is not alone in the 
world ; nature surrounds him, and his fellow-men surround him ; acci- 
dental and secondary tendencies come to place themselves on his primi- 
tive tendencies, and physical or social circumstances disturb or confirm 
the character committed to their charge. In course of time the climate 
has had its effect. Though we can follow but obscurely the Aryan 
peoples from their common fatherland to their final countries, we can 
yet assert that the profound differences which are manifest between the 
German races on the one side, and the Greek and Latin on the other 
arise for the most part from the difference between the countries in 
which they are settled : some in cold moist lands, deep in black marshy 
forests or on the shores of a wild ocean, caged in by melancholy or 
violent sensations, prone to drunkenness and gluttony, bent on a fight- 
ing, blood-spilling life ; others, again, within a lovely landscape, on 
a bright and laughing sea-coast, enticed to navigation and commerce, 
exempt from gross cravings of the stomach, inclined from the beginning 
to social ways, to a settled organisation of the state, to feelings and dispo- 
sitions such as develop the art of oratory, the talent for enjoyment, the 
inventions of science, letters, arts. Sometimes the state policy has been 
at work, as in the two Italian civilisations : the first wholly turned to 
action, conquest, government, legislation, by the original site of its city 
of refuge, by its border-land emporium, by an armed aristocracy, who, 
by inviting and drilling the strangers and the conquered, presently set 
face to face two hostile armies, having no escape from its internal dis- 
cords and its greedy instincts but in systematic warfare ; the other, shut 

' Spinoza. Ethics, Part iv. axiom. 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

out from unity and any great political ambition by the stability of iti 
municipal character, the cosmopolitan condition of its pope, and the 
military intervention of neighbouring nations, directed the whole of 
its magnificent, harmonious bent towards the worship of pleasure and 
beauty. Sometimes the social conditions have impressed their mark, 
as eighteen centuries ago by Christianity, and twenty-five centuriea 
ago by Buddhism, when around the Mediterran«Ran, as in HiadoostaOj 
the extreme results of Aryan conquest and civilisation induced at 
intolerable oppression, the subjugation of the individual, utter despair, 
a curse upon the world, with the development of metaphysics and 
myth, so that man in this dungeon of misery, feeling his heart softened, 
begot the idea of abnegation, charity, tender love, gentleness, humility^ 
brotherly love — there, in a notion of universal nothingness, here under 
the Fatherhood of God. Look around you upon the regulating in* 
stincts and faculties implanted in a race — in short, the mood of intelli- 
gence in which it thinks and acts at the present time : you will discover 
most often the work of some one of these prolonged situations, these 
surrounding circumstances, persistent and gigantic pressures, brought to 
bear upon an aggregate of men who, singly and together, from genera* 
tion to generation, are continually moulded and modelled by theii 
action; in Spain, an eight-century crusade against the Mussulmans, 
protracted even beyond and until the exhaustion of the nation by the 
expulsion of the Moors, the spoliation of the Jews, the establishment of 
the Inquisition, the Catholic wars ; in England, a political establishment 
of eight centuries, which keeps a man erect and respectful, in indepen- 
dence and obedience, and accustoms him to strive unitedly, under the 
authority of the law ; in France, a Latin organisation, which, imposed 
first upon docile barbarians, then shattered in the universal crash, 
is reformed from within under a lurking conspiracy of the national 
instinct, is developed under hereditary kings, ends in a sort of egality- 
republic, centralised, administrative, under dynasties exposed to revo- 
lution. These are the most efficacious of the visible causes which 
mould the primitive man : they are to nations what education, career, 
conditio n^ abode, are to individuals; and they seem to comprehend every- 
thing, since they comprehend all external powers Avhich shape huma» 
matter, and by which the external acts on the internal. 

There is yet a third rank of causes ; for, with the forces within and 
without, there is the work which they have already produced together, 
and this work itself contributes to produce that which follows. Beside 
the permanent impulse and the given surroundings, there is the ac- 
quired momentum. When the national character and surrounding 
circumstances operate, it is not upon a tabula rasa, but on a ground 
on which marks are already impiessed. According as one takes the 
ground at one moment or another, the imprint is diiferent ; and this ia 
the cause that the total effect is different. Consider, for instance, twa 
epochs of a literature or an art, — French tragedy under Corneille ani 



INTRODUCTION. JS 

under Voltaire, the Greek drama under ^Eschylus and under Euripides, 
Italian painting under da Vinci and under Guido. Truly, at either of 
these two extreme points the general idea has not changed; it is always 
the same human type which is its subject of representation or painting; 
the mould of verse, the structure of the drama, the form of body has 
endured. But among several differences there is this, that the one 
artist is the precursor, the other the successor ; the first has no model, 
tlie second has ; the first sees objects face to face, the second sees them 
through the first ; that many great branches of art are lost, many 
details are perfected, that simplicity and grandeur of impression have 
diminished, pleasing and refined forms have increased, — in short, that 
the first work has outlived the second. So it is with a people as with 
li plant ; the same sap, under the same temperature, and in the same 
soil, produces, at diiTerent steps of its progressive development, different 
formations, buds, flowers, fruits, seed-vessels, in such a manner that the 
one which follows has always the first for its condition, and grows from 
its death. And if now you consider no longer a brief epoch, as our 
V'Avn time, but one of those wide intervals which embrace one or more 
;enturies, like the middle ages, or our last classic age, the conclusion 
will be similar. A certain dominant idea has had sway ; men, for two, 
for five hundred years, have taken to tliemselves a certain ideal model 
of man : in the middle ages, the knight and the monk ; in our classic 
age, the courtier, the man who speaks well. This creative and universal 
idea is displayed over the whole field of action and thought ; and after 
covering the world with its works, involuntarily systematic, it has 
faded, it has died away, and lo, a new idea springs up, destined to a 
like domination, and the like number of creations. And here re- 
member that the second depends in part upon the first, and that the 
first, uniting its effect with those of national genius and surrounding 
circumstances, imposes on each new creation its bent and direction. 
The great historical currents are formed after this law — the long domi- 
nations of one intellectual pattern, or a master idea, such as the period 
of spontaneous creations called the Renaissance, or the period of ora- 
torical models called the Classical Age, or the series of mystical com- 
positions called the Alexandrian and Christian eras, or the series of 
mythological efflorescences which we meet with in the infancy of the 
German people, of the Indian and the Greek. Here as elsewhere we 
have but a mechanical problem ; the total effect is a result, depending 
entirely on t.he magnitude and direction of the producing causes. The 
only difference which separates these moral problems from physical ones 
is, that the magnitude and direction cannot be valued or computed in 
the first as in the second. If a need or a faculty is a quantity, capable 
of degrees, like a pressure or a weight, this quantity is not measurable 
like the pressure or the weight. We cannot define it in an exact or 
approximative formula ; we cannot have more, or give more, in respect 
of it, than a literary impression ; we are limited to marking and quot 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

ing the salient points by -which it is manifested, and which indicate 
approximately and roughly the part of the scale which is its position. 
But though the means of notation are not the same in the moral and 
physical sciences, yet as in both the matter is the same, equally made 
up of forces, magnitudes, and directions, we may say that in both the 
final result is produced after the same meth<7 1. It is great or small, af 
the fundamental forces are great or small and act more or less exactly 
in the same sense, according as the distinct effects of race, circura* 
Etance, and epoch, combine to add the one to the other, or to annul 
one another. Thus are explained the long impotences and the brilliant 
triumphs which make their appearance irregularly and without visible 
cause in the life of a people ; they are caused by internal concords or con- 
trarieties. There was such a concord when in the seventeenth century 
the sociable character and the conversational aptitude, innate in France, 
encountered the drawing-room manners and the epoch of oratorical ana- 
lysis ; when in the nineteenth century the profound and elastic genius of 
Germany encountered the age of philosophical compositions and of cos- 
mopolitan criticism. There was such a contrariety when in the seven- 
teenth century the rude and lonely English genius tried blunderingly to 
adopt a novel politeness ; when in the sixteenth century the lucid and 
prosaic French spirit tried vainly to cradle a living poetry. That 
hidden concord of creative forces produced the finished urbanity and 
the noble and regular literature under Louis xiv. and Bossuet, the 
grand metaphysics and broad critical sympathy of Hegel and Goethe. 
That hidden contrariety of creative forces produced the imperfect 
literature, the scandalous comedy, the abortive drama under Dry den 
and Wycherley, the vile Greek importations, the groping elaborate 
efforts, the scant half-graces under Ronsard and the Pleiad. So much 
we can say with confidence, that the unknown creations towards which 
the current of the centuries conducts us, will be raised up and regu- 
lated altogether by the three primordial forces; that if these forces 
could be measured and computed, one might deduce from them as 
from a formula the specialties of future civilisation ; and that if, in spite 
of the evident crudeness of our notations, and the fundamental inexact- 
ness of our measures, we try now to form some idea of our general 
destiny, it is upon an examination of these forces that we must ground 
oar prophecy. For in enumerating them, we traverse the complete 
circle of the agencies ; and when we have considered race, circumstance, 
and epoch, which are the internal mainsprings, the external pressure, 
and the acquired momentum, we have exhausted not only the whole of 
the actual causes, but also the whole of the possible causes of motion. 

VI. 

It remains for us to examine how these causes, when applied to a 
nation or an age, produce their results. As a rivulet falling from a 
height spreads its streams, according to the depth of the descent, staga 



INTRODCj._;TIOJ^ 15 

after stage, until it readies the lowest level tf the soil, bo tie disposi- 
tion of intellect or soul impressed on a people by race, circumstance, or 
epoch, spreads in different proportions and by regular descents, down 
the diverse orders of facts which make up its civilisation.^ If we 
arrange the map of a country, starting from the watershed, we find 
that below this common point the streams are divided into five or six 
principal basins, then each of these into several secondary basins, and 
so on, until the whole country with its thousand details is included in 
the ramifications of this network. So, if we arrange the psychological 
map of the events and sensations of a human civilisation, we find first 
of all five or six well-defined provinces — religion, art, philosophy, the 
state, the family, the industries ; then in each of these provinces natural 
departments ; and in each of these, smaller territories, until we arrive 
at the numberless details of life such as may be observed within and 
around us every day. If now we examine and compare these diverse 
groups of facts, we find first of all that they are made up of parts, and 
that all have parts in common. Let us take first the three chief works 
of human intelligence — religion, art, philosophy. What is a philosophy 
but a conception of nature and its primordial causes, imder the form 
of abstractions and formularies ? What is there at the bottom of a 
religion or of an art but a conception of this same nature and of these 
same causes, under form of symbols more or less concise, and person- 
ages more or less marked ; with this difference, that in the first we 
believe that they exist, in the second we believe that they do not 
exist ? Let the reader consider a few of the great creations of the 
intelligence in India, Scandinavia, Persia, Rome, Greece, and he will 
see that, throughout, art is a kind of philosophy made sensible, religion 
a poem taken for true, philosophy an art and a religion dried up, and 
reduced to simple ideas. There is therefore, at the core of each of 
these three groups, a common element, the conception of the world and 
its principles ; and if they differ among themselves, it is because each 
combines Avith the common, a distinct element: now the power of 
abstraction, again the power to personify and to believe, and finally 
the ].ower to personify and not believe. Let us now take the two chief 
works of human association, the family and the state. What forms the 
slate but a sentiment of obedience, by which the many unite under the 
authority of a chief? And what forms the family but the sentiment of 
obedience, by which wife and children act under the direction of a father 
and husband ? The family is a natural state, primitive and restrained, 
as the stiite is an artificial family, ulterior and expanded ; and amongst 
the differences arising from the number, origin, and condition of its 
members, we discover ia the small society as in the great, a like dis- 

* For this scale of co-ordinate effects, consult Renan, Langues Semitiques, eh. 
1. ; Mommsen, Comparison between the Greek and Roman Civilisations, eh. ii. vol 
i ;]d ed. : Tocqueville, Consequences de la Democratie en Ameriqiie, vol. iii. 



16 INTRODUCTIOX. 

position of tlie fundamental intelligence whicli assimilatf* and \initei 
them. Now suppose that this element receives from circumstance, 
race, or epoch certain special marks, it is clear that all the groups into 
which it enters, will be modified proportionately. If the sentiment of 
obedience is merely fear,^ you will find, as in most Oriental states, a 
brutal despotism, exaggerated punishment, oppression of the subject, 
servility of manners, insecurity of property, an impoverished produc- 
tion, the slavery of women, and the customs of the harem. If the 
sentiment of obedience has its root in the instinct of order, sociality, 
and honour, you will find, as in France, a perfect military organisation, 
a fine administrative hierarchy, a want of public spirit with occasional 
jerks of patriotism, ready docility of the subject with a revolutionary 
impatience, the cringing courtier with the counter-efforts of the genuine 
man, the refined sympathy betAveen conversation and society on the one 
hand, and the worry at the fireside and among the family on the other, 
the equality of the married with the incompleteness of the married 
state, under the necessary constraint of the law. If, again, the senti- 
ment of obedience has its root in the instinct of subordination and 
the idea of duty, you will find, as among the Germans, security and 
happiness in the household, a solid basis of domestic life, a tardy and 
incomplete development of society, an innate respect for established 
dignities, a superstitious reverence for the past, the keeping up of 
social inequalities, natural and habitual regard for the law. So in a 
race, according as the aptitude for general ideas varies, religion, art, 
and philosophy vary. If man is naturally inclined to the widest uni- 
versal conceptions, and apt to disturb them at the same time by the 
nervous delicacy of his over-sensitive organisation, you will find, as in 
India, an astonishing abundance of gigantic religious creations, a glow- 
ing outgrowth of vast and transparent epic poems, a strange tangle ol 
subtle and imaginative philosophies, all so well interwoven, and sc 
penetrated with a common essence, as to be instantly recognised, by 
their breadth, their colouring, and their want of order, as the products 
of the same climate and the same intelligence. If, on the other hana, a 
man naturally staid and balanced in mind limits of his own accord the 
scope of his ideas, in order the better to define their form, you will 
find, as in Greece, a theology of artists and tale-tellers ; distinctive gods, 
•oon considered distinct from things, and transformed, almost at the 
outset, into recognised personages ; the sentiment of universal unity all 
but effaced, and barely preserved in the vague notion of Destiny ; a 
philosophy rather close and delicate than grand and systematic, con- 
lined to a lofty metaphysics,^ but incomparable for logic, sophistry, 
*■ 1 

' Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Principes des trois gouvernementa. 

' The Alexandrian philosophy had its birth from the West. The metaphys 
leal notions of Aristotle are isolated ; moreover, with him as with Plato, thej 
are but a sketch. By way of contrast consider the systeraatic vigour of Plo 



INTRODUCTION. 



17 



and morals ; poetry and arts superior for clearness, spirit, scope, truth, 
and beauty to all that have ever been known. If, once more, man, 
reduced to narrow conceptions, and deprived of all speculative refine- 
ment, is at the same time altogether absorbed and straitened by 
practical occupations, you will find, as in Rome, rudimentary deities, 
mere hollow names, serving to designate the trivial details of agri- 
culture, generation, household concerns, etiquettes in fact of marriage, 
of the farm, producing a mythology, a philosophy, a poetrj^, either 
worth nothing or borrowed. Here, as everywhere, the law of mutual 
dependence^ comes into play. A civilisation forms a body, and its 
parts are connected with each other like the parts of an organic body. 
As in an animal, instincts, teeth, limbs, osseous structure, muscular 
envelope, are mutually connected, so that a change in one produces a 
corresponding change in the rest, and a clever naturalist can by a 
process of reasoning reconstruct out of a few fragments almost the 
whole body; even so in a civilisation, religion, philosophy, the 
organisation of the family, literature, the arts, make up a system 
in which every local change induces a general change, so that an 
experienced historian, studying some particular part of it, sees in ad- 
vance and half predicts the character of the rest. There is nothing 
vague in this interdependence. In the living body the regulator 
is, first, its tendency to manifest a certain primary type ; then its 
necessity for organs whereby to satisfy its wants, and for harmony with 
itself in order that it may live. In a civilisation, the regulator is the 
presence, in every great human creation, of a productive element, 
present also in other surrounding creations, — to wit, some faculty, 
aptitude, disposition, effective and discernible, which, being possessed 
of its proper character, introduces it into all the operations in which 
it assists, and, according to its variations, causes all the works in which 
it co-operates to vary also. 

vn. 

At this point we can obtain a glimpse of t!ie principal features of 
human transformations, and begin to search for the general laws which 
regulate, not events only, but classes of events, not such and such 
religion or literature, but a group of literatures or religions. If, for 
instance, it were admitted that a religion is a metaphysical poem, accom- 
panied by a belief; and remarking at the same time that there are cer- 
tain epochs, races, and circumstances in which belief, the poetical and 
metaphysical faculty, are combined with an unwonted vigour; if we 
consider that Christianity and Buddhism were produced at periods of 



tinus, Proclus, Schelling, and Hegel, or the admirable boldness of brahminicoa 
and buddhistic speculation. 

' I have endeavoured on several occasions to give expression to this law 
nota]>ly in the preface to Ensaia de Gritioue et d'Histoire. 



IS INTRODUCTION. 

grand productions, and amid such miseries as raised up the fnnrific» 
of the Cevennes; if we recognise, on the other hand, that primitive 
rehgions are born at the awakening of human reason, durii^g the richest 
blossoming of human imagination, at a time of the fairest artlessnesi 
and tlie greatest creduUty ; if we consider, also, that Mohammedanism 
appeared with the dawning of poetic prose, and the conception of national 
unity, amongst a people destitute of science, at a period of sudden 
development of the intellect, — we might then conclude that a religion 
is born, declines, is reformed and transformed according as circum- 
gtances confirm and combine with more or less exactitude and force its 
throe generative instincts ; and we should understand why it is endemic 
ill India, amidst imaginative, philosophic, eminently fanatic brains; why 
it blossomed forth so strangely and grandly in the middle ages, amidst 
an oppressive organisation, new tongues and literatures; why it waa 
aroused in the sixteenth century with a new character and heroic enthu- 
siasm, amid universal regeneration, and during the awakening o^ ihe 
German races ; why it breaks out into eccentric sects amid the rude 
American democracy, and under the bureaucratic Russian despotism ; 
why, in fine, it is spread, at the present day, over Europe in such dif- 
ferent dimensions and such various characteristics, according to the 
differences of race and civilisation. And so for every kind of human 
production — for literature, music, the fine arts, philosophy, science, 
statecraft, industries, and the rest. Each of these has for its direct 
cause a moral disposition, or a combination of moral dispositions : the 
cause given, they appear; the cause withdrawn, they vanish: the 
weakness or intensity of the cause measures their weakness or intensity. 
They are bound up with their causes, as a physical phenomenon with 
its condition, as the dew with the fall of the variable temperature, as 
dilatation with heat. There are such dualities in the moral as in the 
physical world, as rigorously bound together, and as universally ex- 
tended in the one as in the other. Whatever in the one case pro- 
duces, alters, suppresses the first term, produces, alters, suppresses the 
second as a necessary consequence. Whatever lowers the temperature, 
deposits the dew. Whatever develops credulity side by side with 
poetical thoughts, engenders religion. Thus phenomena have been 
produced; thus they will be produced. As soon as we know the 
sufEcient and necessary condition of one of these vast occurrences, our 
understanding grasps the future as we^ as the past. We can say with 
confidence in what circumstances it will reappear, foresee without 
rashness many portions of its future history, and sketch with care some 
features of its ulterior development. 

vni. 

History is now upon, or perhaps almost upon this footing, that It 
must proceed after such a method of research. The question pro- 
pounded now-a-days is of this kind. Given a literature, philosophy. 



INTRODUCTION. I9 

society, art, group of arts, what is the moral condition which produced 
it? what the condUions of race, epoch, circvunstance, the most fitted to 
produce tliis moral condition ? There is a distinct moral condition for 
each of these formations, and for each of their branches ; one for art in 
general, one for each kind of art — for architecture, painting, sculpture, 
rausic, poetry ; each has its special germ in the wide field of human 
psychology ; each has its law, and it is by virtue of this law tliat we 
see it raised, by chance, as it seems, wholly alone, amid the miscarriage of 
its nt (t hbours, like painting in Flanders and Holland in the seventeenth 
century, poetry in England in the sixteenth, music in Germany in the 
eighteenth. At this moment, and in these countries, the conditions have 
been fulfilled for one art, not for others, and a single branch has budded 
in the general barrenness. For these rules of human growth must history 
search ; with the special psychology of each special formation it must 
occupy itself; the finished picture of these characteristic conditions it 
must now labour to compose. No task is more delicate or more diffi- 
cult; Montesquieu tried it, but in his time history was too new to 
admit of his success ; they had not yet even a suspicion of the road 
necessary to be travelled, and hardly now do we begin to catch sight 
of it. Just as in its elements astronomy is a mechanical and physiology 
a chemical problem, so history in its elements is a psychological 
problem. There is a particular inner system of impressions and opera- 
tions which makes an artist, a believer, a musician, a painter, a wan- 
derer, a man of society; and of each the affiliation, the dej tb, the 
independence of ideas and emotions, are different : each has its moral 
history and its special structure, with some governing disposition and 
some dominant feature. To explain each, it would be necessary to 
write a chapter of esoteric analysis, and barely yet has such a method 
been rudely sketched. One man alone, Stendhal, with a singular bent 
of mind and a singular education, has undertaken it, and to this day 
the majority of readers find his books paradoxical and obscure : his 
talent and his ideas were premature ; his admirable divinations were 
not understood, any more than his profound sayings thrown out cur- 
sorily, or the astonishing justness of his perception and of his logic 
It was not perceived that, under the exterior of a conversationalist and 
a man of the world, he explained the most complicated of esoteric 
mechanisms ; that he laid his finger on the mainsprings ; that he intro- 
duced into the history of the heart scientific processes, the art of nota- 
tion, decomposition, deduction ; that he first marked the fundamental 
causes of nationality, climate, temperament ; in short, that he treated 
of sentiments as they should be treated, — in the manner of the naturalist, 
namely, and of the natural philosopher, who constructs classifications 
and weighs forces. For this very reason he was considered dry and 
eccentric: he remained solitary, writing novels, voyages, notes, for 
which he sought and obtained a score of readers. And yet we find is 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

his books at the present day essays the most suitable to open the path 
which I have endeavoured to describe. No one has better taught us 
how to open our eyes and see, to see first the men that surround us and 
the life that is present, then the ancient and authentic documents, to 
read between the black and white lines of the pages, to recognise under 
the old impression, under the scribbling of a text, the precise sentiment, 
the movement of ideas, the state of mind in which they were written. 
In his writings, in Sriinte-Beuve, in the German critics, the reader will 
see all the wealth that may be drawn from a literary work : when the 
work is rich, and one knows how to interpret it, we find there tha 
psychology of a soul, frequently of an age, now and then of a race. 
In this light, a great poem, a fine novel, the confessions of a superior 
man, are more instructive than a heap of historians with their histories. 
I would give fifty volumes of charters and a hundred volumes of state- 
papers for the memoirs of Cellini, the epistles of St. Paul, the Table- 
talk of Luther, or the comedies of Aristophanes. In this consists the 
importance of literary works : they are instructive because they are 
beautiful ; their utility grows with their perfection ; and if they furnish 
documents, it is because they are monuments. The more a book repre- 
sents visible sentiments, the more it is a work of literature ; for the proper 
ofiSce of literature is to take note of sentiments. The more a book 
represents important sentiments, the higher is its place in literature; 
for it is by representing the mode of being of a whole nation and a 
whole age, that a writer rallies round hira the sympathies of an entire 
age and an entire nation. This is why, amid the writings which set 
before our eyes the sentiments of preceding generations, a literature, 
and notably a grand literature, is incomparably the best. It resembles 
that admirable apparatus of extraordinary sensibiUty, by which phy- 
sicians disentangle and measure the most recondite and delicate changes 
of a body. Constitutions, religions, do not approach it in importance ; 
the articles of a code and of a catechism only show us the spirit roughly 
and without delicacy. If there are any writings in which politics and 
dogma are full of life, it is in the eloquent discourses of the pulpit and 
the tribune, memoirs, unrestrained confessions ; and all this belongs to 
literature: so that, in addition to itself, it has all the advantage of 
other works. It is then chiefly by the study of literatures that one 
may construct a moral history, and advance toward the knowledge of 
psychological laws, from which events spring. 

I am about to write the history of a literature, and to seek in it for 
the psychology of a people : if I have chosen this one in particular, it 
is not without a reason, I had to find a people Avith a grand and 
complete literature, and this is rare : there are few nations who have, 
during their whole existence, really thought and written. Among the 
ancients, the Latin literature is worth nothing at the outset, then bor- 
rowed and imitative. Among the moderns, German literature is almo^ 



INTRODUCTION. 



31 



wanting (or two centuries.* Italian literature and Spanish literature 
end at the middle of the seventeenth century. Onlj ancient Greece, 
modern France and England, offer a complete series of great significant 
monuments. I have chosen England, because being yet alive, and 
subject to direct examination, it may be better studied than a destroyed 
civ^ilisation, of which we retain but the scraps, and because^ being 
different from France, it has in the eyes of a Frenchman a more distinct 
character. Besides, there is a peculiarity in this civilisation, that apart 
from its spontaneous development, it presents a forced deviation, it has 
suffered the last and most effectual of all conquests, and that the three 
giounds whence it has sprung, race, climate, the Norman invasion, 
may be observed in its remains with perfect exactness ; so well, that 
we may examine in this history the two most powerful moving springs 
of human transformation, natural bent and constraining force, and we 
may examine them without uncertainty or gap, in a series of authentic 
and unmutilated memorials. I have endeavoured to define these 
primary springs, to exhibit their gradual effects, to explain how they 
have ended by bringing to light great political, religious, and literary 
works, and by developing the recondite mechanism whereby the Saxon 
barbarian has been transformed into the Englishman of to-day. 



From 1550 to 1760, 



HISTOEY OF ENGLISH LITERATUKE. 



BOOK I. 

THE SOURCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Saxons. 

1 The old country— Soil, sea, sky, climate— The new country — A moisf 

land and a thankless soil — Influence of climate on character. 
II The bodily structure — Food — Manners — Uncultivated instincts, German 
and English. 

III. Noble instincts in Germany — The individual — The family — The state — 

Religion — The Edda — Tragi-heroic conception of the world and of man- 
kind. 

IV. Noble instincts in England — ^Warrior and chieftain — Wife and husband — 

The poem of Beowulf — Barbarian society and the barbarian hero. 
V, Pagan poems — Kind and force of sentiments — Bent of mind and speech— 
Force of impression ; harshness of expression. 
VI. Christian poems — "Wherein the Saxons are predisposed to Christianity — 
How converted— Their view of Christianity — Hymns of Csedmon— 
Funeral h3rmn — Poem of Judith — Paraphrase of the Bible. 
VII. Wliy Latin culture took no hold on the Saxons — Reasons drawn from 
the Saxon conquest — Bede, Alcuin, Alfred — Translations — Chronicles — 
Compilations — Impotence of Latin writers — Reasons drawn from the 
Saxon character — Adhelm — Alcuin — Latin verse — Poetic dialogues — Bad 
taste of the Latin writers. 
VIII. Contrast of German and Latin races — Character of the Saxon race— Ita 
endurance under the Norman conquest. 



AS you coast the North Sea from the Scheldt to Jutland, you will 
mark in the first place that the characteristic feature is the want 
of slope ; marsh, waste, shoal ; the rivers hardly drag themselves along, 
swollen and sluggish, with long, black-looking waves; the flooding 
stream oozes over the banks, and appears beyond them in stagnant 
pools. In Holland the soil is but a sediment of mud ; here and there 
only does the earth cover it with a crust of mire, shallow and brittle- 
*be mere anuviuni of the river, which the river Boems ever ready i'" 



iii THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

destroy. Thict mists hover above, being fed by ceaseless exhalations. 
They lazily turn their violet flanks, grow black, suddenly descend in 
heavy showers; the vapour, like a furnace- smoke, crawls for ever on 
the horizon. Thus watered, the plants multiply ; in the angle between 
Jutkmd and the continent, in a fat muddy soil, ' the verdure is as fresh 
as that of England.' ^ Immense forests covered the land even after 
the eleventh century. The sap of this humid country, thick and 
potent, circulates in man as in the plants, and by its respiration, its 
nutrition, the sensations and habits which it generates, affects his 
faculties and his frame. 

The land produced after this fashion has one enemy, to wit, the sea. 
Holland maintains its existence only by virtue of its dykes. In 1654 
those in Jutland burst, and fifteen thousand of the inhabitants were 
swallowed up. One need see the blast of the North swirl down upon 
the low level of the soil, wan and ominous : ^ the vast yellow sea dashes 
against the narrow belt of coast which seems incapable of a moment's 
resistance ; the wind howls and bellows ; the sea-mews cry ; the poor 
little ships flee as fast as they can, bending, almost overset, and en- 
deavour to find a refuge in the mouth of the river, which seems as 
hostile as the sea. A sad and precarious existence, as it were face to 
face with a beast of prey. The Frisians, in their ancient laws, speak 
already of the league they have made against ' the ferocious ocean. 
Even in a calm this sea is unsafe. * Before the eye spreads a mighty 
waste of waters ; above float the clouds, grey and shapeless daughters 
of the air, which draw up the water in their mist-buckets from the sea, 
carry it along laboriously, and again suffer it to fall into the sea, a sad, 
useless, wearisome task.' ^ ' With flat and long extended maw, the 
shapeless north wind, like a scolding dotard, babbles with groaning, 
mysterious voice, and repeats his foolish tales.' Eain, wind, and surge 
leave room for naught but gloomy and melancholy thoughts. The very 
joy of the billows has in it an inexplicable restlessness and harshness, 
From Holland to Jutland, a string of small, deluged islands * bears wit- 
ness to their ravages; the shifting sands which the tide floats up 



* Malte-Brun, iv. 398. Denmark means *low plain.' Not counting bays, gulfs, 
and canals, the sixteenth part of the country is covered by water. The dialect 
of Jutland bears still a great resemblance to the English, 

2 See Euysdaal's painting in Mr. Baring's collection. Of the three Saxon islands, 
North Strandt, Busen, and Heligoland, North Strandt was inundated by the sea 
in 1300, 1483, 1532, 1615, and almost destroyed in 1634. Busen is a level plain, 
beaten by storms, which it has been found necessary to surround by a dyke. Heli- 
goland was laid waste ly the sea in 800, 1300, 1500, 1649, the last time so 
violently that only a portion of it survived. Turner, Hist, of Angl. Saxoiis, 1852, 
i. 97 

' Heine, die Nordaee, Cf. Tacitus, Ann, book 2, for the impressions of th« 
Romans, 'truculentia cceli.' 

* Watten, Platen, Sande, Diineninseln. 



^TIAP. I.J THE SAXONS. 25 

obstiuct Avith roclcs the banks And entrance of the rivers.* The firs! 
Roman fleet, a thousand vessels, perished there ; to this day ships wait 
a month or more in sight of port, tossed upon the great white waves, 
not daring to risk themselves in the shifting, winding channel, notorious 
for its wrecks. In winter a breastplate of ice covers the two streams ; 
♦.he sea drives back the frozen masses as they descend; they pile them- 
lolves with a crash upon the sandbanks, and sway to and fro; now and 
then you may see a vessel, seized as in a vice, split in two beneath their 
violence. Picture, in this foggy clime, amid hoar-frost and storm, in 
these marshes and forests, half-naked savages, a kind of wild beasts, 
fishers and hunters, even hunters of men ; these are they, Saxons, 
Angles, Jutes, Frisians ; ^ later on, Danes, who during the fifth and the 
niiith centuries, with their swords and battle-axes, took and kept the 
island of Britain. 

A rude and foggy land, like their own, except in the depth of its 
sea and the safety of its coasts, which one day will call up real fleets 
and mighty vessels ; green England — the word rises to the lips and 
expresses all. Here also moisture pervades everything ; even in sum- 
mer the mist rises ; even on clear days you perceive it fresh from the 
great sea-girdle, or rising from vast but ever slushy moorlands, undu- 
lating with hill and dale, intersected with hedges to the hmit of the 
horizon. Here and there a sunbeam strikes on the higher foliage with 
burning flash, and the splendour of the verdure dazzles and almost blinds 
you. The overflowing water straightens the flabby stems ; they grow 
up, rank, weak, and filled with sap ; a sap ever renewed, for the grey 
mists creep over a stratum of motionless vapour, and at distant inter- 
vals the rim of heaven is drenched by heavy showers. * There are yet 
commons as at the time of the Conquest, deserted, abandoned,^ wild, 
covered with furze and thorny plants, with here and there a horse 
grazing in the solitude. Joyless scene, poverty-stricken soil !* What a 
labour it has been to humanise it! What impression it must have 
made on the men of the South, the Romans of Csesarl I thought, 
when I saw it, of the ancient Saxons, wanderers from West and North, 
who came to settle in this land of marsh and fogs, on the border of these 
primeval forests, on the banks of these great muddy streams, which 
roll down their slime to meet the waves.* They must have lived as 
hunters and swineherds ; grow, as before, brawny, fierce, gloomy. 
Take civilisation from this soil, and there will remain to the inhabit- 

* Nine or ten miles out, near Heligoland, are the nearest soundings of alout 
fifty fathoms. 

* Talgrave, Saxon CoinmoniveaUhy vol. L 
^ Notes of a Journey in England. 

* Leonce de Lavergne, De V Agriculture anglaise. * The soil is much worst 
ihan tliat of France.* 

* There aro at least four rivers in England passing by the name of ' Ouse 
which is only another form of ' ooze.' — Tr. 



26 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

ants only war, the chase, gluttony, drunkenness Smiling love, sweet 
poetic dreams, art, refined and nimble thought, are for the liappy shores 
of the Mediterranean. Here the barbarian, ill housed in his mud- 
hovel, who hears the rain rustling whole days in the oak leaves — what 
dreams jan he have, gazing upon his mud-pools and his sombre sky?' 

II. 

Huge -white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish 
flaxen hair ; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese, heated by 
strong drinks ; of a cold temperament, slow to love,^ home-stayers, 
prone to brutal drunkenness : these are to this day tlie features which 
descent and climate preserve in the race, and these are what the Roman 
historians discovered in their former country. There is no living, in 
these lands, without abundance of solid food ; bad weather keeps people 
at home ; strong drinks are necessary to cheer them ; the senses become 
blunted, the muscles are braced, the will vigorous. In every country 
the body of man is rooted deep into the soil of nature ; and in this 
instance still deeper, because, being uncultivated, he is less removed 
from nature. In Germany, stormbeaten, in wretched boats of hide, 
amid the hardships and dangers of seafaring life, they were pre-eminently 
adapted for endurance and enterprise, inured to misfortune, scorners 
of danger. Pirates at first : of all kinds of hunting the man-hunt is 
most profitable and most noble ; they left the care of the land and 
flocks to the women and slaves ; seafaring, war, and pillage^ was their 
whole idea of a freeman's work. They dashed to sea in their two- 
sailed barks, landed anywhere, killed everything; and having sacrificed 
in honour of their gods the tithe of their prisoners, and leaving behind 
them the red light of their burnings, went farther on to begin again. 

* Lord,' says a certain litany, * deliver us from the fury of the Jutes.' 

* Of all barbarians^ these are strongest of body and heart, the most 
formidable,' — we may add, the most cruelly ferocious. When murder 
becomes a trade, it becomes a pleasure. About the eighth century, the 
final decay of the great Roman corpse which Charlemagne had tried to 
revive, and which was settling down into corruption, called them like 
-vultures to the prey. Those who had remained in Denmark, with their 
brothers of Norway, fanatical pagans, incensed against the Christians, 
made a descent on all the surrounding coasts. Their sea-kings,* * who 

^ Tacitns, De moribus Germanorum, passim: Diem noctemque continuare 
potando, nulli proborum. — Sera juvenum Venus. — Totos dies juxta focum atque 
ignem agunt. Dargaud, Voyage en Danemark. * They take six meals per day, the 
first at five o'clock in the morning. One should see the faces and meals at Ham« 
bui»g and at Amsterdam.' 

« Bade, v. 10. Sidonius, viii. 6. Lmgard, Hist, of England, 1854, L chap, a 

8 Zozimos, iii. 147. Amm. Marcelliuus, xxviii. 536. 

* Aug. Thierry Uist. S. Edniundi vi. 441 See Ynglingasaga, and especially 
the Saga of Egil. 



CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 27 

ftad never slept tinder the smoky rafters of a roof, who had never 
drained the ale-horn by an inhabited hearth,' laughed at wind and 
storms, and sang : ' The blast of the tempest aids our oars ; the bellow- 
ing of heaven, the howling of the thunder, hurt us not ; the hurricane 
is our servant, and drives us whither we wish to go.* * We smcte with 
our swords,' says a song attributed to Ragnar Lodbrog; * to me it was 
A joy like having my bright bride by me on the couch. . , . He who 
has never been wounded lives a weary life.* One of them, at the 
monastery of Peterborough, kills with his own hand all the monks, to 
the number of eighty-four; others, having taken King jElla, divided 
his ribs from the spine, and drew his lungs through the opening, so as 
to represent an eagle. Harold Harefoot, having seized his rival Alfred, 
with six hundred men, had them maimed, blinded, hamstrung, scalped, 
or embowelled.^ Torture and carnage, greed of danger, fury of de- 
struction, obstinate and frenzied bravery of an over-strong temperament, 
the unchaining of the butcherly instincts, — such traits meet us at every 
step in the old Sagas. The daughter of the Danish Jarl, seeing Egil 
taking his seat near her, repels him with scorn, reproaching him with 
* seldom having provided the wolves with hot meat, with never having 
seen for the whole autumn a raven croaking over the carnage.' But 
Egil seized her and pacified her by singing : * I have mai'ched with my 
bloody sword, and the raven has followed me. Furiously we fought, 
the fire passed over the dwellings of men ; we slept in the blood of 
those who kept the gates.' From such table-talk, and such maid's 
fancies, one may judge of the rest.* 

Behold them now in England, more settled and wealthier : do you 
look to find them much changed ? Changed it may be, but for the 
worse, like the Franks, like all barbarians who pass from action to en- 
joyment. They are more gluttonous, carving their hogs, filling them- 
selves with flesh, swallowing down deep draughts of mead, ale, spiced 
wines, all the strong, coarse drinks which they can procure, and so they 
are cheered and stinudated. Add to this the pleasure of the fight. Not 
easily with such instincts can they attain to culture ; to find a natural 
and ready culture, we must look amongst the sober and sprightly popu- 
lations of the south. Here the sluggish and heavy ^ temperament re- 
mains long buried in a brutal life ; people of the Latin race, never 

* Lingard, Hist, of England^ i. 164, says, however, * Eveiy tenth man out 
cf the six hundred received his liberty, and of the rest a few were selected for 
slaveiy. ' — Tr. 

* Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, are one and the 
same people. Their language, laws, religion, poetry, differ but little. The mort 
northern continue longest in their primitive manners. Germany in the fourth 
and liftli centuries, Denmark and Norway in the seventh and eighth, Iceland in 
the tenth and eleventh centuries, present the same condition, and the documentg 
li each country will till up the gaps that exist in the history of the others. 

" Tacitus, De mor. Germ. xxii. ; Ueus nee astuta nee callida. 



28 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

at a jfirst gLmce see in them aught but large grofs beasts, clumsy and 
ridiculous when not dangerous and enraged. Up to the sixteenth cen- 
turjj says an old historian, the great body of the nation were litxla else 
than herdsmen, keepers of beasts for flesh and fleece ; up to the end of 
the eighteenth drunkenness was the recreation of the higher ranks ; it 
\s still tliat of the lower; and all the refinement and softening influence 
of civilisation have not abolished amongst them the use of the rod and 
the fist. If the carnivorous, warlike, drinking savage, proof against 
the climate, still shows beneath the conventions of our modern society 
and the softness of our modern polish, imagine what he must have been 
when, landing with his band upon a wasted or desert country, and 
becoming for the first time a settler, he saw on the horizon the common 
pastures of the border country, and the great primitive forests which 
furnished stags for the chase and acorns for his pigs. The ancient 
histories tell us that they had a great and a coarse appetite.^ Even at 
the time of the Conquest the custom of drinking to excess was a common 
vice with men of the highest rank, and they passed in this way whole 
days and nights without intermission. Henry of Huntingdon, in the 
twelfth century, lamenting the ancient hospitality, says that the Norman 
kings provided their courtiers with only one meal a day, while the 
Saxon kings used to provide four. One day, when Athelstan went 
with his nobles to visit his relative Ethelfleda, the provision of mead 
was exhausted at the first salutation, owing to the copiousness of the 
draughts ; but Sainl Dunstan, forecasting the extent of the royal appe- 
tite, had furnished the house, so that though the cup-bearers, as is the 
custom at royal feasts, were able the whole day to serve it out in horns 
and other vessels, the liquor was not found to be deficient. When the 
guests were satisfied, the harp passed from hand to hand, and the rude 
harmony of their deep voices swelled under the vaulted roof. The 
monasteries themselves in Edgard's time kept up games, songs, and 
dances till midnight. To shout, to drink, to caper about, to feel their 
veins heated and swollen with wine, to hear and see around them the 
riot of the orgy, this was the first need of the Barbarians.^ The heavy 
human brute gluts himself with sensations and with noise. 

For this appetite there was a stronger grazing-ground, — I mean, 
blows and battle. In vain they attached themselves to the soil, be- 
came cultivators, in distinct communities and distinct regions, shut up* 
in their march with their kindred and comrades, bound together, scpa- 

* Craik and ilacFarlane, Pictorial History of England, 1837, L 337. W. ol 
Malmesbury. Henry of Huntingdon, vi. 365. 

' Tacitus, De moribus Germanorum, xxii., xxilL 

3 Kemble, Saxons in England, 1849, L 70, ii. 184. * The Acts of an Anglo-Saxon 
parliament are a series of treaties of peace between all the associations which make 
up the Btato ; a continual revision and renewal of the alliances offenuve and 
defensive of all the free men. They are universally mutual contraotr for th« 
maintenance of the frid or peace. 



CRAP L] THE SAXONS. 29 

rated from the mass, marked round by sacred landmarks, by primeval 
oaks on ^vhich they cut the figures of birds and beasts, by poles set up 
in the midft of the marsh, which whosoever removed was punished with 
merciless tortures. In vain these Marches and Ga's^ were grouped 
into states, and finally formed a half-regulated society, with assembUea 
and laws, under the lead of a single king ; its very structure indicates 
the necessities to supply which it was created. They united in order 
to maintain peace ; treaties of peace occupy their Parliaments ; provi- 
sions for peace are the matter of their laws. War was waged daily and 
everywhere ; the aim of life was, not to be slain, ransomed, mutilated, 
pillaged, hung and of course, if it was a woman, violated.^ Every man 
was obliged to appear armed, and to be ready, with his burgh or his 
township, to repel marauders, who went about in bands ; one such con- 
sisted of thirty-five and more. The animal was yet too powerful, too 
impetuous, too untamed. Anger and covetousness in the first place 
brought him upon his prey. Their history, such as that of the Hept- 
archy, is like a history of * kites and crows.'* They slew the Britons 
or reduced them to slavery, fought the remnant of the Welsh, Irish, and 
Picts, massacred one another, were hewn down and cut to pieces by the 
Danes. In a hundred years, out of fourteen kings of Northumbria, 
seven were slain and six deposed. Penda of Mercia killed five kings, 
and in order to win the town of Bamborough, demolished all the neigh- 
bouring villages, heaped their ruins into an immense pile, sufficient to 
burn all the inhabitants, undertook to exterminate the Northumbrians, 
and perished himself by the sword at the age of eighty. Many amongst 
them were put to death by the thanes ; one thane was burned alive ; 
brothers slew one another treacherously. With us civilisation has in- 
terposed, between the desire and its fulfilment, the counteracting and 
softening preventive of reflection and calculation ; here, the impidse is 
sudden, and murder and every kind of excess spring from it instanta- 
neously. King Edwy* having married Elgiva, his relation within the 
prohibited degrees, quitted the hall where he was drinking on the very 
day of his coronation, to be with her. The nobles thought themselves 
wsulted, and immediately Abbot Dunstan went himself to seek the 
young man. ' He found the adulteress,' says the monk Osbern, * her 
mother, and the king together on the bed of debauch. He dragged the 
king thence violently, and setting the crown upon his head, bronglit 

* A large district ; the word is still existing in German, as Rheingau, Breisgau. 

* Turner, Hist, of the Anglo-Sax. ii. 440, Laws of Ina. 

* Milton's expression. Lingard's History^ i. chap. 3. This history beara 
much resemblance to that of the Franks in Gaul. See Gregory of Tours. Tlia 
Shxoiis, like the Franks, were somewhat softened, but above aU depraved, and 
were pillaged and massacred by those of their northern brothers who had re 
Uiaiiied in a savage state. 

■* Vita S. Dunstaui, Anylia Sacra, JL 



30 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

him back to the nobles.' Afterwards Elgiva sent men to deprive 
Dunstan of his eyes, and then, in a revolt, saved herself and the king 
by hiding in the country; but the men of the North having^eized her, 
* hamstrung her, and then subjected her to the death which she de- 
served ^ Barbarity follows barbarity. At Bristol, at the time of the 
Conquest, as we are told by an historian of the time,^ it was the custom 
to buy men and women in all parts of England, and to carry theui to 
Ireland for sale. The buyers usually made the women pregnant, and 
took theni to market in that condition, in order to ensure a better 
price, 'You might have seen with sorrow long files of young people 
of both sexes and of the greatest beauty, bound with ropes, and daily 
exposed for sale. . . . They sold in this manner as slaves their nearest 
relatives, and even their own children.' And the chronicler adds that, 
having abandoned this practice, they * thus set an example to all the 
rest of England.' Would you know the manners of the highest ranks, 
in the family of the last king?^ At a feast in the king's hall, Harold 
was serving Edward the Confessor with wine, wdien Tostig, his brother, 
stimulated by envy at his favour, seized him by the hair. They were 
separated. Tostig went to Plereford, v/here Harold had ordered a great 
royal banquet to be prepared. There he seized his brother's attendants, 
and cutting off their heads and limbs, he placed them in the vessels of 
wine, ale, mead, and cider, and sent a message to the king : * If you go 
to your farm, you will find there plenty of salt meat, but you will do 
well to carry some more with you.' Harold's other brother, Sweyn, 
had violated the abbess Elgiva, assassinated Beorn the thane, and being 
banished from the country, had turned pirate. When we regard thei? 
deeds of violence, their ferocity, their cannibal jests, we see that they 
were not far removed from the sea-kings, or from the followers of Odin, 
who ate raw flesh, hung men as victims on the sacred trees of Upsal, 
and killed one another to make sure of dying as they had lived, in 
blood. A score of times the old ferocious instinct reappears beneath 
the thin crust of Christianity. In the eleventh century, Sigeward,* the 
great Duke of Northumberland, was afflicted with a dysentery; and feel- 
ing his death near, exclaimed, * What a shame for me not to have been 
permitted to die in so many battles, and to end thus by a cow's death ! 
At least put on my breastplate, gird on my sword, set my helmet on 
my head, my shield in my left hand, my golden battle-axe in my right, 

* It is amusing to compare the story of Edwy and Elgiva in Tm-ner, ii. 216, 
etc., and then in Lingard, i. 132, etc. The first accuses Dunstan, the other 
defends liini. — Tr. 

2 Life of Bishop Wolstan. 

* Tantae saevitise eraiit fiatres illi quo<l, cum alicujus nitidam villain conspi- 
cerent, dominatorem de nocte interiici juberent, totamqne progeniem illius pof. 
lessionemque defuncti obtinerent. Turner, iii. 27. Henry of Huntingdon, vi. 367. 

* ' Pane gigas statura,' says tlie clivouicler. H. of Huntingdon vi. Ml 
Kemble. J. oO:j. Turner, ii. ;;i8. 



::hap. i.j the saxons. 31 

BO that a great wnrrior, lilve myself, may die as a warrior.' They dij 
as he bade, nnd thns died he honourably with his arms. They had 
made one step, and only one, from barbarism. 

III. 

Under this native barbarism there were noble dispositions, unl^noA\Ti 
^^ the Roman world, which were destined to produce a better people 
out of the ruins of these. In the first place, *a certain earnestness, 
which leads them out of idle sentiments to noble ones.'^ From their 
origin in Germany this is what we find them, severe in manner, with 
grave inclinations and a manly dignity. They live solitary, each one 
near the spring or the wood which has taken his fancy.^ Even in 
villages the cottages were detached ; they must have independence and 
free air. They had no taste for voluptuousness; love was tardy, edu- 
cation severe, their food simple ; all the recreation they indulged in 
was the hunting of the aurochs, and a dance amongst naked swords. 
Violent intoxication and perilous wagers were their weakest points ; 
they sought in preference not mild pleasures, but strong excitement. 
In everything, in rude and masculine instincts, they were men. Each 
in his own home, on his own land, and in his own hut, was master of 
himself, firm and self-contained, in no wise restrained or shackled. If 
the commonweal received anything from him, it was because he gave 
it. In all great conferences he gave his vote in arms, passed judg- 
ment in the assembly, made alliances and wars on his own account, 
moved from place to place, shoAved activity and daring.* The modern 
Englishman existed entire in this Saxon. If he bendc, it is because he 
is quite willing to bend ; he is no less capable of self-denial than of 
independence ; sacrifice is not uncommon, a man cares not for his life 
and his blood. In Homer the warrior often gives way, and is not blamed 
if he flees. In the Sagas, in the Edda, he must be over-brave ; in 
Germany the coward is drowned in the mud, under a hurdle. Through 
all outbreaks of primitive brutality gleams obscurely the grand idea of 
duty, which is, the self-constraint exercised in view of some noble end. 
.Marriage was pure amongst them, chastity instinctive. Amongst the 
Saxons the adulterer was punished by death; the adulteress was obliged 
to hang herself, or was stabbed by the knives of her companions. The 
wives of the Cimbrians, when they could not obtain from Marius assui- 
ance of their chastity, slew themselves with their own hands. They 
thought there was something sacred in a woman ; they married but one, 
and kept faith with her. In fifteen centuries the idea of marriage is 
unchanged amongst them. The wife, on entering her husband's home, 

* Grimm, Mythology, 53, Preface. 

' Tacitus, XX., xxiii., xi., xii., xiii., et passim. We may still 8(c the tracei 
of this taste in English dwellings. 

• TacituB, xiii. 



32 THE SOURCE. |B()OK 1 

is aware that she gives herself altogether,* * that she will have but onei 
body, one life with him ; that she -will have no thought, no desire 
beyond ; that she will be the companion of his perils and labours ; 
that she will sufier and dare as much as he, both in peace and war.' 
And he, like her, knows that he gives himself. Having chosen his 
chief, he forgets himself in him, assigns to him his own glory, serves 
him to the death. ' He is infamous as long as he lives, who returns 
from the field of battle without his chief.'^ It was on this voluntary 
subordination that feudal society was based. Man, in this race, caa 
accept a superior, can be capable of devotion and respect. Thrown 
back upon himself by the gloom and severity of his climate, he ha? 
discovered moral beauty, while others discover sensuous beauty. This 
kind of naked brute, who lies all day by his fireside, sluggish and dirty, 
always eating and drinking,^ whose rusty faculties cannot follow the 
clear and fine outlines of poetic forms, catches a glimpse of the sublime 
in his troubled dreams. Pie does not see it, but simply feels it ; his 
religion is already within, as it will be in the sixteenth century, when 
he will cast off the sensuous worship of Rome, and confirm the faith of 
the heart.* His gods are not enclosed in walls ; he has no idols. What 
he designates by divine 'names, is something invisible and grand, which 
floats through nature, and is conceived beyond nature,* a mysterious 
infinity which the sense cannot touch, but which ' reverence alone can 
appreciate ;' and when, later on, the legends define and alter this vague 
divination of natural powers, an idea remains at the bottom of this 
chaos of giant-dreams ; that the world is a warfare, and heroism the 
greatest excellence. 

In the beginning, say the old Icelandic legends,* there were two 
worlds, Niflheim the frozen, and Muspell the burning. From the fall- 
ing snow-flakes was born the giant Ymir. * There was in times of old, 
where Ymir dwelt, nor sand nor sea, nor gelid waves ; earth existed 
not, nor heaven above; 'twas a chaotic chasm, and grass nowhere.* 
There was but Ymir, the horrible frozen Ocean, with his children, 
sprung from his feet and his armpits; then their shapeless progeny. 
Terrors of the abyss, barren Mountains, Whirlwinds of the North, an I* 

' Tacitus, xix., viii., xvi. Kemble, i. 232. ^ Tacitus, xiv. 

■ * In omni domo, nudi et sordid!. . . . Plus per otium transigunt, dediti somno, 
ciboque ; totos dies juxta focum atque ignera agunt.' 

* Grimm, 53, Preface. Tacitus, x. 

* * Deorum nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod sola reverentia vident. 
Later on, at Upsa] for instance, they had images (Adam of Bremen, Historia 
Ecclesiastlca). Wuot2,n (Odin) signifies etymologicalJy the All -Powerful, him who 
penetrates and circulates through everything (Grimm, MytlioL). 

* Edda ScBmundi, Edda Snorri, ed. Copenhagen, three vols, passim. Mr 
Bergmann has translated several of these poems into French, which Mr. Taim 
quotes. The translator has generally made use of the edition of Mr. Thorpe 
Loudon, Triibner, 180(5. 



CHAP. I.J THE SAXONS. 33 

other malevolent beings, enemies of the sun and of life ; then tho cow 
Andhumbla, born also of melting snow, brings to light, whilst licking 
the hoar- frost from the rocks, a man Bur, whose grandsons kill the 
giant Ymir. 'From liis flesh the earth was formed, and from his bones 
the hills, the heaven from the skull of that ice-cold giant, and from 
his blood the sea ; but of his brains the heavy clouds are all created.* 
Then arose war between the monsters of winter and the luminous fer- 
tile gods, Odin the founder, Baldur the mild and benevolent, Thor the 
iummer-thunder, who purifies the air and nourishes the earth with 
showers. Long fought tlie gods against the frozen Jotuns, against the 
lark bestial powers, the wolf Fenrir, the great Serpent, whom they 
drown in the sea, the treacherous Loki, Avhom they bind to the rocks, 
beneath a viper whose venom drops continually on his face. Long will 
the heroes, who by a bloody death deserve to be placed 'in the halls 
of Odin, and there wage a combat every day,' assist the gods in their 
mighty war. A day will, however, arrive when gods and men will be 
conquered. Then 

* trembles Yggdrnsil's ash yet standing ; groans that ancient tree, and the Jotun 
Loki is loosed. The sliado-\vs groan on the ways of Hel,* until the fire of 
Snrt has consumed the tree. Hryui steers from the east, the waters rise, the 
mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage. The worm beats the water, and the eagle 
screams ; the pale of beak tears carcases ; (the ship) Naglfar is loosed. Surt from 
the South comes with flickering flame ; shines from his sword the Val-god's sun. 
The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter ; men tread the path 
of Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from 
heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the all-nourishing tree, towering fire 
plays against heaven itself.** 

The gods perish, devoured one by one by the monsters ; and the 
celestial legend, sad and grand now like the life of man, bears wit- 
ness to the hearts of warriors and heroes. 

There is no fear of grief, no care for life ; they count it as dross 
when the idea has seized upon them. The trembling of the nerves, the 
repugnance of animal instinct which starts back before wounds and 
death, are all lost in an irresistible determination. See how in their 
ej ic^ the sublime springs up amid the horrible, like a bright purple 
floAver amid a pool of blood. Sigurd has plunged his sword into the 
dragon Faf nir, and at that very moment they looked on one another ; 
and Fafnir asks, as he dies, ' Who art thou ? and who is thy father ? 
and what thy kin, that thou wert so hardy as to bear weapons against 

' Hel, the goddess of death, born of Loki and Angrboda. — Tr. 

* Thorpe, The Edda ofScemund, The Vala'sProj^hecy, str. 48-56, p. 9 et passim. 

3 Fajnismdl Edda. This epic is common to the Northern races, as is tht 
Jliad to the Greek populations, and is found almost entire in Germany in th« 
Nihelungen Lied. The translator has also used Magnusson and Morris* poet 
leal version of the Volsunga Saga, and certain songs of the Elder Edda, JjO^ 
dou, Ellis, 1870. 



34 THE SOUiivJE. [BOOK i 

ma ?' * A hardy heart urged me on thereto, and a strong hand and this 
sharp sword. . . . Seldom hath hardy eld a fiiint-heart youth.' After 
this triumphant eagle's cry Sigurd cuts out the worm's heart; but 
Refrin, brother of Fafnir, drinks blood from the wound, and falls asleep. 
Sigurd, who was roasting the heart, raises his finger thoughtlessly 
to his lips. Forthwith he understands the language of the birds. The 
eagles scream above liim in the branches. They warn him to mis- 
trust Regin. Sigurd cuts off the latter's head, eats of Fafnir's heart, 
drinks 'lis blood and his brother's. Amongst all these murders their 
courage and poetry grow. Sigurd has subdued Brynhild, the untamed 
maiden, by passing through the flaming fire; they share one couch 
for three nights, his naked sword betwixt them. ' Nor the damsel did 
oe kiss, nor did the Hunnish king to his arm lift her. He the blooming 
maid to Giuki's son delivered,' because, according to his oath, he must 
send her to her betrothed Gunnar. She, setting her love upon him, 
* Alone she sat without, at eve of day, began aloud with herself to 
speak: *' Sigurd must be mine; I must die, ?r that blooming youth 
clasp in my arms."' But seeing him married, she brings about his 
death. 'Laughed then Brynhild, Budli's daughter, once only, from 
her whole soul, when in her bed she listened to the loud lament of 
Giuki's daughter.' She put on her golden corslet, pierced herself with 
the sword's point, and as a last request said : 

* Let in the plain be raised a pile so spacious, that for us all like room may 
be ; let them burn the Him (Sigurd) on the one side of me, on the other side my 
household slaves, with collars splendid, two at our heads, and two liawks ; let also 
he between us both the keen -edged sword, as when we both one couch ascended ; 
also five female thralls, eight male slaves of gentle birth fostered with me. ' ^ 

All were burnt together ; yet Gudrun the widow continued motionless 
by the corpse, and could not weep. The wives of the jarls came to 
console her, and each of them told her own sorrows, all the calamities 
of great devastations and the old life of barbarism. 

'Then spoke Giaflang, Giuki's sister: **Lo, up on earth I live most loveless, 
who of five mates must see the ending, of daughters twain and three sisters, of 
brethren eight, and abide behind lonely." Then spake Herborg, Queen of Hun- 
land: ** Crueller tale have I to tell of my seven sons, down in the Southlands, 
and the eight man, my mate, felled in the death-mead. Father and mother, and 
four brothers on the wide sea the winds and death played with ; the billows beat 
on the bulwark boards. Alone must I sing o'er them, alone must I array them, 
alone must my hands deal with their departing ; and all this was in one season's 
wearing, and none was left for love or solace. Then was I bound a prey of the 
battle when that s^.me season wore to its ending ; as a tiring may must I bind the 
shoon of the duke's high dame, every day at dawning. From her jealous hate gat 
I heavy mocking, cruel lashes she laid upon me.'"* 

_ .t 

> Thorpe, Tlie Edda ofSiBmund, Third lay ofJSigurd Fafnicide, str. G2-64, p. 83 
* Maguusson and Morris, Story of the Volsunys and Nihelunys, Lamentation 
if Oadrun, p. 118 ct passim. 



CHAP. I.] rHE SAXONS. 3^ 

All was in vain ; no word could draw tears from those dry eyes. They 
were obliged to lay the bloody corpse before her, ere her tears would 
come. Then a flood of tears ran down over her knees, and * the geese 
withal that were in the home-field, the fair fowls the may owned, fell 
a-screaming.' She wishes to die, like Sigurd, on the corpse of him 
whom alone she had loved, if they had not deprived her of memory by 
R magic potion. Thus affected, she depart* in order to marry Atli, king 
of the Huns ; and yet she goes against her will, with gloomy forebod- 
ings : for mi.rder begets murder ; and her brothers, the murderers of 
Sigurd, having been drawn to Atli's court, fall in their turn into a 
snare like that which they had themselves laid. Then Gunnar was 
bound, and they tried to make him deliver up the treasure. He 
answers with a barbarian's laugh : 

' " Hogni's heart in my hand shall lie, cut bloody from the breast of the 
valiant chief, the king's son, with a dull-edged knife." They the heart cut out 
from Hialli's breast ; on a dish, bleeding, laid it, and it to Gunnar bare. Then 
said Gunnar, lord of men: "Here have I the heart of the timid Hialli, unlike 
the heart of the bold Hogni ; for much it trembles as in the dish it lies ; it 
trembled more by half while in his breast it lay. " H ogni laughed when to his heari 
they cut the living crest-crasher ; no lament uttered he. All bleeding on a dish 
.they laid it, and it to Gunnar bare. Calmly said Gunnar, the warrior "Niflung . 
" Here have I the heart of the bold Hogni, unlike the heart of the timid Hialli ; 
for it little trembles as in the dish it lies : it trembled less while in his breast it 
lay. So far shalt thou, Atli ! be from the eyes of men as thou wilt from the 
treasures be. In my power alone is all the hidden Niflung's gold, now that Hogni 
lives not. Ever was I wavering while we both lived ; now am 1 so no longer, as I 
alone survive. " ' * 

It was the last insult of the self-confident man, who values neither 
his own life nor that of another, so that he can satiate his vengeance. 
They cast him into the serpent's den, and there he died, striking his 
harp with his foot. But the inextinguishable flame of vengeance 
passed from his heart to that of his sister. Corpse after corpse fell 
on each other; a mighty fury hurls them open-eyed to death. She 
killed the children she had by Atli, gave him their hearts to eat, served 
in honey, one day on his return from the carnage, and laughed coldly 
as she told him on what he had fed. ' Uproar was on the benches, 
portentous the cry of men, noise beneath the costly hangings. The 
children of the Huns wept; all Avept save Gudrun, who never wept, 
or for her bear-fierce brothers, or for her dear sons, young, simple.'* 
Judge from this heap of ruin and carnage to what excess tlie mind 
could attain. There were men amongst them, Berserkirs,^ who in 
battle, seized with a sort of madness, showed a sudden and super- 

Thorpe, The Edda of Scemund, Lay of Atli, str. ?.l-27, p. 117 
» Ibid, str. as, p. 119. 

' This word signifies men who fought without a breastplate, perhaps io 
sLirtri onlv ; ScoUice, ' Baresarks.' — Tp 



36 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

human strength, and ceased to feel their wounds. This is the concep- 
tion of a hero as engendered by this race in its infancy. Is it not 
strange to see them place their happiness in battle, their beauty in 
death ? Is there any people, Hindoo, Persian, Greek, or Gallic, which 
has formed so tragic a conception of life ? Is there any which has 
peopled its infnntine mind with such gloomy dreams? Is there any 
which has so entirely banished the sweetness from enjoyment, and the 
aofmess from pleasure? Energy, tenacious and mournful energy, an 
ecstasy of energy — such was their chosen condition. Carlyle said well, 
that in the sombre obstinacy of an English labourer still survives the 
tacit rage of the Scandinavian warrior. Strife for strife's sake — such is 
their pleasure. With what sadness, madness, waste, such a disposition 
bleaks its bonds, we shall see in Shakspeare and Byron; with what 
completeness, in what duties it can entrench and employ itself under 
moral ideas, we shall see in the case of the Puritans. 

IV. 

They have established themselves in England ; and however disor- 
dered the society which binds them together, it is founded, as in Ger- 
many, on generous sentiment. War is at every door, 1 am aware, but 
warlike virtues are behind every door ; courage chiefly, then fidelity. 
Under the brute there is a free man, and a man with a heart. There is 
no man amongst them who, at his own risk,^ will not make alliance, 
go forth to fight, undertake adventures. There is no group of men 
amongst them, who, in their Witenagemote, is not for ever concluding 
alliances one with another. Every clan, in its own district, forms a 
league of which all the members, ' brothers of the sword,' defend each 
other, and demand each other's blood at the price of their own. Every 
chief in his hall reckons that he has friends, not mercenaries, in the 
faithful ones who drink his beer, and who, having received as marks of 
his confidence, bracelets, swords, and suits of armour, will cast them- 
selves between him and danger on the day of battle.^ Independence 
and bravery smoulder amongst this young nation with violence and 
excess ; but these are of themselves noble things ; and no less noble 
are the sentiments which serve them for discipline, — to wit, an affec- 
tionate devotion, and respect for plighted faith. These appear in their 
laws, and break forth in their poetry. Amongst them greatness of 
heart gives matter for imagination. Their characters are not selfish 
and shifty, like those of Homer. They are brave hearts, simple^ and 
strong, faithful to their relatives, to their master in arms, firm and 
Btedfast to enemies and friends, abounding in courage, and ready for 
iacrifice. * Old as I am,' says one, * I will not budge hence. I mean 

' See the Life of Sweyu, of Hereward, etc., even up to the time of the Conquest 
' Beowulf, passim, Death of Byrhtnoth. 
Tacitus, ' Geus nee calliila, nee astuta.' 



3HAP. I.] ^ THE SAXONS 3'j 

to iiie by my lord's side, near this man I have loved so much. He 
kept his word, the word he had given to his chief, to the distributor o* 
gifts, promising him that they should return to the town, safe and 
sound to their homes, or that they would fall both together, in the thick 
of the carnage, covered with wounds. He lay by his master's side, like 
a faithful servant.' Though awkward in speech, their old poets find 
iouchmg words when they have to paint these manly friendships. We 
cannot without emotion hear them relate how the old ' king embraced 
the best of his thanes, and put his arms about his neck, how the tears 
flowed down the cheeks of the greyhaired chief. . . . The valiant man 
was so dear to him. He could not stop the flood which mounted from 
his breast. In his heart, deep in the cords of his soul, he sighed in secret 
after the beloved man.' Few as are the songs which remain to us, they 
return to this subject again and again. The wanderer in a reverie 
dreams about his lord : ^ It seems to him in his spirit as if he kisses and 
embraces hira, and lays head and hands upon his knees, as oft before in 
the olden time, when he rejoiced in his gifts. Then he wakes — a man 
without friends. He sees before him the desert tracks, the seabirds 
dipping in the sea, stretching wdde their wings, the frost and the snow, 
mingled with falling hail. Then his heart's wounds press more heavily. 
The exile says : 

* Often and often we two were agreed, that nought should divide us save Death 
himself ! Ifow all is changed, and our friendship is as though it had never been. 
I must dwell here, far from my well-beloved friend, in the midst of enmities. I 
am forced to live under the forest leaves, under an oak, in this cavern under 
ground. Cold is this earth-dwelling ; I am weary of it. Dark are the valleys, 
high the mountains, a sad wall of houghs, covered ^vith brambles, a joyless abode. 
. . . My friends are in the earth ; they whom I loved in life, the tomb holds 
them. And I am here before the dawn ; I walk alone under the oak, amongst 
the earth-caverns. . . . Here often and often the loss of my lord has oppressed 
me with heavy grief. ' 

Amid their perilous mode of life, and the perpetual appeal to arms, 
there exists no sentiment more warm than friendship, nor any virtue 
stronger than loyalty. 

Thus supported by powerful affection and firm fidelity, society is 
kept Avholesome. Marriage is like the state. We find women asso- 
ciating with the men, at their feasts, sober and respected.^ She speaks, 
and they listen to her; no need for concealing or enslaving her, in 
order to restrain or retain her. She is a person, and not a thing. Tha 
law demands her consent to marriage, surrounds her with guarantees, 
accords her protection. She can inherit, possess, bequeath, appear in 
courts of justice, in county assemblies, in the great congress of the elders. 
Frequently the name of the queen and of several other ladies is inscribed 

' The Wanderer, the Exile's Song, Codex Exordensis, published by Thorpe 

* Turner, Hint. Angl. Sax, iii. 63; Pictorial History, i. 34C. 



38 THE SOURCE. [BOOK i 

in th.« proceedings of the Witenagemote. Law and tradition maintain 
lier integrity, as if she were a man, and side by side with the man. In 
Alfred^ there is a portrait of the wife, wliich for purity and elevation 
equals all that we can devise with our modern refinement. 

* Thy wife now lives for thee— for thee alone. She has enough of all kind of 
wealth for this present life, hut she scorns them all for thy sake alone. She hai 
forsaken them all, because she had not thee with them. Thy absence makes her 
think that all she possesses is nought. Thus, for love of thee, she is wasted away, 
and lies near death for tears and giief.' 

Already, in the legends of the Edda^ we have seen the maiden Sigrun 
at the tomb of Helgi, ' as glad as the voracious hawks of Odin, when 
they of slaughter know, of warm prey,' desiring to sleep still in the 
arms of death, and die at last on his grave. Nothing here like the love 
we find in the primitive poetry of France, Provence, Spain, and Greece. 
There is an absence ol gaiety, of delight ; beyond marriage it is only a 
ferocious appetite, an outbreak of the instinct of the beast. It appears 
nowhere with its charm and its smile ; there is no love song in this 
ancient poetry. The reason is, that with them love is not an amuse- 
ment and a pleasure, but a promise and a devotion. All is grave, even 
sombre, in civil relations as in conjugal society. As in Germany, amid 
the sadness of a melancholic temperament and the savagery of a bar- 
barous life, the most tragic human faculties, the deep power of love 
and the grand power of will, are the only ones that sway and act. 

This is why the hero, as in Germany, is truly heroic. Let us speak 
of him at length ; we retain one of their poems, that of Beowulf, almost 
entire. Here are the stories, which the thanes, seated on their stools, 
by the light of their torches, listened to as they drank the ale of their 
king: we can glean thence their manners and sentiments, as in the 
Iliad and the Odyssey those of the Greeks. Beowulf is a hero, a 
knight-errant before the days of chivalry, as the leaders of the German 
bands were feudal chiefs before the institution of feudalism.* He has 
* rowed upon the sea, his naked sword hard in his hand, amidst the 
fierce waves and coldest of strrms, and the rage of winter huitled over 
the waves of the deep.' The sea-monsters, 'the many-coloured foes, 
drew him to the bottom of th<. sea, and held him fast in thiir gripe.* 
But he reached * the wretches with his point and with his war-bill.' 
*The mighty sea -beast received the war-rush through his hands,' and he 
slew nine nick<.»rs (sea-monsters). And now behold him, as he comes 
across the waves to succour the old King Hrothgar, who with his 
vassals sits afflicted in his great mead-hall, high and curved with pin- 

1 Alfred borrows his portrait from Boethius, but almost entirely re- writes it. 

• Kemble thinks that the origin of this poem is very ancient, perliaps contem- 
pora / with the invasion of the Angles and Saxons, but that the version we 
possess is later than the seventh century. — Kemble's Beowulf text and trana 
latiou. 1833. The characters are Danish. 



CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 39 

nacles. For *a grim stranger, Grenclel, a mighty haunter of the 
marshes,' had entered his hall during the night, seized thirty of the 
thanes who were asleep, and returned in his war-craft with their car- 
casses; for twelve years the dreadful ogre, the beastly and greedy 
creature, father of Orks and Jotuns, devoured men and emptied the 
best of houses. Beowulf, the great warrior, offers to grapple with the 
fiend, and foe to foe contend for life, without the bearing of either 
sword or ample shield, for he has * learned also that the wretch for his 
C'irsed hide recketh not of weapons,' asking only that if death takes 
him, they will bear forth his bloody corpse and bury it; mark his fen- 
dwelling; send to Hygelac, nis chief, the best of war-slirouds that 
guards his breast. 

He is lying in the hall, ' trusting in his proud strength; and when the 
mists of night arose, lo, Grendel comes, tears open the door,' seized a 
sleeping warrior: * he tore him unawares, he bit his body, he drank the 
blood from the veins, he swallowed him with continual tearings.' But 
Beowulf seized him in turn, and ' raised himself upon his elbow.* 

*The lordly hall thundered, the ale was spilled . . . both were enraged; 
savage and strong warders ; the house resounded ; then was it a great wonder that 
the wine-hall withstood the beasts of war, that it fell not upon the earth, the 
fair palace ; hut it was thus fast. . , . The noise arose, new enough ; a fearful 
terror fell on the North Danes, on each of those who from the wall heard the out- 
cry, God's denier sing his dreadful lay, his song of defeat, lament his wound.* 
. , . The foul wretch awaited the mortal wound ; a mighty gash was evident 
upon his shoulder ; the sinews sprung asunder, the junctures of the hones hurst ; 
success in war was given to Beowulf. Thence must Grendel fly sick unto death, 
among the refuges of the fens, to seek his joyless dwelKng. He all the better 
knew that the end of his life, the number of his days was gone by.'* 

For he had left on the land, *hand, arm, and shoulder;' and *in the 
lake of Nicors, where he was driven, the rough wave was boiling with 
blood, the foul spring of waves all mingled, hot with poison ; the dye, 
discoloured with death, bubbled with warlike gore.' There remained 
H female monster, his mother, who like him * was doomed to inhabit 
the terror of waters, the cold streams,' who came by night, and amidst 
drawn swords tore and devoured another man, jEscliere, the king's best 
Iriend. A lamentation arose in the palace, and Beowulf offered him- 
i^lf again. They went to the den, a hidden land, the refuge of the 
wolf, near the windy promontories, where a mountain stream rusheth 
downwards under the darkness of the hills, a flood beneath the earth ; 
the wood fast by its roots overshadoweth the water ; there may one by 
night behold a marvel, fire upon the flood : the stepper over the heath, 
when wearied out by the hounds, sooner will gii^e xp his soul, his Hfo 
■upon the brink, than plunge therein to hide his head. Strange dragons 
and serpents swam there ; * from time to time the horn sang a dirge, a 

* Kemble's Beowulf, xi. p. 32. ' Ibid, xil, p. 34 



40 THE SOURCE. [300K i 

terrible song.* Beowulf plunged into the wave, descended, passed mon- 
sters who tore his coat of mail, to the ogress, the hateful manslayer, who, 
seizing him in her grasp, bore him off to her dwelling. A pale gleam 
shone brightly, and there, face to face, the good champion perceived 
'the she-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea-woman ; he gave the war-onset with 
his battle-bill ; he held not back the swing of the sword, so that on her head the 
ring-mail sang aloud a greedy war-song. . . . The beam of war would not bite. 
Then he caught the Grendel's mother by the shoulder ; twisted the homicide, that 
•he bent upon the floor. . . . She drew her knife broad, brown-edged, (and tried to 
pierce) the twisted breast-net which protected his life. . . . Then saw he among 
the weapons a bill fortunate with victory, an old gigantic sword, doughty oi 
edge, ready for use, a work of giants. He seized the belted hilt ; the warrior of the 
Scyldiugs, fierce and savage whirled the ring-mail ; despairing of life, he struck 
furiously, so that it grappled hard with her about her neck ; it broke the bone- 
rings, the bill passed through all the doomed body ; she sank upon the floor ; the 
sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed ; the beam shone, light stood 
within, even as from heaven mildly shines the lamp of the firmament. ' ^ 

Then he saw Grendel dead in a corner of the hall; and four of his 
companions, having with difficulty raised the monstrous head, bore it 
by the hair to the palace of the king. 

That was his first labour; and the rest of his life was similar. When 
he had reigned fifty years on earth, a dragon, who had been robbed of 
his treasure, came from the hill and burned men and houses * with 
waves of fire.' 

* Then did the refuge of earls command to make for him a variegated shield, all 
of iron ; he knew that a shield of wood could not help him, lindcnwood opposed 
to fire. . . . The prince of rings was then too proud to seek the wide flier with 
a troop, with a large company ; he feared not for himself that battle, nor did he 
make anj' account of the dragon's war, his laboriousness and valour.' 

And yet he was sad, and went unwillingly, for he was * fated to abide 
the end.' Then 

'he was ware of a cavern, a mound under the earth, nigh to the sea-wave, 
the dashing of waters, which was full within of embossed ornaments and wires. 
. . . Then the king, hard in v/ar, sat upon the promontory, and bade farewell 
to his household comrades. ... I, the old guardian of my people, seek a feud.* 

He let words proceed from his heart, the dragon came, vomiting fire ; 
the blade bit not his body, and the king suffered painfully, involved in 
fire. His comrades had turned into the woods, all save Wiglaf, who 
went through the fatal smoke, knowing well ' that it was not the old 
custom ' to abandon relation and prince, * that he alone shall suffer dis- 
tress, shall sink in battle.' 

'The worm became furious, the foul insidious stranger, variegated with waves 
of fire, . . . hot and warlike fierce, he clutched the whole neck with bitter banes ; 
he was bloodied with life-gore, the blood boiled in waves.'* 



^ Beowulf, xxii., xxiii., p. 62 et passim. 
2 Ibid, xxxiii.-xxxvi., p. 94 et passim. 



CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 4^ 

They, with their swords, carved the worm in the midst. Yet the 
wound of the king became burning and swelled ; he soon discovered 
that the poison boiled in his breast within, and sat by the wall upon a 
Btone; *he looked upon the work of giants, how the eternal cavern 
held within stone arches fast upon pillars.* 

Then he said, * I have held this people fifty years ; there was not any king tA 
my neighboars who dared to greet me with warriors, to oppress me with terror. . . . 
I held mine own well, I sought not treacherous malice, nor swore unjustly many 
oaths ; on account of all this, I, sick with mortal wounds, may have joy. . . 
Now do thou go immediately to behold the hoard under the hoary stone, my dea» 
Wiglaf. . . . Now, 1 have purchased with my death a hoard of treasures ; it will be 
yet of advantage at the need of my people. ... I give thanks . . . that I might 
before my dying day obtain such for my people . . . longer may I not here be.'* 

This is thorough and real generosity, not exaggerated and pretended, 
as it will be later on in the romantic imaginations of babbling clerics, 
mere composers of adventure. Fiction as yet is not far removed from 
fact : the man breathes manifest under the hero. Rude as the poetry 
is, its hero is grand ; he is so, simply by his deeds. Faithful, tirst to 
his prince, then to his people, he went alone, in a strange land, to ven- 
ture himself for the delivery of his fellow-men ; he forgets himself in 
death, while thinking only that it profits others. *Each one of us,' he 
says in one place, 'must abide the end of his present life.' Let, there- 
fore, each do justice, if he can, before his death. Compare with him 
the monsters whom he destroys, the last traditions of the ancient wars 
against inferior races, and of the primitive religion ; think of his life of 
danger, nights upon the waves, man's efforts against the brute creation, 
the indomitable breast crushing the breasts of beasts, powerful muscles 
which, when exerted, tear the flesh of the monsters : you will see 
through the mist of legends, and under the light of poetry, the valiant 
men Avho, amid the furies of war and the raging of their own mood, 
began to settle a people and to found a state. 

V. 

One poem nearly whole and two or three fragments are all that 
remain of this lay-poetry of England. The rest of the pagan current, 
German and barbarian, was arrested or overwhelmed, first by the influx of 
the Christian religion, then by the conquest of the Norman-French. But 
the remnant more than suffices to show the strange and powerful poetio 
genius of the race, and to exhibit beforehand the flower in the bud. 

If there has ever been anywhere a deep and serious poetic senti- 
ment, it is here. "They do not speak, they sing, or rather cry out. 
Each little verse is an acclamation, which breaks forth like a growl ; 
their strong breasts heave with a groan of anger or enthusiasm, and a 
vehement phrase or indistinct expression rises suddenly, almost in spite 

' 5<?<??C2i^/, xxxvii., xxxviii., p. 110 et passim. I have throughout aUvayg 
lisod the very words of Kemble's translation. — Tu. 



42 THE SOURCE. [BOOK \ 

of tliem, to their lips. There is no art, no natural talent, for describing 
singly and in order the different parts of an object or an event. Th6 
fifty rays of light which every phenomenon emits »i^ succession to a 
regular and well-directed intellect, come to them at once in a glowing 
and confused beam, disabling them by their force and convergence. 
Listen to their genuine war-chants, unchecked and violent, as became 
tlieir terrible voices. To this day, at this distance of time, separated as 
they are by manners, speech, ten centuries, we seem to hear them still : — 

* The army goes forth : the birds sing, the cricket chirps, the war- weapons 
eoimd, the lance clangs against the shield. Now shineth the moon, wandering 
under the sky. Now arise deeds of woe, which the enmity of this people prepares 
to do. . . . Then in the court came the tumult of war-carnage. They seized with 
their hands the hollow wood of the shield. They smote through the bones of the 
head. The roofs of the castle resounded, until Garulf fell in battle, the first of 
earth -dwelling men, son of Guthlaf. Around him lay many brave men dying. 
The rav^n whirled about, dark and sombre, like a willow leaf There was a 
sparkling of blades, as If all Finsburg were on fire. Never have I heard of a moiB 
worthy battle in war.'' 

This is the song on Athelstan's victory at Brunanburh : 

* Here Athelstan king, of earls the lord, the giver of the bracelets of the nobles, 
ftnd his brother also, Edmund the setheling, the Elder a lasting glory won by 
slaughter in battle, with the edges of swords, at Brunan burh. The wall of shields 
they cleaved, they hewed the noble banners : with the rest of the family, the 
children of Edward. . . . Pursuing, they destroyed the Scottish people and the 
ship-fleet. . . . The field was coloured with the warrior's blood ! After that the 
sun on high, . . . the greatest star ! glided over the earth, God's candle bright ! 
till the noble creature hastened to her setting. There lay soldiers many with darts 
struck down, Northern men over their shields shot. So were the Scotch ; weary of 
ruddy battle. . , . The screamers of war they left behind ; the raven to enjoy, 
the dismal kite, and the black raven with horned beak, and the hoarse toad ; the 
eagle, afterwards to feast on the white flesh ; the greedy battle-hawk, and the grey 
beast, the wolf in the wood.'* 

Here all is image. In their impassioned minds events are not bald, 
with the dry propriety of an exact description ; each fits in with its 
pomp of sound, shape, colouring ; it is almost a vision which is raised, 
complete, with its accompanying emotions, joy, fury, excitement. In 
their speech, arrows are ' the serpents of Hel, shot from bows of horn ;' 
ships are ' great sea-steeds,' the sea is * a chalice of waves,' the helmet 
is 'the castle of the head:' they need an extraordinary speech to ex- 
press their vehement sensations, so that after a time, in Iceland, when 
this kind of poetry is carried on, the earlier inspiration fails, art re- 
places nature, the Skalds are reduced to a distorted and obscure jargon. 
But whatever be the imagery, here as in Iceland, though unique, it is 

* Conybeare's Illustrations of Anglo Saxon Poetry, 1826, Battle of Fins 
horoughy p. 175. The complete collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry has beoi 
published by M. Grein. 

' Turner. Hist, of the Anglo-Saxons, iii.. book 9, ch. 1. p. 3-15. 



CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 43 

too feeble. The poets cannot satisfy the inner emotion by a single 
word. Time after time they return to and repeat their idea. * The 
Biin on high, the great star, God's brilliant candle, the noble creature!' 
Four subsequent times they employ the same thought, and each time 
under a new aspect. All its different aspects rise simultaneously before 
the barbarian's eyes, and each word was like a shock of the semi- 
hallucination whicli excited him. Verily, in such a condition, the 
r( gularity of speech and of ideas is disturbed at every turn. The suc- 
cession of thought in the visionary is not the same as in a reasoning 
mind. One colour induces another ; from sound he passes to sound; 
his imagination is like a diorama of unexplained pictures. His phrases 
recur and change ; he emits the word that comes to his lips without 
hesitation ; he leaps over wide intervals from idea to idea. The more 
his mind is transported, the quicker and wider the intervals traversed. 
With one spring he visits the poles of his horizon, and touches in 
one moment objects which seemed to have the world between them. 
His ideas are entangled ; without notice, abruptly, the poet will re- 
turn to the idea he has quitted, and insert it in the thought to which 
he is giving expression. It is impossible to translate these incon- 
gruous ideas, which quite disconcert our modern style. At times 
they are unintelligible.-^ Articles, particles, everything capable of 
illuminating thought, of marking the connection of terms, of producing 
regularity of ideas, all rational and logical artifices, are neglected.^ 
Passion bellows forth like a great shapeless beast ; and that is all. It 
rises and starts in little abrupt lines ; it is the acme of barbarism. 
Homer's happy poetry is copiously developed, in full narrative, with 
rich and extended imagery. All the details of a complete picture are 
not too much for him; he loves to look at things, he lingers over them, 
rejoices in their beauty, dresses them in splendid words ; he is like the 
Greek girls, who thought themselves ugly if they did not bedeck arms 
and shoulders with all the gold coins from their purse, and all the trea- 
sures from their caskets ; his long verses flow by with their cadences, 
and spread out like a purple robe under an Ionian sun. Here the 
clumsy-fingered poet mingles and clashes his ideas in a bold measure; 
if measure there be, he barely observes it; all his ornament is three 
words beginning with one letter. His chief care is to abridge, to im- 
prison Vhought in a kind of mutilated cry.* The force of the internal 

^ The cleverest Anglo-Saxon scholars, Turner, Conybeare, Thorpe, recognisa 
this difficulty. 

* Turner, iii. 231, et passim. The translations in French, however literal, do 
injustice to the text ; that language is too clear, too logical. Ko Frenchman can 
understand this extraordinary phase of intellect, except by taking a dictionary, 
and deciphering some pages of Anglo-Saxon for a fortnight. 

2 Turner remarks that the same idea expressed by King Alfred, in prop* 
find then in verse, takes in the first case seven words, in the second five. His 
fori/ of the Anglo-Saxons, iii. 235. 



44 THE SOURCE. [BOuK i 

impression, wliich, not knowing how to unfold itself, becomes condensed 
by accumulation ; the harshness of the expression, which, subservient 
to the energy and shocks of the inner sentiment, seeks only to exhibit 
It intact and original, spite of all order and beauty, — such are the cha- 
racteristics of their poetry, and these will be the characteiistics of the 
poetry which is to follow. 

VL 

A race so constituted was predisposed to Christianity, by its gloom 
its aversion to sensual and reckless living, its inclination for the serioui 
and subUme. When their sedentary habits had reconciled their souls 
to a long period of ease, and weakened the fury which fed their san- 
guinary religion, they readily inclined to a new faith. The vague 
adoration of the great powers of nature, which eternally fight for 
mutual destruction, and, when destroyed, rise up again to the combat, 
had long since disappeared in the far distance. Society, on its for- 
mation, introduced the idea of peace and the need for justice, and the 
war-gods faded from the minds of men, with the passions which had 
created them. A century and a half after the invasion by the SaxonS;* 
Roman missionaries, bearing a silver cross with a picture of Christ, 
came in procession chanting a litany. Presently the high priest of the 
Northumbrians declared in presence of the nobles that the old gods 
were powerless, and confessed that formerly 'he knew nothing of that 
which he adored;' and he among the first, lance in hand, assisted to de- 
molish their temple. At his side a chief rose in the assembly, and said : 

'You remember, it may be, king, that which sometimes happens in -winter 
when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, 
and your hall warmed, and without is rain and snow and storm. Then conies a 
swallow flying across the hall ; he enters by one door, and leaves by another. The 
brief moment wliile he is within is pleasant to him ; he feels not rain nor cheer- 
less winter weather ; but the moment is brief — the bird flies away in the twinkling 
of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man 
on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while ; but 
what is the time which comes alter — the time which was before ? Wc knovv not. 
If, then, tliis new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certaii:ty, it wert 
well that we should regard it. ' 

This restlessness, this feeling of the infinite and dark beyond, this 
sober, melancholy eloquence, were the harbingers of spiritual life.* 
"We find nothing like it amongst the nations of the south, naturally 
pagan, and preoccupied with the present life. These utter barbarians 
embrace Christianity straightway, through sheer force of mood and 
clime. To no purpose are they brutal, heavy, shackled by infantine 
superstitions, capable, like King Knut, of buying for a hundred golden 
talents the arm of Augustine. They possess the idea of God. Thit 

' 596-625. Aug. Thierry, i. 81 ; Bede, xii. 2. 
' 'outfroy, .Problem of Human Destiny. 



CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 45 

grand God of the Bible, omnipotent and unique, who disappears almost 
entively in the middle ages,^ obscured by His court and His family, 
endures amongst them in spite of absurd and grotesque legends. They 
do not blot Him out imder pious romances, by the elevation of thfi 
saints, or under feminine caresses, to benefit the infant Jesus and t\w 
Virgin. Their grandeur and their severity raise them to His high 
level; they are not tempted, like artistic and talkative nations, to 
jO];lace religion by a fair and agreeable narrative. More than auy 
race in Europe, they approach, by the simplicity and energy of ther. 
conceptions, the old Hebraic spirit. Enthusiasm is their natural condi- 
tion ; and their new Deity fills them with admiration, as their ancient 
deities inspired them with fury. They have hymns, genuine odes, 
which are but a concrete of exclamations. They have no develop- 
ment ; they are incapable of restraining or explaining their passion ; 
it bursts forth, in raptures, at the vision of the Almighty. The 
heart alone speaks here — a strong, barbarous heart. Csedmon, says 
Bede, their old poet,^ was a more ignorant man than the others, who 
knew no poetry ; so that in the hall, when they handed him the harp, 
he was obliged to withdraw, being unable to sing like his companions. 
Once, keeping night-watch over the stable, he fell asleep. A stranger 
appeared to him, and asked him to sing something, and these words 
came into his head: * Now we ought to praise the Lord of heaven, the 
power of the Creator, and His skill, the deeds of the Father of glory ; 
how He, being eternal God, is the author of all marvels; who, almighty 
guardian of the human race, created first for the sons of men the 
heavens as the roof of their dwelling, and then the earth.** Re- 
membering this when he woke, he came to the town, and they brought 
him before the learned men, before the abbess Hilda, who, when they 
had heard him, thought that he had received a gift from heaven, and 
made him a monk in the abbey. There he spent his life listening to 
portions of Holy Writ, which were explained to him in Saxon, ' rumi- 
nating over them like a pure animal, turned them into most sweet verse.' 
Thus is true poetry born. These men pray Avith all the emotion of a 
new soul ; they kneel ; they adore ; the less they know, the more they 
think. Some one has said that the first and most sincere hymn is tliis 
one word O ! Theirs were hardly longer ; they only repeated time 
after time some deep passionate word, with monotonous vehemence. 
* In heaven art Thou, our aid and succour, resplendent with happiness ! 
All things bow before Thee, before the glory of Thy Spirit. With one 
voice they call upon Christ ; they all cry : Holy, holy art Thou, King 
of the angels of heaven, our Lord ! and Thy judgments are just and 
great : they reign for ever and in all places, in the multitude of Thy 
works.' We are reminded of the songs of the servants of Odin, ton- 

* Michelet, preface to La Renaissance ; Didron, Ilistoive de Dieii. 

' About G30. See Codex Exoniensis, Thorpe. ^ ^f^iie, iv. 24 



16 THE SOUIiCF. [BOOK i 

siired now, and clad in the garments of monlvS. Vheii poetry is the 
same ; they think of God, as of Odin, in a string of short, accumulated, 
passionate images, like a succession of lightning-flashes ; the Christian 
hymns embody the pagan. One of them, Adhelm, stood on a bridge 
leading to the town where he lived, and repeated warlike and profane 
odes alternately with religious poetry, in order to attract and instruct 
the men of his time. He could do it without changing his key. In 
one of them, a funeral song. Death speaks. It was one of the last 
Saxon compositions, containitig a terrible Christianity, which seems at 
the same time to have sprung from the blackest depths of the Edda. 
The brief metre sounds abruptly, with measured stroke, like the pass- 
ing bell. It is as if one could hear the dull resounding responses 
which roll through the church, while the rain beats on the dim glass, 
and the broken clouds sail mournfully in the sky ; and our -eyes, glued 
to the pale face of a dead man, feel beforehand the horror of the damp 
grave into which the living are about to cast him. 

'For thee was a house built ere thou wert born ; for thee was a mould shapen 
ere thou of thy mother earnest. Its height is not d':;termined, nor its depth 
measuied ; nor is it closed up (however loug it may be) until I thee bring where 
thou shalt remain ; until I shall measure thee and the sod of the earth. Thy 
house is not highly built ; it is unhigh and low. When thou art in it, the heel- 
ways are low, the side-ways unhigh. The roof is built thy breast fall nigh ; so 
thou shalt in earth dwell full cold, dim, and dark. Doorless is that house, and 
dark it is within. There thou art fast detained, and Death holds the key. Loathly 
is that earthdiouse, and grim to dwell in. There thou shalt dwell, and worma 
shall share thee. Thus thou art laid, and leavest thy friends. Thou hast no 
friend that will come to thee, who will ever inquire how that house liketh thee, 
who shall ever open for thee the door, and seek thee, for soon thou becomest 
loathly and hateful to look upon. ' ^ 

Has Jeremy Taylor a more gloomy picture ? The two religions poetries, 
Christian and pagan, are so like, that one might make a common-cata- 
logue of their incongruities, images, and legends. In Beowulf, alto- 
gether pagan, the Deity appears as Odin, more mighty and serene, and 
differs from the other only as a peaceful Bretwalda^ differs from an 
adventurous and heroic bandit-chief. The Scandinavian monsters, 
Jotuns, enemies of the ^sir,^ have not vanished ; but they descend 
from Cain, and are the giants drowned by the flood.* Their new hell 
is nearly the ancient Nastrand,^ ' a dwelling deadly cold, full of bloody 

* Conybeare's Illustrations, p. 271. 

' Bretwakla was a species of war-king, or temporary and elective chief of al' 
the Saxons. — Tii. 

^ The iEsir (sing. As) are the gods of the Scandinavian nations, of whom Odii 
was the chief. — Tr, 

* Kemhle, i. i. xii. In this chapter he has collected many features which 
•how the endurance of the ancient mythology. 

5 NHstrand is the strand or shore of the dead. — Tii, 



CHAP. l.j THE SAXONS. 4.^ 

eagles and pale adders;' and the dreadful last day of judgment, when 
all will crumble into dust, and make way for a purer world, resembles 
the final destruction of Edda, that * twilight of the gods,' which will end 
in a victorious regeneration, an everlasting joy ' under a fairer sun.' 

By this natural conformity they were able to make their religioua 
poen^s indeed poems. Power in spiritual productions arises only from 
the sincerity of personal and original sentiment. If they can describe 
religious tragedies, it is because their soul was tragic, and in a degree 
biblical. They introduce their fierce vehemence into their verses, like 
the old prophets of Israel, their murderous hatreds, their fanaticism, 
all the shudderings of their flesh and blood. One of them, whose poem 
is mutilated, has related the history of Judith — with what inspiration 
we shall see. It needed a barbarian to display in such strong light 
excesses, tumult, murder, vengeance, and combat. 

* Then was Holofernes exhilarated with wine ; in the halls of his guests he 
laughed and shouted, he roared and dinned. Then might the children of men 
afar off hear how the stern one stormed and clamoured, animated and elated with 
wine. He admonished amply that they should bear it well to those sitting on the 
bench. So was the wicked one over all the day, the lord and his men, drunk with 
wine, the stern dispenser of wealth ; till that they swimming lay over drunk, all 
his nobilitj', as they were death-slain. ' ^ 

The night having arrived, he commands them to bring into his tent 
*the illustrious virgin ;'- then, going in to visit her, he falls drunk on 
his bed. The moment was come for ' the maid of the Creator, the holy 
woman.' 

*She took the heathen man fast hy his hair; she drew him by his limbs 
tOAvards her disgracefully; and the mischief- ful odious man at her pleasure laid; so 
as the wretch she might the easiest well command. She with the twisted locks 
sti'uck the hateful enemy, meditating hate, with the red sword, till she ha<l half 
cut off his neck ; so that he lay in a swoon, drunk and mortally wounded. He 
was not then dead, not entirely lifeless. She struck then earnest, the woman 
illustrious in strength, another time the heathen hound, till that his head rolled 
forth upon the floor. The foul one lay without a coffer ; backward his spirit 
turned under the abyss, and there was plunged below, with sulphur fastened; 
for ever afterwards wounded by worms. Boimd in torments, hard imprisoned, in 
licil he burns. After his course he need not hope, with darkness overwhelmed, 
that he may escape from that mansion of worms ; but there Lh shall remain, evef 
and ever, without end, henceforth in that caverndiouse, void of the joys of hope.'" 

Has any one ever heard a sterner accent of satisfied hate? When 
Clovis had listened to the Passion play, he cried, ' Why was I not there 
with my Franks!' So here the old warrior instinct swelled into flamti 
over the Hebrew wars. As soon as Judith returned, 

* Men under helms (went out) from the holy city at the dawn itself. They 

* Turner, Hist, of Anglo-Saxons, iii. book 9. ch. 3, p. 271. 
« Ibid, p. 272. 



l8 THE SOUKCE. (BOOK I 

dinned shields ; men roared loudly. At this rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood, 
and the wan raven, the fowl greedy of slaughter, both from the west, that the sons 
of men for them should have thought to prepare their fill on corpses. And to 
them flew in their paths the active devourer, the eagle, hoary in his feathers. 
The willowed kite, with his horned beak, sang the song of Hilda. The nobl« 
warriors proceeded, they in mail, to the battle, furnished with shields, witl 
swelling banners. . . . They then speedily let fly forth showers of arrows, the 
serpents of Hilda, from their horn bows ; the spears on the ground hard stormed 
Loud raged the plunderers of battle ; they sent their darts into the throng of th« 
chiefs. . . . They that awhile before the reproach of the foreigners, the taunts oi 
the heathen endured. ' * 

Amongst all these unknown poets* there is one whose name we know, 
Caedmon, perhaps the old Casdmon who wrote the first hymn ; like hiwi, 
at all events, who, paraphrasing the Bible with a barbarian's vigour and 
sublimity, has shown the grandeur and fury of the sentiment witl 
which the men of these times entered into their new religion. He also 
sings when he speaks ; when he mentions the ark, it is with a profusion 
of poetic names, 'the floating house, the greatest of floating chambers, 
the wooden fortress, the moving house, the cavern, the great sea-chest,' 
and many more. Every time he thinks of it, he sees it with his mind, 
like a quick luminous vision, and each time under a new aspect, now 
undulating on the muddy waves, between two ridges of foam, now 
casting over the water its enormous shadow, black and high like a 
castle, 'now enclosing in its cavernous sides' the endless ferment of thn 
caged beasts. Like the others, he wrestles with God in his heart ; 
triumphs like a warrior in destruction and victory ; and in relating the 
death of Pharaoh, can hardly speak from anger, or see, because the blood 
mounts to his eyes : 

* The folk was affrighted, the flood-dread seized on their sad souls ; ocean wailed 
with death, the mountain heights were with blood besteamcd, the sea foamed gore, 
crying was in the waves, the water full of weapons, a death-mist rose ; the Egyp- 
tians were turned back ; trembling they fled, they felt fear : would that host gladly 
find their homes ; their vaunt grew sadder : against them, as a cloud, rose the fell 
robing of the waves ; there came not any of that host to home, but from behind 
inclosed them fate with the wave. Where ways ere hiy sea raged. Their might 
was merged, the streams stood, the storm rose high to heaven ; the loudest anny- 
cry the hostile uttered ; the air above was thickened with dying voices. . . . Ocean 
raged, drew itself up on high, the storms rose, the corpses rolled. '^ 

Is the song of the Exodus more abrupt, more vehement, or more 
savage ? These men can speak of the creation like the Bible, because 
they speak of destruction like the Bible. They have only to look into 
their own minds, in order to discover an emotion sufficiently strong to 
raise their souls to the height of their Creator. This emotion existed 

' Turner, Hist, of Awjlo-Saxons, iii. book 9, ch. 3, p. 374. 
'^ Greiu, Bibliothek der Angelsfeohsischcii poesie. 
' Thorpe, Ccednion. iSd2, xlvii. p. 20G. 



CHAP l.J THE SAXONS. 49 

already in their pagan legends ; and Caedmon, m order to recount the 
origin of things, has only to turn to the ancient dreams, such as have 
been preserved in the prophecies of the Edda. 

* Inhere had not here as yet, save cavern-shade, aught been ; but ihis wide abyss 
itood deep and dim, strange to its Lord, idle and useless ; on which looked wiia 
his eyes the King firm of mind, and beheld those places void of joys ; saw the dark 
cload lower in eternal night, swart under heaven, dark and waste, until this worldly 
creation through the word existed of the Glory-King. . . . The earth as yet wag 
not gi-een with grass ; ocean cover'd, swart in eternal night, far and wide the dusky 
iraya '* 

In this manner will Milton hereafter speak, the descendant of the 
Hebrew seers, last of the Scandinavian seers, but assisted in the 
development of his thought by all the resources of Latin culture and 
civilisation. And yet he will add nothing to the primitive sentiment. 
Religious instinct is not acquired ; it belongs to the blood, and is in- 
herited with it. So it is with other instincts ; pride in the first place, 
indomitable self-conscious energy, which sets man in opposition to all 
domination, and inures him against all grief. Milton's Satan exists 
already in Cajdmon's, as the picture exists in the sketch ; because both 
have their model in the race ; and Caidmon found his originals in the 
northern warriors, as Milton did in the Puritans : 

* "Why shall I for his favour serve, bend to him in such vassalage ? I may be 
a god as he. Stand by me, strong associates, who will not fail me in the strife. 
Heroes stern of mood, they have chosen me for chief, renowned warriors ! with 
such may one devise counsel, Avith such capture his adherents ; they are my zealous 
friends, faithful in their thoughts ; I may be their chieftain, sway in this realm ; 
thus to me it seemeth not right that I in aught need cringe to God for any good ; 
I will no longer be his vassal.'' 

He is overcome ; shall he be subdued ? He is cast into the * where 
torment they suffer, burning heat intense, in midst of hell, fire and 
broad flames : so also the bitter seeks smoke and darkness ;' will he 
repent? At first he is astonished, he despairs; but it is a hero's 
despair. 

* This narrow place is most unlike that other that we ere knew,^ high in heaven's 
kingdom, which my master bestow'd on me. . . . Oh, had 1 power of my hands, 
and might one season be without, be one winter's space, then with this host I — 
r>ut around me lie iron bonds, presscth this cord of chain : I am powerless ! me 
Lave so hard the clasps of hell, so firmly grasped ! Here is a vast fire above and 
!inderneath, never did I see a loatlilier landskip ; the flame abateth not, hot over 
hell. Me hath the clasping of these rings, this hard-polish'd band, impeded in my 

^ Thorpe, Ccedmon, ii. p. 7. A likeness exists between this song and corre« 
sponJing portions of the Edda. 

2 Ibid. iv. p. 18. 

** This is Milton's opening also. (See Paradise Lost, Book i. verse 242, etc.) 
One would think that he must have had some knowledge of Teedmon firom tn« 
translation of Junius. 

D 



50 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I,. 

course, debarr'd me from my way ; my feet are bound, my hands nanaeled, . . . 
80 that with aught 1 cannot from these limb-bonds escape.'^ 

As there is nothing to be done against God, it is with His net? 
creature, man, that lie must busy himself. To bim who has lost 
everything, vengeance is left ; and if the conquered can enjoy tliis, he 
will find himself happy ; * he will sleep softly, even under his chains.' 

VII. 

Here the foreign culture ceased. Beyond Christianity it could not 
^aft upon this barbarous stock any fruitful or living branch. All the 
circumstances which elsewhere softened the wild sap, failed here. The 
Saxons found Britain abandoned by the Romans ; they had not yielded, 
like their brothers on the continent, to the ascendency of a superior 
civilisation ; they had not become mingled with the inhabitants of the 
land ; they had always treated them like enemies or slaves, pursuing 
like wolves those who escaped to the mountains of the west, oppressing 
like beasts of burden those whom they had conquered with the land. 
While the Germans of Gaul, Italy, and Spain became Romans, the 
Saxons retained their language, their genius and manners, and created 
in Britain a Germany outside of Germany. A hundred and fifty 
years after the Saxon invasion, the introduction of Christianity and the 
dawn of security attained by a society inclining to peace, gave birth to 
a kind of literature ; and we meet with the venerable Bede, and later 
on, Alcuin, John Scotus Erigena, and some others, commentators, 
translators, teachers of barbarians, who tried not to originate but to 
compile, to pick out and explain from the great Greek and Latin 
encyclopedia something which might suit the men of their time. But 
\he wars witli the Danes came and crushed this humble plant, which, 
^f left to itself, would have come to nothing.^ When Alfred* the 
Deliverer became king, * there were very few ecclesiastics,' he says, 
*on this side of the Humber, who could understand in English their 
own Latin prayers, or translate any Latin writing into English. On 
the other side of the Humber I think there were scarce any ; there 
wern so few that, in truth, I cannot remember a single man south of 
the Thames, when I took the kingdom, who was capable of it.' He 
tried, like Charlemagne, to instruct his people, and turned into Saxon 
for their use several works, above all some moral books, as the de Con- 
tolatiane of Boethius ; but this very translation bears witness to the bar- 



* Thorpe, Ccedmon, iv. p. 23. 

* They themselves feel their impotence and decrepitude. Bede, dividing the 
history of the world into six periods, says that the fifth, wliicli stretches from th« 
return out of Babylon to the birth of Christ, is the senile period ; the sixth is th« 
present, CBias decj'epita, totius morte sceculi consummanda. 

^ Died in 901 ; Adhelm died 709, Bede died 785, Alcuin lived under Cliarla. 
ma^ne, Erigena under Charles the Bald (843-877). 



CHAP i.( 



THE SAXONS. 



51 



barism of his audience. He adnpfs the text in order to bring it d own to 
their inteUigence ; the pretty verses of Boethius, somewhat pretentious, 
laboured, elegant, croA\'ded with classical allusions of a refinrd and 
polished style worthy of Seneca, become an artless, long drav;n out 
and yet abrupt prose, like a nurse's fairy tale, explaining everything, 
recommencing and breaking off its phrases, making ten turns about a 
single detail ; so low was it necessary to stoop to the level of this 
new intelligence, which had never thought or known anything. Here 
follows the Latin of Boethius, so affected, so pretty, with the English 
translation affixed : — 



* Quondam funera conjugis 
Vates ThreiciHS gemens, 
Postquara flebilibus modis 
Silvas currere, mobiles 
Atnnes stare coegerat, 
Junxitque intrepidum latus 
Ssevis eerva leonibus, 
Nee visum timuit lepus 
Jam cantu placidum canem ; 
Cum flagiantior intima 
Fervor pectoris ureret, 
Nee qui cuncta subegerant 
Mulcerent dominum modi ; 
Immites superos querens, 
Infemas adiit domos. 
Illic blanda sonantibiis 
Chordis carmina temperans, 
Quidquid prpecipuis Dese 
Matris fontibus hauserat, 
Quod luctus dabat impotens, 
Quod luctum geminans amor, 
Deflet Tartara commovens, 
Et dulci veniam prece 
Umbrarum dominos rogat. 
Stupet tergeminus novo 
Captus carmine janitor ; 
Quae sontes agitant metu 
Ultrices scelerura Deae 
Jam moestse lacrymis madent. 
Kon Ixionium caput 
Vclox prs&cipitat rota, 
Et longa site perditus 
Spernit flumina Tantalus. 
Vultur dum satur est modis 
Non traxit Tityi jecur. 
Tandein, vincimur, arbiter 
Umbrarum miserans ait. 
Donemus comiiem viro, 
Emptam carmine coujugem. 



* It happened formerly that there was a harper 
in the country called Thrace, which was in 
Greece. The harper was inconceivably good. 
His name was Orpheus. He had a very excel- 
lent wife, called Eurydice. Then began men to 
say concerning the harper, that he could harp 
so that the wood moved, and the stones stirred 
themselves at the sound, and wild beasts would 
run thereto, and stand as if they were tame ; so 
still, that though men or hounds pursued tliem, 
they shunned them not. Then said they, tliat 
the harper's wife should die, and her soul should 
be led to hell. Then should the iiarper become 
so sorrowful that he could not remain among the 
men, but frequented the wood, and sat on tlie 
mountains, both day and night, weeping and 
harping, so that the woods shook, and the 
rivers stood still, and no hart shunned any 
lion, nor hare any hound ; nor did cattle know 
any hatred, or any fear of others, for the 
pleasure of the sound. Then it seemed to the 
harper that nothing in this world pleased lim. 
Then thought he that he would seek the gods 
of hell, and endeavour to allure them with hia 
harp, and pray that they would give him back 
his wife. "When he came thither, then should 
there come towards him the dog of hell, whose 
name was Cerberus, — he should have three heads, 
— and began to wag his tail, and play with him 
for his harping. Then was there also a very hor- 
rible gatekeeper, whose name should be Charon. 
He had also three heads, and he wps very old. 
Then began the harper to beseech hi.m that he 
would protect him while he was there, and bring 
him thence again safe. Then did he promise that 
to him, because he was desirous of the unaccus- 
tomed sound. Then went he further until he 
met the fierce goddesses, whom tho common 
people call Parcsp, of whom they say, that they 



52 THE SOURea [BOOR 1 

8cd lex dona coerceat, know no respect for any man, bnt punish eveiy 

Nee, duni Tartara liqnerit, man according to his deeds ; and of whom they 
Fas sit lumina flcctere. say, that they control every man's fortune. Then 

Quis legem det araantibus ! began he to implore their mercy. Then began 
Major lex fit amor sibi. tliey to weep with him. Then went he farther^ 

Heu ! noctis prope terminos and all the inhabitants of hell ran towards hia\,, 
Orpheus Eurydicem suam and led him to their king ; and all began to speak 

Vidit, perdidit, occidit. with him, and to pray that which he prayed, 

Vos hsec fabula respicit, And the restless wheel which Ixion, the king of 

Quicunque in superum diem tke Lapithse, was bound to for hi3 guilt, that 
Mentem ducere qureritis. stood still for his narping. And Tantalus the 

Nam qui tartareuui in specus king, who in this world Avas immoderately greedy, 
Victus lamina flexerit, and whom that same vice of greediness followed 

Quidquid praicipuum trahit there, he became quiet. And the vulture should 
Pcrdit, dum videt inferos.' cease, so that he tore not tire liver of Tityus the 
Book III. Metre 12. king, which before therewith tonnented him. 
And all the punishments of the inhabitants of 
hell were suspended, whilst he harped before the king. Wlien he long and long 
had harped, then spoke the king of the inhabitants of hell, and saiJ, Let ns 
give the man his wife, for he has earned her by his harping. He then com- 
manded him that he should well observe that he never looked hachioards after 
he departed thence ; and said, if he looked backwards, that he should lose the 
woman. But men can with great difficulty, if at all, restrain love ! "Wellaway ! 
What ! Orpheus then led his wife with him till he came to the boundary of light 
and darkness. Then went his wife after him. AVlien he came forth into the liglit, 
then looked he behind his back towards the woman. Then was she immediately 
lost to him. This fable teaches eveiy man who desires to fly the darkness of hell, 
and to come to the light of the true good, that he look not about him to his old 
vices, so that he practise them again as fully as he did before. For whosoever with 
full will turns his mind to the vices which he had before forsaken, and practises 
them, and they then fully please him, and he never thinks of forsaking them j 
then loses he all his former good unless he again amend it.'^ 

One speaks thus Avlien an indistinct idea has to be impressed upon 
the mind. Boethius had for his audience senators, men of culture, who 
understood as well as we the slightest mythological allusion. Alfred is 
obliged to take them up and develop them, like a father or a master, 
who draws his little boy between his knees, and relates to him names, 
qualities, crimes and their punishments, which the Latin only hints at. 
But the ignorance is such that the teacher himself needs correction. 
He takes the Parcae for the Erinyes, and gives Charon three heads like 
Cerberus. There is no adornment in his version ; no finesse as in the 
original. Alfred himself has hard work to be understood. What, for 
instance, becomes of the noble Platonic moral, the apt interpretation 
after the style of L^mblichus and Porphyry ? It is altogether dulled. 
He has to call everything by its name, and turn the eyes of his people 
to tangible and visible things. It is a sermon suited to his audience of 
thanes ; the Danes whom he had converted by the sword needed a cleai 



Fox's Alfred's Boethius, chap. 35. § G, 1864 



CIIAP. 1.] THE SAXONS. 53 

moral. If he had translated for them exactly the fine words of Boethius, 
they would have opened wide their big stupid eyes and fallen asleep. 

For the whole talent of an uncultivated mind lies in the force and 
oneness of its sensations. Beyond that it is powerless. The art of 
thinking and reasoning lies above it. These men lost all genius when 
they lost their fever-heat. They spun out awkwardly and heavily dry 
chronicles, a sort of historical almanacks. You might think them 
peasants^ who, returning from their toil, came and scribbled with chalk 
i-n a smoky table the date of a year of scarcity, the price of corn, the 
el .mges in the weather, a death. Even so, side by side with the meagre 
Bible chronicles, which set down the successions of kings, and of Jewish 
massacres, are exhibited the exaltation of the psalms and the transpoits 
of prophecy. The same lyric poet tian be at one time a brute and a 
genius, because his genius comes and goes like a disease, and instead of 
having it he simply is ruled by it. 

*A.D. 611. This year Cynegils succeeded to the government in Wessex, and 
held it one-and-tliirty winters. Cynegils was the son of Ceol, Ceol of Cutha, 
Cutha of Cynric. 

'614. This year Cynegils and Cnichelm fought at Eampton, and slew two 
thousand and forty-six of the Welsh. 

* 678. This year appeared the comet-star in August, and shone every morning 
during three months like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfrid being driven from his 
bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his stead. 

* 901. This year died Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf, six nights before the mass 
of All Saints. He was king over all the English nation, except that part that was 
nnder the power of the Danes. He held the government one year and a half less 
than thirty winters ; and then Edward his son took to the government. 

* 902. This year there was the great fight at the Holme, between the men of 
Kent and the Danes. 

* 1077. This year were reconciled the King of the Franks, and William, King of 
England. But it continued only a little while. This year was London burned, 
one night before the Assumption of St. Mary, so terribly as it never was before 
since it was built. ' ^ 

It is thus the poor monks speak, with monotonous dryness, who after 
Alfred's time gather up and take note of great visible events ; sparsely 
scattered we find a few moral reflections, a passionate emotion, 
nothing more. In the tenth century we see King Edgar give a manor 
k) a bishop, on condition that he will put into Saxon tHe moriastic 
rt^gulation written in Latin by Saint Benedict. Alfred himself was 
almost the last man of culture ; he, like Charlemagne, became so only 
by dint of determination and patience. In vain the great spirits of this 
age endeavour to link themselves to the relics of the old civilisation, 
and tc ruise themselves above the chaotic and muddy ignorance in 
which the others wallow. They rise almost alone, and on their death 
the rest are again enveloped in the mire. It is the human beast that 

* All these extracts are taken from Ingram's Saxon Chronide, 1823. 



54 THE SOURCE. [ BOOK 1 

remains master; genins cannot find a place amidst revolt and hlood- 
tliirstiness, gluttony and brute force. Even in the little circle where 
he moves, bis labour comes to nought. The model which he proposed 
to himself oppresses and enchains him in a cramping imitation ; he 
aspires but to be a good copyist ; he produces a gathering of centos 
which he calls Latin verses; he applies himself to the discovery of 
expressions, sanctioned by good models ; he succeeds only in elaborat- 
ing an emphatic, spoiled Latin, bristling with incongruities. In place 
of ideas, the most profound amongst them serve up the defunct doc- 
trines of defunct authors. They compile religious manuals and philo- 
sophical manuals from the Fathers. Erigena, the most learned, goeg 
to the extent of reproducing the old complicated dreams of Alex- 
andrian metaphysics. How far ^lese speculations and reminiscences 
soar above the barbarous crowd which howls and bustles in the plain 
below, no words can express. There was a certain king of Kent in 
the seventh century who could not write. Imagine bachelors of theo- 
logy discussing before an audience of w^aggoners in Paris, not Parisian 
waggoners, but such as survive in Auvergne or in the Vosges. Among 
these clerks, who think like studious scholars in accordance with their 
favourite authors, and are doubly separated from the world as collegians 
and monks, Alfred alone, by his position as a layman and a practical 
man, descends in his Saxon translations and his Saxon verses to the 
common level ; and we have seen that his effort, like that of Charle- 
magne, was fruitless. There was an impassable wall between the old 
learned literature and the present chaotic barbarism. Incapable, yet 
compelled, to fit into the ancient mould, they gave it a twist. Unable 
to reproduce ideas, they reproduced a metre. They tried to eclipse 
their rivals in versification by the refinement of their composition, and 
the prestige of a difnculty overcome. So, in our ow^n colleges, the 
good scholars imitate the clever divisions and symmetries of Claudian 
rather than the ease and variety of Virgil. They put their feet in 
irons, and showed their smartness by running in shackles ; they 
weighted themselves with rules of modern rhyme and rules of ancient 
metre ; they added the necessity of beginning each verse with the same 
letter that began the last. A few, like Adhelra, wrote square acrostics, 
in v'hicli the first line, repeated at the end, was found also to the left 
and right of the piece. Thus made up of the first and last letteis of 
each verse, it forms a border to the whole piece, and the morsel of 
verse is like a morsel of tapestry. Strange literary tricks, which 
changed the poet into an artisan! They bear witness to the con- 
trariety which then impeded culture and nature, and spoiled at once 
the Latin form and the Saxon genius. 

Beyond this barrier, which drew an impassable line between civilisa- 
tion and barbarism, there was another, no less impassable, between thf! 
Latin and Saxon genius. The strong German imagination, in which 
glowing and obscure visions suddenly meet and violently clash, was 



CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 5JS 

in contrast with the reasoning spirit, in which ideas gatlier and ar« 
developed in a regular order ; so that if the barbarian, in his classical 
essays, retained any part of his primitive instincts, he succeeded only 
in producing a grotesque and frightful monster. One of them, this 
very Adlielm, a relative of King Ina, who sang on the town-bridge 
profane and sacred hymns alternately, too much imbued with Saxon 
poesy, simply to imitate the antique models, adorned his Latin prose 
and verse with all the 'English k^Agnificence.'^ You might compare 
him to a barbarian who seizes a flute from the skilled hands of a player 
of Augustus' court, in order to blow on it with inflated lungs, as if it 
were the bellowing horn of an aurochs. The sober speech of the 
Roman orators and senators becomes in his hands full of exaggerated 
and incoherent images; he heaps up his colours, and gives vent to the 
extraordinary and unintelligible nonsense of the later Skalds, — ^in short, 
he is a latinised Skald, dragging into his new tongue the ornaments of 
Scandinavian poetry, such as alliteration, by dint of which he con- 
gregates in one of his epistles fifteen consecutive words, all beginning 
with the same letter ; and in order to make up his fifteen, he introduces 
% barbarous Grsecism amongst the Latin wor.ds.^ Many times amongst 
he others, the writers of legends, you will meet with deformation of 
-I^atin, distorted by the outbreak of a too vivid imagination ; it breaks 
cut even in their scholastic and scientific writing. Alcuin, in the 
dialogues which he made for the son of Charlemagne, uses like 
formulas the little poetic and trite phrases which abound in the 
national poetry. * What is winter ? the exile of summer. What is 
spring ? the painter of earth. What is the year ? the world's chariot. 
What is the sun? the splendour of the universe, the beauty of the 
firmament, the grace of nature, the glory of the day, the distributor 
of hours. What is the sea? the road of the brave, the frontier of 
earth, the hostelry of the waves, the source of showers.' More, he 
ends his instructions with enigmas, in the spirit of the Skalds, such as 
we still find in the old manuscripts with the barbarian songs. It was 
the last feature of the national genius, which, when it labours to under- 
stand a matter, neglects dry, clear, consecutive deduction, to employ 
grotesque, remote, oft-repeated imagery, and replaces rpalysis by in- 
tuition. 

VIII. 

Such was this race, the last born of the sister races, Saxon, Latin, 

■ 
* William of Malmesbury's expression. 

' Primitus (pantorum procerum praetoriimque pio potissimum paternoqut 
praesertiui privilegio) panegyricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo pro- 
mulgantes. stridula vocum syraphonia ac melodiaB cantile, npeque carrahic mo 
fiulaturl hyniiizemus. 



56 TUE SOURCE. [BOOK i 

and Greek, who, in the decay of the other two, brings to the world a 
new civilisation, with a new character and genius. Inferior to these 
in many respects, it surpasses them in not a few. Amidst the woods 
and fens and snows, under a sad, inclement sky, gross instincts have 
gained the day. The German has not acquired gay humour, unre- 
served facility, the idea of harmonious beauty; his great rtlegmatic 
body continues fierce and coarse, greedy and brutal ; his rude and 
unpliable mind is still inclined to savagery, and restive under culture; 
DuK and congealed, his ideas cannot expand with facility and freedom, 
with a natural sequence and an instinctive regularity. But this spirit, 
void of the sentiment of the beautiful, is all the more apt for the senti- 
ment of the true. The deep and incisive impression which he receives 
from contact with objects, and which as yet he can only express by a 
cry, will afterwards liberate him from the Latin rhetoric, and will vent 
itself on things rather than on words. Moreover, under the constraint 
of climate and solitude, by the habit of resistance and effort, his ideal 
is changed. Human and moral instincts have gained the empire over 
him ; and amongst them, the need of independence, the disposition for 
serious and strict manners, the inclination for devotion and veneration, 
the worship of heroism. Here are the foundations and the elements of 
a civilisation, slower but sounder, less careful of what is agreeable and 
elegant, more based on justice and truth.^ Hitherto at least the race 
is intact, intact in its primitive rudeness ; the Eoman cultivation could 
neither develop nor deform it. If Christianity took root, it was owing 
to natural affinities, but it produced no change in the native genius. 
Now approaches a new conquest, which is to bring this time men, as 
well as ideas. The Saxons, meanwhile, after the wont of German 
races, vigorous and fertile, have within the past six centuries multi- 
plied enormously. They were now about two millions, and the Nor- 
man army numbered sixty thousand.^ In vain these Normans become 
transformed, gallicised ; by their origin, and substantially in themselves 
they are still the relatives of those whom they conquered. In vain 
they imported their manners and their poesy, and introduced into the 
language a third part of its words ; this language continues altogether 



* In Iceland, the country of the iSercest sea-kings, crimes are unknown j piisons 
have been turned to other uses ; fines are the only punishment. 

2 See Pictorial History, i. 249. Following Doomsday Book, Mr. Turner 
reckons at three hundred thousand the heads of families mentioned. If each 
family consisted of five persons, that would make one million five hundred 
thousand people. He adds five hundred thousand for the four northern counties, 
for London and several large towns, for the monks and provincial clergy not 
enumerated- . . . We must accept these figures with caution. Still they agree 
with those of Macintosh, George Chalmeis, and several others. Many facts show 
that the Saxon population was very numerous, and quite out of propcrtiou to the 
Norman population. 



CHAP. 1.] THE SAXONS. 57 

German in element and in substance.^ Though the grammar cfiangeci, 
it changed integrally, by an internal action, in the same sense as its 
continental cognates. At the end of three hundred years the con- 
querors themselves were conquered ; their speech became English ; 
and owing to frequent intermarriage, the English blood ended by 
gaining the predominance over the Norman blood in their veins. The 
race finally remains Saxon. If the old poetic genius disappears aftei 
the Conquest, it is as a river disappears, and flows for a while under- 
ground. In five centuries it will emerge once more. 

* Warton, Histt -^y of E'lglish Poetry, 1840, 3 vela., prefsea. 



58 THE SOURCE. I BOOK I 



CHAPTER IL 

The Normans. 

I. The protection and cha-acter of Feudalism. 

II. The Norman invasion • character of the Normans — Contrast wi ih the Saxonf 
— The Normans are French — How they became so — Their taste and 
architecture — Their spirit of inquiry and their literature — Chivalry and 
amusements — Their tactics and their success. 

III. Bent of the French genius— Two principal characteristics ; clear and con- 

secutive ideas — Psychological form of French genius — Prosaic histories ; 
lack of colour and passion, ease and discursiveness — Natural logic and 
clearness, soberness, grace and delicacy, refinement and cynicism — Order 
and charm — The nature of the beauty and of the ideas which the French 
have introduced. 

IV. The Normans in Englnnd— Their position and their tyranny — They implant 

their literature and langiiage — They forget the same — Learn English by 
degrees — Gradually English becomes gallicised. 
T, They translate French works into English — Opinion of Sir John MandeviUe 
— Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert de Brunne — They imitate in 
English tlie French literature — Moral manuals, chansons, fabliaux, Gestes 
— Brightness, frivolity, and futility of this French literature — Barbarity 
and ignora,nce of the feudal civilisation — Geste of Richard Coeur de Lion, 
and voyages of Sir John Mandeville — Poorness of the literature introduced 
and implanted in England — Why it has not endured on the Continent or 
in England. 

VI. The Saxons in England — Endurance of the Saxon nation, and formation ol 
the English constitution — Endurance of the Saxon character, and formation 
of the English character. 

VII. -IX. Comparison of the ideal hero in France and England — Fabliaux of Reynard, 
and ballads of Robin Hood — How the Saxon character makes way for and 
supports political liberty — Comparison of the condition of the Commons 
in France and England — Theory of the English constitution, by Sir John 
Fortescue — How the Saxon constitution makes way for and supporta 
political liberty — Situation of the Church, and precursors of the Refor- 
mation in England — Piers Plowman and Wycliffe — How the Saxon 
character and the situation of the Norman Church make way for religiot'j 
reform — Incompleteness and importance of the national literatui'e — Wl y 
it has not enduied. 



A CENTURY and a half had passed on the Continent since, amid 
the universal decay and dissolution, a new society had been 
formed, and new men had risen up. Brave men had at length made a 



CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 59 

league against the Norsemen and the robbers. They had planted their 
feet in the soil, and the moving chaos of the general subsidence had 
become fixed by the effort of their great hearts and of their arms. At 
the mouths of the rivers, in the defiles of the mountains, on the margin 
of the waste borders, at all perilous passes, they had built their forts, 
each for himself, each on his own land, each with his faithful band ; and 
tney had lived like a scattered but Avatchful army, camped and con- 
federate in their castles, sword in hand, in front of tlic enemy. Beneath 
tliis «iiscii)line a formidable people had been formed, fierce hearts ir 
strong bodies,^ intolerant of restraint, longing for violent deeds, born 
for constant warfare because steeped in jjermanent warfare, heroes and 
robbers, who, as an escape from their solitude, plunged into adven- 
tures, and went, that they might conquer a country or win Paradise, to 
Sicily, to Portugal, to Spain, to Livonia, to Palestine, to England. 

IL 

On the 27th of September 1006, at the mouth of the Somme, there 
■was a great sight to be seen: four hundred large sailing vessels, more 
than a thousand transports, and sixty thousand men were on the point 
of embarking.^ The sun shone splendidly after long rain; trumpetg 
sounded, the cries of this armed multitude rose to heaven ; on the far 
horizon, on the shore, in the wide-spreading river, on the sea which 
opens out thence broad and shining, masts and sails extended like a 
forest; the enormous fleet set out wafted by the south wind.^ The 
people which it carried were said to have come from Norway, and one 
might have taken them for kinsmen of the Saxons, with whom they 
were to fight; but there were with them a multitude of adventurers, 
crowding from every direction, far and near, from north and south, 
from Maine and Anjou, from Poitou and Brittany, from Ile-de-France 
and Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy;* and, in short, the expe- 
dition itself was French. 

^ k'ee, amidst other delineations of their manners, the first accounts of the first 
Crusade. Godfrey clove a Saracen down to liis waist. — In Palestine, u widow waa 
compelled, up to the age of sixty, to marry again, because no fief cculd remain 
without a defender. — A Spanish leader said to his exhausted soldiers after a battle, 
* You are too weary and too much wounded, but come and fight with me against 
this other band ; the fresh wounds which we shall receive will make us forget 
those which we have.' At this time, says the General Chronicle of Spain, kings, 
counts, and nobles, and all the knights, that they might be ever ready, kept their 
horses in the chamber where they .slept with their wives. 

* For difference in numbers of the fleet and men, see Freeman, Hist, of the 
Norm. Conq., 3 vols. 1867, iii. 381, 387.— Tr. 

^ For all the details, see Anglo-Norman Chronkles, iii. 4, as quoted by Aug. 
Ihieny. I have myseK seen the locality and the country. 

* Of three columns of attack at Hastings, two were compoged of auu" liar 
ies. Moreover, the chroniclers are not at fault upon this critical point ; they 
agree in stating that England was conquered by Frenchmen. 



fln THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

How comes it that, having kept its name, it had changed its nature? 
and what series of renovations had made a Latin out of a German 
people? The reason is, that this people, when they came to Neustria, 
were neither a national body, nor a pure race. They were but a band ; 
and as such, marrying the women of the country, they introduced 
foreign blood into their children. They were a Scandinavian band, 
but deteriorated by all the bold knaves and all the wretched despera- 
does who wandered about the conquered country;^ and as such they 
received the foreign blood into their veins. Moreover, if the nomadic 
band was mixed, the settled band was much more so ; and peace by its 
transfusions, like war by its recruits, had changed the character of 
the primitive blood. When Rollo, having divided the land amongst 
his followers, hung the thieves and their abettors, people from every 
country gathered to him. Security, good stern justice, were so rare, 
that they were enough to re-people a land.* He invited strangers, say 
the old writers, ' and made one people out of so many folk of different 
natures.' This assemblage of barbarians, refugees, robbers, immi- 
grants, spoke Romance or French so quickly, that the second Duke, 
wishing to have his son taught Danish, had to send him to Bayeux, 
where it was still spoken. The great masses always form the race in 
the end, and generally the genius and language. Thus this people, so 
transformed, quickly became polished ; the composite race showed itself 
of a ready genius, far more wary than the Saxons across the Channel, 
closely resembling their neighbours of Picardy, Champagne, and Ile- 
^e-France. ' The Saxons,' says an old writer,'* * vied with each other 
in their drinking feats, and wasted their goods by day and night in 
feasting, whilst they lived in wretched hovels; the French and Nor- 
mans, on the other hand, living inexpensively in their fine large houses, 
were besides studiously refined in their food and careful in their habits.* 
The former, still weighted by the German phlegm, were gluttons and 
drunkards, now and then aroused by poetical enthusiasm ; the latter, 
made sprightlier by their transplantation and their alloy, felt the cravings 
of genius already making themselves manifest. ' You might see amongst 
tksm churches in every village, and monasteries in the cities, towering 
on high, and built in a style unknown before,' first in Normandy, and 
presently in England.* Taste had come to them at once — that is, the 



' It was a Rouen fisherman, a soldier of Rollo, who killed the Duke of France 
at the mouth Df the Eure. Hastings, the famous sea-king, was a labourer's son 
from the neighbourhood of Troyes. 

' *Tn the tenth century," says Stendhal, *a man wished for two things: l»t, 
not to be slain ; 2c?, to have a good leather coat.' See FonteneUe's Chronicle. 

* WiUiam of Malmesbuiy. 

* Pictorial History, i. 615. Churches in London, Sarum, Norwich, Durham, 
Chichester, Peterborough, Rochester, Hereford, Gloucester, Oxford, etc.— Wil 
Uam of Vfalmesbury. 



UHAP, II.J THE NORMANS. Ql 

desirfj to please the eye, and to express a thought by outward repre- 
s«mtation, -which was quite a new idea : the circular arch was raised on 
ime or on a cluster of columns; elegant mouldings were placed about 
the windows ; the rose window made its appearance, simple yet, like 
the flower which gives it its name; and the Norman style unfolded 
Itself, original and measured, betAveen the Gothic style, whose richness 
it foreshadowed, and the Eomance style, whose solidity it recalled. 

"Witli taste, just as natural and just as quickly, was developed the 
spirit of inquiry. Nations are like children ; with some the tongue is 
readily loosened, and they comprehend at once; with others it is 
loosened with difficulty, and they are slow of comprehension. The 
men before us had educated themselves nimbly, as Frenchmen do. 
rhey were the first in France who unravelled the language, fixing it 
and writhig it so well, that to this day we imderstand their code and 
their poems. In a century and a half they Avere so far cultivated as to 
find the Saxons 'unlettered and rude.'^ That was the excuse they 
made for banishing them from the abbeys and all valuable ecclesiastical 
posts. And, in fact, this excuse was rational, for they instinctively 
hated gross stupidity. Between the Conquest and the death of King 
John^ they established five hundred and fifty-seven schools in England. 
Henry Beauclerk, son of the Conqueror, was trained in the sciences ; 
so wvjre Henry ii. and his three sons : Richard, the eldest of these, was 
a poet. Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, a subtle 
logician, ably argued the Real Presence; Anselm, his successor, the 
first thinker of the age, thought he had discovered a new proof of the 
existence of God, and tried to make religion philosophical by adopting 
as his maxim, * Crede ut intelligas.' The notion was doubtless grand, 
(i/Specially in the eleventh century ; and they could not have gone more 
promptly to work. Of course the science I speak of was but scholastic, 
and these terrible folios slay more understandings than they confirm. 
But people must begin as they can ; and syllogism, even in Latin, even 
in theology, is yet an exercise of the mind and a proof of the under- 
standing. Among the continental priests who settled in England, one 
established a library; another, founder of a school, made the scholars 
perform the play of- Saint Catherine; a third wrote in polished Latin, 
* epigrams as pointed as those of Martial.' Such were the recreations of 
an intelligent race, eager for ideas, of ready and flexible genius, whose 
clear thought was not overshadowed, like that of the Saxon brain, by 
drunken conceits, and the vapours of a greedy and well-filled stomach. 
Ihey loved conversations, tales of adventure. Side by side Avith their 
Latin chroniclers, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, men 
of reflection, Avho could not only relate, but criticise here and there ; 
there were rhyming chronicles in the vulgar tongue, as those of GeofFroy 
Gaimar, Benoit de Sainte-Maure, Robert Wace. Do not imagine that 

' Qrdericus Vi talis. 



02 THE SOURCE. [BOOK i 

their verse-writers were sterile of words or lacking in details. They 
were talkers, tale-tellers, speakers above all, ready of tongue, and nevei 
stinted in speech. Not singers by any means; they speak — this is 
their strong poi^nt, in their poems as in their chronicles. One of the 
earliest wrote the Song of Roland ; upon this they accumulated a mul- 
titude of songs concerning Charlemagne and his knights, concerning 
Arthur and Merlin, the Greeks and Komans, King Horn, Guy oi 
Warwick, every prince and every people. Their minstrels {trouvere3\ 
like their knights, draw in abundance from Gauls, Franks, and Latins, 
and descend upon East and West, in the wide field of adventure. 
They address themselves to a spirit of inquiry, as the Saxons to enthu- 
siasm, and dilute in their long, clear, and flowing narratives the lively 
colours of German and Breton traditions; battles, surprises, single 
combats, embassies, speeches, processions, ceremonies, huntings, a 
variety of amusing events, employ their ready and adventurous imagi- 
nations. At first, in the Song of Roland, it is still kept in check; it 
walks with long strides, but only walks. Presently its wings have 
grown ; incidents are multiplied ; giants and monsters abound, the 
natural disappears, the song of the jongleur grows a poem under the 
hands of the trouvere ; he would speak, like Nestor of old, five, even 
six years running, and not grow tired or stop. Forty thousand verses 
are not too much to satisfy their gabble; a facile mind, abundant, 
curious, descriptive, is the genius of the race. The Gauls, their fathers, 
used to delay travellers on the road to make them tell their stories, 
and boasted, like these, * of fighting well and talking with ease.' 

With chivalric poetry, they are not wanting in chivalry ; principally, 
it may be, because they are strong, and a strong man loves to prove his 
strength by knocking down his neighbours ; but also from a desire of 
fame, and as a point of honour. By this one word honour the whole 
spirit of warfare is changed. Saxon poets painted it as a murderous 
fury, as a blind madness which shook flesh and blood, and awakened 
the instincts of the beast of prey ; Norman poets describe it as a tourney. 
The new passion which they introduce is that of vanity and gallantry ; 
Guy of Warwick dismounts all the knights in Europe, in order to deserve 
the hand of the prude and scornful Felice. The tourney itself is but 
a ceremony, somewhat brutal I admit, since it turns upon the break- 
ing of arms and limbs, but yet brilliant and French. To make a show 
of cleverness and courage, display the magnificence of dress and armour, 
be applauded by and please the ladies, — such feelings indicate men of 
greater sociality, more under the influence of public opinion, less the 
slaves of their own passions, void both of lyric inspiration and savage 
enthusiasm, gifted by a different genius, because inclined to other 
pleasures. 

Such were the men who at this moment were disembarking in Eng- 
land to introduce their new manners and a new spirit, French at bottom, 
ia character and speech, though with special and provincial features ,• 



CHAP. II.J THE NORMANS. 63 

of all the most determined, with an eye on the main chance, calculating, 
having the nerve and the dash of our own soldiers, but with the t_ncks 
and precautions of lawyers ; heroic undertakers of profitable enterprises ; 
having travelled in Sicily, in Naples, and ready to travel to Constanti- 
nople or Antioch, so it be to take a country or carry off money ; sharp 
politicians, accustomed in Sicily to hire themselves to the highest bidder 
and capable of doing a stroke of business in the heat of the Crusade, 
like Bohemond, who, before Antioch, speculated on the dearth of his 
Christian allies, and would only open the town to them under condi- 
tion of their keeping it for himself; methodical and persevenng con- 
querors, expert in administration, and handy at paper-work, like this 
very William, who was able to organise such an expedition, and such 
an army, and kept a written roll of the same, and who proceeded to 
register the whole of England in his Domesday Book. Sixteen days 
after the disembarkation, the contrast between the two nations was 
manifested at Hastings by its sensible effects. 

The Saxons *ate and drank the whole night. You might have 
seen them struggling much, and leaping and singing,* with shouts of 
laughter and noisy joy.^ In the morning they crowded behind their 
palisades the dense masses of their heavy infantry, and with battle-axe 
hung round their neck awaited the attack. The wary Normans weighed 
the chances of heaven and hell, and tried to enlist God upon their side. 
Robert Wace, their historian and compatriot, is no more troubled by 
poetical imagination than they were by warlike inspiration ; and on 
the eve of the battle his mind is as prosaic and clear as theirs.^ The 
same spirit showed in the battle. They were for the most part bow- 
men and horsemen, well-skilled, nimble, and clever. Taillefer, the 
jongleur, who asked for the honour of striking the first blow, went 
iinging, like a true French volunteer, performing tricks all the 

* Robert Wace, Roman du Bou. 
' Ibid. Et li Normanz et li Franceiz 

Tote nuit firent oreisona, 

Et furent en afiicions. 

De lor pechies confez se firent 

As proveires les regehirent, 

Et qui n'en out provieres prez, 

A son veizin se fist confez, 

Pour (JO ke samedi esteit 

Ke la bataille estre debveit. 

Unt Normanz a pramis e voc, 

Si com li cler I'orent loe, 

Ke a ce jor mes s'il veskeient, 

Char ni saunc ne mangereient 

Qifirei, eveske de Coustances, 

A plusors joint lor penitances. 

Cli regut li confessions 

Et dona li benei(jons. 



04 THE SOJRCE. [BOOK. 1 

while.* Having arrived before the English, he cast his lance three tirata 
in the air, then his sword, and caught them again by the handle ; and 
Harold's clumsy foot- soldiers, who only knew how to cleave coats of mail 
by blows from their battle-axes, ' were astonished, saying to one another 
that it was magic' As for William, amongst a score of prudent and 
cunning actions, he performed two well- calculated ones, which, in this 
sore embarrassment, brought him safe out of his difficulties. He ordered 
his archers to shoot into the air; the arrows wounded many of the 
Saxons in the fiice, and one of them pierced Harold in the eye. After 
this he simulated flight ; the Saxons, intoxicated with joy and wrath, 
quitted their entrenchments, and exposed themselves to the lances of 
the knights. During the remainder of the contest they only make a 
stand by small companies, fight with fury, and end by being slaugh- 
tered. The strong, mettlesome, brutal race threw themselves on the 
enemy like a savage bull ; the dexterous Norman hunters wounded 
them, subdued, and drove them under the yoke. 

IIL 

Wliat then is this French race, rrhich by arms and letters niakes 

* Robert Wace, Roman du Ron : 

Taillefer ki moult bien cantout 
Sur uu roussin qui tot alout 
Devant li dus alont cantant 
De Kalermaine e de Rolant, 
E d'Oliver et des vassals 
Ki inoururent a Roncevals. 
Quant lis orent chevalchie tant 
K'as Engleis vindrent aprismant. 
' Sires ! dist Taillefer, merci 1 
Je vos ai languement servi. 
Tut men servise me debvez, 
Hui, si vos plaist, me le rendez 
Por tout guerredun vos requier, 
Et si vos voil forment preier, 
Otreiez-mei, ke jo u'i faille, 
Li primier colp de la bataille 
Et li dus repont : ' Je Totrei.' 
Et Taillefer point a desrei ; 
Devant toz li altres se mist, 
Un Englez feri, si I'ocist. 
De SOS le pis, parmie la pance, 
Li fist passer ultre la lance, 
A terre estendu I'abati. 
Poiz trait Tespee, altre feri. 
Poiz a crie : ' Venez, venez I 
Ke fetes-vos ? Ferez, f erez 1 ' 
Done I'unt Englez avirone 
Al secund colp k'il ou don^. 



CEAP II.] THE NORMANS. 65 

such a splendid entrance upon the world, and is so manifestly destined 
to rule, that in the East, for example, their name of Franks will be 
given to all the nations of the West? Wherein consists this new 
spirit, this precocious pioneer, this key of all middle- age civilisation? 
There is in every mind of the kind a fundamental activity which, 
when incessantly repeated, moulds its plan, and gives it its direction ; 
in town or country, cultivated or not, in its infancy and its age, it 
spends its existence and employs its energy in conceiving an event or an 
object. This is its original and perpetual process; and whether it change 
its region, return, advance, prolong, or alter its course, its whole motion 
is but a series of consecutive steps ; so that the least alteration in the 
lengtli, quickness, or precision of its primitive stride transforms and 
regulates the whole course, as in a tree the structure of the first shoot 
determines the whole foliage, and governs the whole growth.^ When 
the Frenchnian conceives an event or an object, he conceives quickly 
and distinctly ; there is no internal disturbance, no previous fermenta- 
tion of confused and violent ideas, which, becoming concentrated and 
elaborated, end in a noisy outbreak. The movement of his intelligence 
is nimble and prompt like that of his limbs ; at once and without effort 
he seizes upon his idea. But he seizes that alone : he leaves on one 
side all the long entangling offshoots whereby it is entwined and 
twisted amongst its neighbouring ideas; he does not embarrass himself 
with nor think of them ; he detaches, plucks, touches but slightly, and 
that is all. He is deprived, or if you prefer it, he is exempt from those 
sudden half-visions which disturb a man, and open up to him instan- 
taneously vast deeps and far perspectives. Images are excited by in- 
ternal commotion ; he, not being so moved, imagines not. He is only 
moved superficially ; he is without large sympathy ; he does not per- 
ceive an object as it is, complex and combined, but in parts, with a 
discursive and superficial knowledge. That is why no race in Europe is 
less poetical. Let us look at their epics ; none are more prosaic. They 
are not wanting in number : The Song of Roland^ Garin le Loherain^ 
Ogier le Danois,^ BertJie aux grands Pieds. There is a library of them. 
Though their manners are heroic and their spirit fresh, though they 
have originality, and deal with grand events, yet, spite of this, the 
narrative is as dull as that of the babbling Norman chroniclers. Doubt- 
less Homer is precisely like them ; but his magnificent titles of rosy- 
fingered Morn, the wide -bosomed Air, the divine and nourishing 
Earth, the earth-shaking Ocean, come in every insiant and expand 
their purple tint over the speeches and battles, and the grand abound- 
ing similes which intersperse the narrative tell of a people more inclined 
to rejoice in beauty than to proceed straight to fact- But here we 
have facts, always facts, nothing but facts ; the Frebchman wants to 

* The idea of types is applicable throughout all physical and moral nature. 
" Danois is a contraction of le d'ArdennoiSy from the Ai'dennes. — Tk. 

S 



66 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

know if the hero will kill the traitor, the lover wed the maiden ; h« 
must not be delayed by poetry or painting. He advances nimbly to 
the end of the story, not lingering for dreams of the heart or wealth of 
landscape. There is no splendour, no colour, in his narrative ; his style 
is quite bare; and without figures ; you may read ten thousand verses 
in these old poems without meeting one. Shall we open the most 
ancient, the most original, the most eloquent, at the most moving point, 
the Song of Roland^ when Roland is dying ? The narrator is moved, 
and yet his language remains the same, smooth, accentless, so pene- 
trated by the prosaic spirit, and so void of the poetic ! He gives an 
abstract of motives, a summary of events, a series of causes for grief, 
a series of causes for consolation.^ Nothing more. These men regard 
the circumstance or the action by itself, and adhere to this view. Their 
idea remains exact, clear, and simple, and does not raise up a similai 
image to be confused with itself, to colour or transform itself. It re- 
mains dry ; they conceive the divisions of the object one by one, 
without ever collecting them, as the Saxons would, in a rude, impas- 
sioned, glowing fantasy. Nothing is more opposed to their genius than 
the genuine songs and profound hymns, such as the English monks Aver« 
singing beneath the low vaults of their churches. They would be 
disconcerted by the unevenness and obscurity of such language. They 



* Qenin, Chanson de B aland : 

Co sent Rollans que la mort le trespent., 

Devers la teste sur le quer li descent ; 

Desuz un pin i est alet curant, 

Sur riierbe verte si est culcliet adenz ; 

Desuz lui met I'espee et I'olifan ; 

Turnat sa teste vers la pai'ene gent ; 

Pour go I'at fait que il voelt veirement 

Que Carles diet e trestute sa gent, 

Li gentilz quens, qui'l f ut mort cunquerar t. 

Cleimet sa culpe, e menut e suvent. 

Pur ses pecchez en purofirid lo guant. 

Li quens Rollans se jut desuz un pin, 
Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis, 
De plusurs choses a remembrer le prist. 
De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist, 
De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, 
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki I'nurrit. 
Ne poet muer n'en plurt et ne susprit. 
Mais lui meisme ne volt mettre en ubli 
Cleimet sa culpe, si priet Dieu mercit • 

' Veire paterne, ki unques ne mentis, 
*>cint Lazaron de mort resurrexis, 
Et Daniel des lions guaresis 
Guaris de mei Tarome de tuz perilz 
Pur les pecchez que en ma vie fis * 



CUAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 67 

are not capable of such an access of enthusiasm and such excess of 
emotions. They never cry out, they speak, or rather they converse, 
and that at moments when the soul, overwhelmed by its trouble, might 
be expected to cease thinking and feeling. Thus Amis, in a mystery- 
play, being leprous, calmly requires his friend Amille to slay his two 
sons, in order that their blood should heal him of his leprosy; and 
Amille replies still more calmly.^ If ever they try to sing, even in 
heaven, * a roundelay high and clear,' they wr^l produce little rhymed 
argu^ujnts, as dull as the dullest conversations.^ Pursue this litera- 
ture to its conclusion ; regard it, like the Skalds, at the time of 
its decadence, when its vices, being exaggerated, display, like the 
Skalds, with marked coarseness the kind of mind which produced 
them. The Skalds fall off into nonsense; it loses itself into babble 
and platitude. The Saxon could not master his craving for exalta- 
tion ; the Frenchman could not restrain the volubility of his tongue. 
He is too diflfuse and too clear ; the Saxon is too obscure and brief. 
The one was excessively agitated and carried away; the other ex- 
plains and develops without measure. From the twelfth century the 
Gestes degenerate into rhapsodies and psalmodies of thirty or forty 
thousand verses. Theology enters into them ; poetry becomes an in- 
terminable, intolerable litany, where the ideas, developed and repeated 



Sun destre guant a Deii en puroffrit. 
Seint Gabriel de sa main Fad pris. 
Desur sun bras teneit le chef enclin, 
Juntas ses mains est alet a sa fin. 
Deus i tramist sun angle cherubin, 
Et seint Michel qu'on cleimet del peril 
Ensemble ad els seint Gabriel i vint, 
L'anme del cunte portent en pareis. 

* Men tres-chier ami debonnaire, 
Vous m'avez une chose ditte 
Qui n'est pas a faire petite 
Mais que Ton doit moult resonguier 
Et nonpourquaut, sans eslongnier, 
Puisque garison autrement 
Ne povez avoir vraiemeut. 
Pour vostre amour les occiray, 
Et le sang vous apporteray. 

5 Vraiz Diex, moult est excellente 
Et de grant charite plaine, 
Vostre bonte souveraiue. 
Car vostre grace presente, 
A toute personne humaine 
Vraix Diex, moult est excellente, 
Puisqu'elle a cuer et entente, 
Et que a ce desir I'amaine 
Que de vous servir se paine. 



(58 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

ad injimtum, without an outburst of emotion nor an accent of originality, 
flow like a clear and insipid stream, and send off ilieir reader, by dim 
of their monotonous rhymes, into a comfortable slumber. What a de- 
plorable abundance of distinct and facile ideas ! We meet with it again 
in the seventeenth century, in the literary gossip which took place at 
the feet of men of distinction ; it is the fault and the talent of the race. 
With this involuntary art of conceiving, and isolating instantaneousl} 
and clearly each part of every object, people can speak, even for speak- 
ing's sake, and for ever. 

Such is the primitive process ; how will it be continued ? Here 
appears a new trait in the French genius, the most vahiable of all. It 
is necessary to comprehension that the second idea shall be continuous 
with the first ; otherwise that genius is thrown out of its course and 
arrested : it cannot proceed by irregular bounds ; it must walk step 
by step, on a straight road ; order is innate in it ; without study, and 
at first approach, it disjoints and decomposes the object or event, how- 
ever complicated and entangled it may be, and sets the parts one by 
one in succession to each other, according to their natural connection. 
True, it is still in a state of barbarism ; yet intelligence is a reasoning 
faculty, which spreads, though unwittingly. Nothing is more clear than 
the style of the old French narrative and of the earliest poems : we do 
not perceive that we are following a narrator, so easy is the gait, so even 
the road he opens to us, so smoothly and gradually every idea glides 
into the next ; and this is why he narrates so well. The chroniclers 
Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, the fathers of prose, have an ease 
and clearness approached by none, and beyond all, a charm, a grace, 
which they had not to go out of their way to find. Grace is a national 
possession in France, and springs from the native delicacy which has a 
horror of incongruities ; the instinct of Frenchmen avoids violent shocks 
in works of taste as well as in works of argument ; they desire that tlicir 
sentiments and ideas shall harmonise, and not clash. Throughout they 
have this measured spirit, exquisitely refined.^ They take care, on a 
sad subject, not to push emotion to its limits ; they avoid big words. 
Think how Joinville relates in six lines the death of the poor sick priesl 
who wished to finish celebrating the mass, and * never more did sing^ 
and died.' Open a mystery-play — TJieophile^ the Queen of Hungaiy^ 
for instance ; when they are going to burn her and her child, she says 
two short lines about ' this gentle dew which is so pure an innocent/ 
naught beside. Take a fabliau, even a dramatic one : Avhen tiie 
penitent knight, who has undertaken to fill a barrel with his tears, 
dies in the hermit's company, he asks from him only one last gift : 
* Do but put thy arms on me, and then I'll die embraced by thee.' 
Could a more touching sentiment be expressed in more sober 
Innguage? One has to say of their poetry what is said of certaia 

' See H. Taiiie, La Fontaine and his Fables p. 15. 



CHAP. U.] . THE NORMANS. QQ 

pictures: This is made out of nothing. Is there in the world any- 
thing more delicately graceful than the verses of Guillaume de Lorris? 
Allegory v^lothes his ideas so as to dim their too great brightness ; 
ideal figures, half transparent, float about the lover, luminous, yet in a 
cloud, and lead him amidst all the sweets of delicate-hued ideas to the 
ro3e, of which 'the gentle odour embalms all the plain.' This refine- 
ment goes so far, that in Thibaut of Champagne and in Charles of 
Orleans it turns to affectation and insipidity. In them impressions 
grow more slender ; the perfume is so weak, that one often fails to 
catch it *, on their knees before their lady they whisper their waggeries 
and conceits ; they love politely and wittily ; they arrange ingeniously 
in a bouquet their * painted words,' all the flowers of * fresh and 
beautiful language ; ' they know how to mark fleeting ideas in their 
flight, soft melancholy, uncertain reverie ; they are as elegant as 
eloquent, and as charming as the most amiable abbes of the eighteenth 
Century. This lightness of touch is proper to the race, and appears as 
plainly under the armour and amid the massacres of the middle ages 
as amid the salutations and the musk-scented, wadded clothes of the 
last court. You will find it in their colouring as in their sentiments. 
They are not struck by the magnificence of nature, they see only her 
pretty side ; they paint the beauty of a woman by a single feature, 
which is only polite, saying, ' She is more gracious than the rose in 
May.' They do not experience the terrible emotion, ravishment, 
sudden oppression of heart which is displayed in the poetry of 
neighbouring nations ; they say directly, ' She began to sm.ile, which 
vastly became her.' They add, wdien they are in a descriptive 
humour, * that she had a sweet and perfumed breath,' and a body 

* white as new-fallen snow on a branch.' They do not aspire higher ; 
beauty pleases, but does not transport them. They delight in agreeable 
emotions, but are not fitted for deep sensations. The full rejuvenes- 
cence of being, the warm air of spring which renews and penetrates 
all existence, suggests but a pleasing couplet ; they remark in passing, 

* Now is winter gone, the hawthorn blossoms, the rose expands,' and so 
pass on about their business. It is a light pleasure, soon gone, like 
that which an April landscape affords. For an instant tlie author 
glances at the mist of the streams rising about the willow trees, the 
pleasant vapour which imprisons the brightness of the morning ; then, 
humming a burden of a song, he returns to his narrative. He seeks 
asnusement, and herein lies his power. 

In life, as in literature, it is pleasure he aims at, not sensual 
pleasure or emotion. He is gay, not voluptuous; dainty, not a 
glutton. He takes love for a pastime, not for an intoxication. It is 
a pretty fruit which he plucks, tastes, and leaves. And we must 
remark yet further, that the best of the fruit in his eyes is the fact of 
its being forbidden. He says to himself that he is duping a husband, 
that * he deceives a cruel woman, and thinks he ought to obtain 



70 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

a pope's indulgence for the deed.' ^ He wishes to be merry — it if 
the state he prefers, the end and aim of his life ; and especially to 
laugh at another's expense. The short verse of his fabliaux garribola 
and leaps like a schoolboy released from school, over all things re- 
spected or respectable ; criticising the church, women, the great, the 
monks. Scoffers, banterers, our fathers have abundance of the same 
expressions and things; and the thing comes to them so naturally, 
that wdthout culture, and surrounded by coarseness, they are as deli- 
cate in their raillery as the most refined. They touch upon ridicule 
lightly, they mock without emphasis, as it were innocently ; their 
style is so harmonious, that at first sight we make a mistake, and do 
not see any harm in it. They seem artless ; they look so very de- 
mure ; only a word shows the imperceptible smile : it is the ass, for 
example, which they call the high priest, by reason of his padded 
cassock and his serious air, and who gravely begins * to play the 
organ.' At the close of the history, the delicate sense of comicality 
has touched you, though you cannot say how. They do not call 
things by their name, especially in love matters ; they let you guess 
it ; they suppose you to be as sharp of intellect and as wary as them- 
selves.^ Be sure that one might discriminate, embellish at times, even 
refine upon them, but that their first traits are incomparable. When 
the fox approaches the raven to steal the cheese, he begins as a 
hypocrite, piously and cautiously, and as one of the family. He 
calls the raven his * good father Don Robart, who sings so well ; ' he 
praises his voice, 'so sweet and fine.' 'You would be the best singer 
in the world if you beware of nuts.' Renard is a Scapin, an artist in 
the way of invention, not a mere glutton ; he loves roguery for its 
own sake ; he rejoices in his superiority, and draws out his mockery, 
AVhen Tibjrt, the cat, by his counsel hung himself at the bell rope, 
wishing to ring it, he uses irony, smacks his lips and pretends to 
wax impatient against the poor fool whom he has caught, calls him 
proud, complains because the other does not answer, and because be 
wishes to rise to the clouds and visit the saints. And from be- 
ginning to end this long epic is the same ; the raillery never ceases, 
and never fails to be agreeable. Renard has so much wit, th.at he is 
pardoned for eveiy thing. The necessity for laughter is national — so 
indigenous to the French, that a stranger cannot understand, and ia 
shocked by it. This pleasure does not resemble physical joy in any 
respect, which is to be despised for its grossness ; on the contrary, it 
sharpens the intelligence, and brings to light many a delicate and sug- 
gestive idea. The fabliaux are full of truths about men, and still more 
fcbout women, about low conditions, and still more about high ; it is 

* La Fontaine, Gontes, Richard Minutolo. 
2 Parler lui veut d'une besogne 
Oil crois que peu conquerreois 
Si la besogne vous nommois. 



CHAP, n.] THE NORMANS. 71 

a method of philosopliising by stealth and boldly, in spite of conven- 
tionalism, and in opposition to the powers that be. This taste has 
nothing in common either with open satire, which is hideous because 
it is cruel ; on the contrary, it provokes good humoui . One soon seea 
that the jester is not ill-disposed, that he does not wish to wound : if 
he stings, it is as a bee, without venom ; an instant later he is not 
thinking of it ; if need be, he will take himself as an object of his 
pleasantry ; all he wishes is to keep up in himself and in us sparkling 
and pleasing ideas. Do we not see here in advance an abstract of the 
whole French literature, the incapacity for great poetry, the quick and 
durable perfection of prose, the excellence of all the moods of conversa- 
tion and eloquence, the reign and tyranny of taste and method, the art 
and theory of development and arrangement, the gift of being measured, 
clear, amusing, and pungent? We have taught Europe how ideas 
fall into order, and which ideas are agreeable ; and this is Avhat our 
Frenchmen of the eleventh century are about to teach their Saxons 
during five or six centuries, first with the lance, next with the stick, 
next with the birch. 

IV. 

Consider^ then, this Frenchman or Norman, this man from Anjou or 
Maine, who in his well-closed coat of mail, with sword and lance, came 
to seek his fortune in England. He took the manor of some slain Sjsxon, 
and settled himself in it with his soldiers and comrades, gave them land, 
houses, the right of levying taxes, on condition of their fighting under him 
and for him, as men-at-arms, marshals, standard-bearers ; it was a league 
in case of danger. In fact, they were in a hostile and conquered country, 
and they have to maintain themselves. Each one hastened to build for 
himself a place of refuge, castle or fortress,^ well fortified, of solid stone, 
with narrow windows, strengthened with battlements, garrisoned by 
soldiers, pierced with loopholes. Then these men went to Salisbury, 
to the number of sixty thousand, all holders of land, having at least 
enough to support a complete horse or armour. There, placing their 
hands in William's, they promised him fealty and assistance ; and the 
king's edict declared that they must be all united and bound together 
like brothers in arms, to defend and succour each other. They are 
an armed colony, and encamped in their dwellings, like the Spartans 
amongst the Helots ; and they make laws accordingly. When a French- 
man is founa dead in any district, the inhabitants are to give up the 
murderer, unless they pay forty-seven marks as compensation ; if the 
dead man is English, it rests with the people of the place to prove it by 
the oath of four near relatives of the deceased. They are to beware of 
killing a stag, boar, or fawn ; for an offence against the forest-laws they 
will lose their eyes. They have nothing of all their property assured 

' At King Stephen's death there were 1115 castles. 



72 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

to them except as alms, or on condition of tribute, or by taking the 
oath of homage. Here a free Saxon proprietor is made a body-slave 
on his own estate,^ Here a noble and rich Saxon lady feels on her 
shoulder the weight of the hand of a Norman valet, who is become by 
force her husband or her loA^er. There were Saxons of one sou, or of 
two sous, according to the sum which they brought to their masters ; 
they sold them, hiied them, worked them on joint account, like an ox 
or an ass. One Norman abbot has his Saxon predecessors dug up, and 
their bones thrown without the gates. Another keeps men-at-arms, 
who reduce the recalcitrant monks to reason by blows of their swords. 
Imagine, if you can, the pride of these new lords, conquerors, strangers, 
masters, nourished by habits of violent activit}^, and by the savagery, 
ignorance, and passions of feudal life. 'They thought they might do 
whatsoever they pleased,' say the old chroniclers. * They shed blood 
indiscriminately, snatched tlie morsel of bread from the moutli of the 
wretched, and seized upon all the money, the goods, the land.'^ Thus 
* all tlie folk in the low coimtry were at great pains to seem humble 
before Ives Taillebois, and only to address him with one knee on the 
ground ; but although they made a point of paying him every honour, 
and giving him all and more than all which they owed him in the way 
of rent and service, he harassed, tormented, tortured, imprisoned them, 
set his dogs upon their cattle, . . . broke the legs and backbones of 
their beasts of burden, . . . and sent men to attack their servants on 
the road wiih sticks and swords.' The Normans would not and could 
not borrow any idea or custom from such boors ;^ they despised them 
as coarse and stu[)id. They stood amongst them, as the Spaniards 
amongst the Americans in the sixteenth century, superior in force and 
culture, more versed in letters, more expert in the arts of luxury. 
They preserved their manners and their speech. England, to all out- 
ward appearance — the court of the king, the castles of the nobles, the 
palaces of the bishops, the houses of the wealthy — was French ; and the 
Scandinavian people, of whom sixty years ago the Saxon kings used to 
have poems sung to them, thought that the nation had forgotten its 
language, and treated it in their laws as though it were no longer 
tlieir sister. 

It was then a French literature whi:,h was at this time domiciled 
across the Channel,^ and the conquerors tried to make it purely French, 
purged from all Saxon alloy. They made such a point of this, that 
the nobles in the reign of Henry ii. sent their sons to France, to pre~ 

^ A. Thierry, Histoire de la Conquete de VAngleterre, ii. 

2 William of Malmesbury. A. Thierry, ii. 20, 13S-203. 

3 ' In the year 653,' says Warton, i. 3, 'it was the common practice of the 
Anglo-Saxons to send their youth to the monasteries of France for education ; 
and not only the language but the manners of the French were esteenced th« 
most polite accomplishmenta.' 

* Warton, i. 5. 



CHAP II.J THE NORMANS. 73 

serve them from barbarisms. *For two hundred years,* says Higden,* 
*cliildren in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations 
bceth compelled for to leve hire own langage, and for to construe hir 
lessons and hire thynges in Frensche.' The statutes of the universities 
obliged the students to converse either in French or Latin. * Gentil- 
men children beeth taught to speke Frensche from the tyme that they 
bith lokked in hire cradell ; and uplondissche men will likne himself to 
gentylmen, and fondeth with greet besynesse for to speke Frensche.* 
Of course the poetry is French. The Norman brought his minstrel 
v/ith him ; there was Taillefer, the jongleur, who sang the Song of 
Roland at the battle of Hastings ; there w^as Adeline, the Jongleuse, who 
received an estate in the partition which followed the Conquest. The 
Norman v/ho ridiculed the Saxon kings, who dug up the Saxon saints, 
and cast them without the walls of the church, loved none but French 
ideas and verses. It was into French verse that Robert Wace rendered 
the legendary history of the England which was conquered, and the 
actual history of the Normandy in which he continued to live. Enter 
one of the abbeys where the minstrels come to sing, ' where the clerks 
after dinner and supper read poems, the chronicles of kingdoms, the 
wonders of the world,'* you will only find Latin or French verses, 
Latin or French prose. What becomes of English? Obscure, de- 
spised, we hear it no more, except in the mouths of degraded franklins, 
outlaws of the forest, swineherds, peasants, the lowest orders. It is no 
longer, or scarcely written ; gradually we find in the Saxon chronicle 
that the idiom alters, is extinguished ; the chronicle itself ceases within 
a century after the Conquest.^ The people who have leisure or 
security enough to read or write are French ; for them authors devise 
and compose ; literature always adapts itself to the taste of those who 
can appreciate and pay for it. Even the English* endeavour to write 
in French : thus Robert Grostete, in his allegorical poem on Christ ; 
Peter Langtoft, in his Chronicle of England^ and in his Life of Thomas 
a Becket; Hugh de Rotheland, in his poem of Ilippomedon ; John 
Hoveden, and many others. Several WTite the first half of the verse in 
English, and the second in French ; a strange sign of the ascendency 
which is moulding and oppressing them. Still, in the fifteenth cen- 
tury,^ many of these poor folk are employed in this task; French is 
the language of the court, from it arose all poetry and elegance ; he if 

* Trevisa's translation of the Polycronycon. 

' Statutes of foundation of New College, Oxford. Tn the ahbey of Glastonbury, 
in 1247 : Liber de excidio Trojce, gesta Ricardi rer/is, gesta Alexandrl Magni, etc. 
In the abbey of Peterborough : Amys et Amelion, Sir Tristam, Guy de Bourgogne, 
gesta Otiiclls, les propheties de Merlin, le Charlemagne de Turpin, la destruction 
ae Troie, etc. Warton, ibidem. 

3 In 1154. ^ WartoD, i. 72-78. 

5 In 1400. Warton, ii. 348. Gower died in 1408 ; his French ballads h« 
long to the end of the fourteenth century. 



74 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

but a clodhopper who is inapt at that style. They apply themselves 
to it as our old writers did to Latin verses ; they are gallicised as those 
were latinised, by constraint, with a sort of fear, knowing well that 
they are but scholars and provincials. Gower, one of their best poets, 
at th<* end of his French works, excuses himself humMy for not having 
* do Fran^ais la faconde. Pardonnez moi,' he says, * que de ce je for»- 
voie; je suis Anglais.' 

And yet, after all, neither the race nor the tongue has perished. 
It is necessary that the Norman should learn English, in order to com- 
mand his serfs ; his Saxon wife speaks it to him, and his sons receive 
it from the lips of their nurse ; the contagion is strong, for he it 
obliged to send them to France, to preserve them from the jargon 
which on his domain threatens to overwhelm and spoil them. From 
generation to generation the contagion spreads ; they breathe it in the 
air, with the foresters in the chase, the farmers in the field, the sailors 
on the ships : for these rough people, shut in by their animal existence, 
are not the kind to learn a foreign language ; by the simple weight of 
their dulness they impose their idiom, at all events such as pertains to 
living terms. Scholarly speech, the language of law, abstract end 
philosophical expressions, — in short, all words depending on reflection 
and culture may be French, since there is nothing to prevent it. This 
is just what happens ; these kind of ideas and this kind of speech are 
not understood by the commonalty, who, not being able to touch them, 
cannot change them. This produces a French, a colonial French, 
doubtless perverted, pronounced with closed mouth, with a contortion 
of the organs of speech, * after the school of Stratford-atte-Bow ;' yet it 
is still French. On the other hand, as regards the speech employed 
about common actions and sensible objects, it is the people, the Saxons, 
who fix it; these living words are too firmly rooted in his experience 
to allow of his removing them, and thus the whole substance of the 
language comes from him. Here, then, we have the Norman who, 
slowly and constrainedly, speaks and understands English, a deformed, 
gallicised English, yet English, vigorous and original ; but he has 
taken his time about it, for it has required two centuries. It was only 
under Henry iii. that the new tongue is complete, with the new con- 
stitution, and that, after the like fashion, by alliance and intermixture ; 
the burgesses come to take their seats in Parliament with the nobles, at 
the same time that Saxon words settle down in the language side by 
side with French words. 

V. 

So was modern English formed, by compromise, and the necessity 
of being understood. But one can well imagine that these nobles, even 
while speaking the growing dialect, have their hearts full of French 
tastes and ideas; France remains the land of their genius, and the 
literature which now begins, is but translation. Translators, copyists. 



i.THAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 75 

imitators — there is nothing else. England is a distant province, wliich 
is to France what the United States were, thirty years ago, to Euroj)€ : 
she exports her wool, and imports her ideas. Open the Voyage attd 
Travaile of Sir John Maundeville^^ the oldest prose-writer, the Villehar- 
douin of the country : his book is but the translation of a translation.* 
He writes first in Latin, the language of scholars ; then in French, the 
language of society ; finally he reflects, and discovers that the barons, 
his compatriots, by governing the rustic Saxons, have ceased to speak 
their own Norman, and that the rest of the nation never knew it ; he 
translates his book into English, and, m addition, takes care to make 
it plain, feeling that he speaks to less expanded understandings. He 
says in French : 

* II advint une fois que Mahomet allait dans une chapelle oh. il y avait un 
saint ermite. II entra en la chapelle 011 il y avait une petite huisserie et basse, 
et etait bien petite la chapelle ; et alors devint la porte si grande qu'il semblait que 
ce fut la porte d'un palais. ' 

He stops, recollects himself, wishes to explain himself better for his 
readers across the Channel, and says in English : 

'And at the Desertes of Arabye, he wente in to a Chapelle where a Eremyte 
duelte. And whan he entred in to the Chapelle that was but a lytille and a low 
thing, and had but a lytill Dore and a low, than the Entree began to wexe so gret 
and so large, and so highe, as though it had*ben of a gret Mynstre, or the Zate o< 
aPaleys.'3 

Yen perceive that he amplifies, and thinks himself bound to clinch and 
drive in three or four times in succession the same idea, in order to get 
it into an English brain ; his thought is drawn out, dulled, spoiled in 
the process. So that, being all a copy, the new literature is mediocre, 
and repeats that which went before, with fewer merits and greater 
faults. 

Let us see, then, what our Norman baron gets translated for him : 
first, the chronicles of GeolFroy Gaimar and Robert Wace, which con- 

» He wrote in 1356, and died in 1372. 

* * And for als moche as it is louge time passed that ther was no generalle Pas- 
wige ne Vyage over the See, and many Men desiren for to here speke of the holy 
t.ond, and han thereof gret Solace and Comfort, I, John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle 
b(3 it I be not worthi, that was born in Englond, in the town of Seynt-Albones, 
passed the See in the Zeer of our Lord Jesu-Crist 1322, in the Day of Seynt Michelle, 
and hidreto have been longe tyme over the See, and have seyn and gon thorgho 
nanye dyverse londes, and many Provynces, and Kingdomes, and lies. 

'And zee shulle undirstonde that I have put this Boke out of Latyn into 
Frcnsclie, and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, tliat every Man 
of my Nacioun may undirstonde it. ' — Sir John MaundevUle's Voyage and Travaile^ 
©d. Halliwell, 1866, prologue, p. 4. 

^ Ibid, xii. p. 139. It is confessed that the original on which Wace de- 
pended for his ancient History oj England is the Latin compilation of Qeofire/ 
of Moumoutli 



76 THE SOURCE. [BOOK t 

aist of the fabulous history of England continued np to their day, a 
dull-rhymed rhapsody, turned into English in a rhapsody no less dull. 
The first Englishman who attempts it is Layamon,^ a monk of Ei nely, 
still fettered in the old idiom, who sometimes happens to rhyme, some- 
times fails, altogether barbarous and childish, unable to develop a con- 
tinuous idea, babbling in little confused and incomplete phrases, after the 
fashion of the ancient Saxon ; after him a monk, Robert oi Gloucester, 
and a canon, Robert of Brunne, both as insipid and clear as their 
French models, having become gallicised, and adopted the significant 
characteristic of the race, namely, the faculty and habit of easy narra- 
tion, and seeing moving spectacles without deep emotion, of writing 
prosaic poetry, of discoursing and developing, of believing that phrases 
ending in the same sounds form real poetry. Our hcnest English 
versifiers, like their preceptors in Normandy and He- de-France, gar- 
nished with rhymes their dissertations and histories, and called them 
poems. At this epoch, in fact, on the Continent, the whole learning of 
the schools descends into the street ; and Jean de Meung, in his poem 



* Extract from the accoimt of the proceedings at Arthur's coronation given bj 
Layamon, in his translation of Wace, executed about 1180. Maddei/s Laya?n<Mi 
1847, ii p. 625, ei passim : 

Tha the kino; igeten hafde 

And al his mon-weorede, 

Tha hugen ut of burhge 

Theines swithe halde. 

AUe tha kinges. 

And heore here-thringes. 

Alle tha biscopes, 

And alle tha claerckes, 

All the eorles, 

And alle tha beornes. 

Alle tha theines, 

Alle the sweines, 

Feire iscrudde, 

Helde geond felde. 

Summe heo gimnen aeruen, 

Sunime heo gunnen uvnen, 

Summe heo gunnen lepen, 

Summe heo gunnen sceoten, 

Summe heo wrcestleden 

And wither-gome makedea, 

Summe heo on uelde 

PleouAveden under scelde, 

Summe heo driven ballea 

Wide geond tha feldes. 

Monianes kuniies gomen 

Ther heo gunnen driuen. 

And wha swa mihte iwiniifi 

"Wurthscipe of his gomeae. 



OUAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 77 

of la Fose, is the most tedious of doctors. So in England, Robert ol 
Bninne transposes into verse the Manuel des Feclies of Bishop Grostete; 
Adam Davie,^ certain Scripture histories ; Hampole^ composes the 
PricJce of Conscience. The titles alone make one yawn ; what of the 
text? 

* Mankynde mad ys to do Goddiis wylle. 

And alle Hys byddyngus to fulfille ; 

For of al Hys makyng more and les, 

Man most principal creature es. 

Al that He made for man hit was done, 

As ye schal here after sone.'^ 

Til ere is a poem! You did not think so ; call it a sermon, if you will 
give it its proper name. It goes on, well divided, well prolonged, 
dowing and hollow; the literature Avhich contains and resembles it 
bears witness of its origin by its loquacity and its clearness. 

It bears witness to it by other and more agreeable features. Here 
and there we find divergences more or less awkAvard into the domain of 
genius ; for instance, a ballad full of quips against Richard, King of 
the Romans, who was taken at the battle of Lewes. Moreover, charm 
is not lacking, nor sweetness either. No one has ever spoken so 
lively and so well to the ladies as the French of the Continent, and 
they have not quite forgotten this talent while settling in England. 
You perceive it readily in the manner in Avhich they celebrate the 
Virgin. Nothing could be more different from the Saxon sentiment, 
which is altogether biblical, than the chivalric adoration of the sovereign 
Lady, the fascinating Virgin and Saint, who was the real deity of the 
middle ages. It breathes in this pleasing hymn : 

Hine me ladde mid songe 
At foren than leod kiiige ; 
And the king, for his gomene^ 
Gaf him geven gode. 
Alle tha quene 
The icumen weoren there, 
And alle tha lafdies, 
Leoneden geond walles, 
To bihalden the diigethen. 
And that folc plseie. 
This ilteste threo dseges, 
Swulc gomes and swulc plseges, 
Tha, at than veorthe dseie 
The king gon to spekene 
And agsef liis goden cnihtea 
All heore rihten ; 
He gef seolver, he gaef gold. 
He gef hors, he gef lond. 
Castles, and cloethes eke ; 
His monnen he iquende, 
' About 1312. - About l:jl!) Warton. li. 36. 



78 THE SOURCE 'BOOK I 

* Blessed beo thu, layedi, 
Ful of hovene blisse ; 
Swete flur of parais, 
Moder of milternisse. . , , 
I -blessed beo thu, Lavedi, 
So fair and so briht ; 
Al min hope is uppon the, 
Bi day and bi nicht. . . . 
Bricht and scene quen of stone. 
So me liht and lere. 
In this false fikele world. 
So me led and steore.'* 

There is but a short and easy step between this tender worship of the 
Virgin and the sentiments of the court of love. The English rhymesters 
take it ; and when they wish to praise their earthly mistresses, they 
borrow, here as elsewhere, our ideas and very form of verse. One 
compares his lady to all kinds of precious stones and flowers ; others 
sing truly amorous songs, at times sensual : 

* Bytuene Mershe and Aueril, 
When spray biginneth to springe. 
The lutei foul hath hire wyl 
On hyre lud to synge, 
Icli libbe in loue longinge 
For semlokest of alle tliynge. 
He may me blysse bringe, 
Icham in hire baundoun. 
An bendy hap ich abbe yhent, 
Ichot from lieuene it is me sent. 
From all wymmen my love is lent, 
And lyht on Alysoun.'* 
Another sings : 

* Suete lemmon, y preye the, of louo one speche, 
Whil y lyue in world so wyde other nuUe y seche. 
With thy loue, my suete leof, mi bliss thou mihtes eche 
A suete cos of thy mouth mihte be my leche.'* ' 

Is not this the lively and warm imagination of the south ? They speak 
of springtime and of love, * the tine and lovely weather,' like trouvhes^ 
even like troubadours. The dirty, smoke-grimed cottage, the black 
feudal castle, where all but the master lie higgledy-piggledy on the 
straw in the great stone hall, the cold rain, the muddy earth, make 
the return of the sun and the warm air delicious. 

* Sumer is i-cumen in, 
Lhude sing cuccu : 

' Time of Henry iii., Beliqum AntiqucB, edited .y Messrs. Wright and 
Halliwell, 1. 103. 

« About 1378. Warton, i. 38. « Ibid, i. 31 



CHAP II.] THE NORMANS 79 

Oroweth sed, and bloweth med. 
And springeth the wde nu. 

Sing cuccu, cnccu. 
Awe Lletcth after lomb, 
Lloutli after calue cu, 
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth : 

Murie sing cuccu, 

Cuccu, cuccu. 
AVel singes thu cuccu ; 
Ne swik thu nauer nu. 

Sing, cuccu nu, 

Sing, cuccu.* 

Here are glowing pictures, such as Guillaume de Lorris waa writing at 
the same time, even richer and more lively, perhaps because the poet 
found here for inspiration that love of country life which in England ia 
deep and national. Others, more imitative, attempt pleasantries like 
those of Rutebeuf and the fabliaux, frank quips,* and even satirical, 
loose waggeries. Their true aim and end is to hit out at the monks. 
In every French country, or country which imitates France, the most 
manifest use of convents is to furnish material for sprightly and scan- 
dalous stories. One writes, for instance, of the kind of life they live at 
the abbey of Cocagne : 

* There is a wel fair abbei, 
Of white monkes and of grei. 
Ther beth bowris and halles : 
Al of pasteiis beth the wallis, 
Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met, 
The likfullist that man may et. 
Fluren cakes beth the schingles alle, 
Of cherche, cloister, boure, and haUe. 
The pinnes beth fat podinges 
Rich met to princes and kinges. ... 
Though paradis be niiri and bright 
Cokaign is of fairir sight. . , • 
Another abbei is ther bi, 
Forsoth a gret fair nunnerie. , . , 
"When the someris dai is bote 
The young nunnes takith a bote . . .' 
And doth ham forth in that river 
Both with ores and with stere. . , . 
And each monk him takes on, 
And snelliche berrith forth har prei 
To the mochil grei abbei. 
And techith the nunnes an oreisun. 
With iamblene up and down.' 

» Warton, i. 30. 

' Poem of the Owl and Nightingale, who dispute as to which has the finert 
voice. 



go THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

This is the triumph of gluttony and feeding. Moreover many things 
could be mentioned in the middle ages, which are now nnmention- 
able. 

But it was the poems of chivalry, which represented to him in fair 
language his own mode of life, that the baron preferred to have trans- 
lated. He desired that his trouvere should set before his eyes the 
magnificence which he has spread around him, and the luxury and 
enjoyments which he has introduced from France. Life at that time, 
without and even during Avar, was a great pageant, a brilliant and 
tumultuous kind of fete. When Henry ii. travelled, he took with him 
a great number of knights, foot-soldiers, baggage- wa^^gons, tents, war- 
horses, comedians, courtesans, and their overseers, cooks, confectioners, 
posture-makers, dancers, barbers, go-betweens, hangers-on.^ In the 
morning when they start, the assemblage begins to shout, sing, hustle 
each other, make racket and rout, ' as if hell were let loose.' William 
Longchamps, even in time of peace, would not travel without a 
thousand horses by way of escort. When Archbishop k Becket came 
to France, he entered the town with two hundred knights, a number 
of barons and nobles, and an army of servants, all richly armed and 
equipped, he himself being providc;d with four-and-twenty suits ; two 
hundred and fifty children walked in front, singing national songs; 
then dogs, then carriages, then a dozen war-horses, each ridden by an 
ape and a man ; then equerries, with shields and horses ; then more 
equerries, falconers, a suite of domestics, knights, priests ; lastly, the 
archbishop himself, with his particular friends. Imagine these pro- 
cessions, and also these entertainments; for the Normans, after the 
Conquest, ' borrowed from the Saxons the habit of excess in eating and 
drinking.'* At the marriage of Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Corn- 
wall, they provided thirty thousand dishes.^ Add to this, that they 
still continued to be gallant, and punctiliously performed the great 
precept of the love courts; be assured that in the middle age the 
sense of love was no more idle than the others. Mark also that tourneys 
were plentiful; a sort of opera prepared for their own entertainment. 
So ran their life, full of adventure and adornment, in the open air and 
in the sunlight, with show of cavalcades s:id arms ; they act a pageant, 
and act it with enjoyment. Thus the King of Scots, having come to 
London with a hundred knights, at the coronation of Edward i,, tliey 
all dismounted, and made over their horses and superb caparisons to the 
people ; as did also five English lords, emulating their example. In 



* Letter of Peter of Blois. * William of Malmesbiiry. 

' At the installation-feast of George Nevill, Archbishop of York, the brother of 
Guy of Warwick, there were consumed, 104 oxen and 6 wild bulls, 1000 sheep, 
304 calves, as many hogs, 2000 swine, 500 stags, bucks, and does, 204 kids, 
22,802 wild or tame fowl, 300 quarters of corn, 300 tuns of ale, 100 of wine, a 
pipe of hypocras, 12 porpoisea and seals. 



(HAP IL] THE NORMANS. ^J 

the midst of war they took their pleasure. Edward iii., in one of 

his expeditions against the King of France, took with him thirty 
falconen?, and made his campaign alternately hunting and fighting.^ 
Another time, says Froissart, the knights who joined the army carried 
8 plaster over one eye, having vowed not to remove it until they had 
performed an exploit worthy of their mistresses. Out of the very exube- 
rancy of genius they practised the art of poetry ; out of the buoyancy 
of their imagination they made a sport of life. Edward ni. built at 
Windsor a round hall and a round table ; and in one of his tourneys in 
London, sixty ladies, seated on palfreys, led, as in a fairy tale, each her 
knight by a golden chain. Was not this the triumph of the gallant 
and frivolous French fashions ? His wife Philippa sat as a model to 
the artists for their Madonnas. She appeared on the field of battle ; 
listened to Froissart, who provided her with moral-plays, love-stories, 
and * things fair to listen to.' At once goddess, heroine, and scholar, 
and all this so agreeably, was she not a true queen of polite chivalry ? 
Now, as in France under Louis of Orleans and the Dukes of Burgundy, 
the most elegant flower of this romanesque civilisation appeared, void 
of common sense, given up to passion, bent on pleasure, immoral and 
brilliant, but, like its neighbours of Italy and Provence, for lack of 
serious intention, it could not last. 

Of all these marvels the narrators make display in their accounts. 
Follow this picture of the vessel which takes the mother of King 
Richard into England : — 

* Swlk on ne seygli they never non ; 
All it was whyt of huel-bon, 

And every nayl with gold begrave : 

Off pure gold was the stave. 

Her mast was of yvory ; 

Off samyte the sayl wytterly. 

Her ropes wer off tuely sylk, 

Al so whyt as ony mylk. 

That noble scliyp was al withoute, 

With clothys of golde sprede aboute ; , 

And her loof and her wyndas, 

Off assure forsothe it was. ' * 

On such subjects they never run dry. When the King of Hungary 
wishes to console his afflicted daughter, he proposes to take her to the 
chase in the following style : — 

• To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare ; 
And yede, my daughter, in a chair ; 



* These prodigalities and refinements grew to excess under his grandleoi 
Richard ii. 

« Warton, l 156. 



88 THE SOURCE. [BC^OK I 

It sliall be covered with velvet red. 

And cloths of fine gold all about your liear! 

With damask white and azure blue, 

"Well diapered with lilies new. 

iTour pommels shall be ended with gold. 

Your chains enamelled many a fold. 

Your mantk- of rich degree, 

Purple pall and ermine free. 

Jennets of Spain that ben so light, 

Trapped to the ground with velvet bright; 

Ye shall have harp, sautry, and song. 

And other mirths you among. 

Ye shall have Kumney and Malespine, 

Both hippocras and Vernage wine ; 

Montrese and wine of Greek, 

Both Algrade and despice eke, 

Antioch and Bastarde, 

Pyment also and garnarde ; 

"Wine of Greek and Muscadel, 

Both clare, pyment, and Eochelle^ 

The reed your stomach to defy. 

And pots of osey set you by. 

You shall have venison ybake, 

The best wild fowl that may be take ; 

A leish of harehound with you to streek, 

And hart, and hind, and other like. 

Ye shall be set at such a tryst, 

That hart and hynd shall come to you fift» 

Your disease to drive you fro. 

To hear the bugles there yblow. 

Homeward thus shall ye ride. 

On hawking by the river's side, 

"With gosshawk and with gentle falcon, 

"With bugle-horn and merlion. 

"When you come home your menie amojag, 

Ye shall have revel, dance, and song ; 

Little children, great and small. 

Shall sing as does the nightingale. 

Then shall ye go to your evensong, 

"With tenors and trebles among. 

Threescore of copes of damask bright 

Full of pearls they shall be pight. 

Your censors shall be of gold. 

Indent with azure many a fold ; 

Your quire nor organ song shall want, 

"With contre-note and descant. 

The other half on organs playing, 

"With young children full fain singing. 

Then shall ye go to your supper. 

And sit in tents in green arber. 

With cloth of arras pight to the ground, 

With sapphires set of diamond. 



CU AP, II.l THE NORMANS. 



8S 



A hundred kniglits truly told, 

Shall play with bowls in alleys cold, 

Your disease to diive away ; 

To see the fishes in pools play, 

To a drawbridge then shall ye, 

Th' one half of stone, th' other of trw ; 

A barge shall meet you full right, 

"With twenty-four oars full bright, 

With trumpets and with clarion, 

The fresh water to row up and down. . . 2 

Forty torches burning bright 

At your bridge to bring you light. 

Into your chamber they shall you brings 

With much mirth and more liking. 

Your blankets shall be of fustian, 

Your sheets shall be of cloth of Eennea. 

Your head sheet shall be of pery pight. 

With diamonds set and nibies bright. 

When you are laid in bed so soft, 

A cage of gold shall hang aloft, 

With long paper fair burning, 

And cloves that be sweet smelling. 

Frankincense and olibanum. 

That when ye sleep the taste may come ; 

And if ye no rest can take. 

All night minstrels for you shall wake. * * 

Xm»d. such fancies and splendours the poets delight and lose them- 
selves ; and the result, like the embroideries of their canvas, bears the 
mark of this love of decoration. They weave it out of adventures, of 
extraordinary and surprising events. Now it is the life of King Horn, 
who, thrown into a vessel when quite young, is driven upon the coast 
of England, and, becoming a knight, reconquers the kingdom of his 
lather. Now it is the history of Sir Guy, who rescues enchanted 
knights, cuts down the giant Colbrand, challenges and kills the Sultan 
in his tent. It is not for me to recount these poems, which are not 
English, but only translations ; still, here as in France, they are multi- 
plied, they fill the imaginations of the young society, and they grow by 
exaggeration, until, falling to the lowest depth of insipidity and impro- 
bability, they are buried for ever by Cervantes. What would you say 
of a society which bad no literature but the opera with its unrealities ? 
Yet it was a literature of this kind which nourished the genius of the 
middle ages. They did net ask for truth, but entertainment, and that 
vehement and hollow, full of glare and startling events. They asked 
for impossible voyages, extravagant challenges, a racket of contests, 
a confusion of magnificence and entanglement of chances. For intro- 
spective history they had no liking, cared nothing for the adventures 
of the heart, devoted their attention to the outside. They lived like 

* NYarton, i 176, spelling modernised. 



84: ^^HE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

children, with eyes glued to a series of exaggerated and coloured images, 
and, for lack of thinking, did not perceive that they had learnt nothing. 
What was there beneath this fanciful dream ? Brutal and evil 
human passions, unchained at first by religious fury, then delivered to 
their own devices, and, beneath a show of external courtesy, as vile as 
before. Look at the popular king, Richard Cceur de Lion, and reckon 
up his butcheries and murders: *King Richard,' says a poem, * is the 
best king ever mentioned in song." I have no objection ; but if he has 
the heart of a lion, he has also that brute's appetite. One day, under 
the walls of Acre, being convalescent, he had a great desire for some 
pork. There was no pork. They killed a young Saracen, fresh and 
tender, cooked and salted him, and the king eat him and found him 
very good ; whereupon he desired to see the head of the pig. The 
cook brought it in trembling. The king falls a laughing, and says the 
army has nothing to fear from famine, having provisions ready at hand. 
He takes the town, and presently Saladin's ambassadors come to sue for 
pardon for the prisoners. Richard has thirty of the most noble be- 
headed, and bids his cook boil the heads, and serve one to each ambas- 
sador, with a ticket bearing the name and family of the dead man. 
Meanwhile, in their presence, he eats his own with a relish, bids them 
tell Saladin how the Christians make war, and ask him if it is true 
that they feared him. Then he orders the sixty thousand prisoners to 
be led into the plain : 

* They were led into the place full even. 
There tliey heard angels of heaven ; 
They said : ** Se'gneures, tuez, tuez ! 
Spares hem nought, and beheadeth these t** 
King Richard heard the angels' voice, 
And thanked God and the holy cross.' 

Thereon they behead them all. When he took a town, it was Ms wonl 
to murder every one, even children and women. That was the devotion 
of the middle ages, not only in romances, as here, but in history. At 
the taking of Jerusalem the whole population, seventy thousand per- 
eons, were massacred. 

Thus even in chivalrous accounts break out the fierce and unbridled 
instincts of the bloodthirsty brute. The authentic narratives show it 
equally. Henry ii., irritated against a page, attempted to tear out 
his eyes.* John Lackland let twenty-three hostages die in prison ol 
hunger. Edward ir. caused at one time twenty-eight nobles to be 
hanged and disembowelled, and was himself put to death by the inser- 

> Warton, i. 133 : 

* In Fraunce these rhymes were wroht. 
Every Englyshe ne knew it not.' 
" See Lingard's History, ii. 55, note 4— Tr. 



CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. S5 

tion of a red-hot iron into his bowels. Look in Froissart for the de- 
baucheries and murders, in France as well as in England, of the Hun- 
dred Years' War, and then for the slaughters of the Wars of the Roses. 
In both countries feudal independence ended in civil war, and the 
middle age founders under its vices. Chivalrous courtesy, w^hich cloaked 
the native ferocity, disappears like a garment suddenly consumed by 
the breaking out of a fire ; at that time in England they killed nobles 
in preference, and prisoners too, even children, with insults, in cold 
blood. What, then, did man learn in this civilisation and by this 
literature? How was he humanised? What precepts of justice, habits 
of reflection, store of true judgments, did this culture interpose between 
'his .desires and his actions, in order to moderate his passion? He 
dreamed, he imagined a sort of elegant ceremonial in order to address 
better lords and ladies ; he discovered the gallant code of little Jehan 
de Saintre. But where is the true education? Wherein has Froissart 
profited by all his vast experience ? He was a fine specimen of a 
babbling child ; what they called his poesy, the poesie neuve, is only a 
refined gabble, a senile puerility. Some rhetoricians, like Christine de 
Pisan, try to round their periods after an ancient model ; but their 
literature amounts to nothing. No one can think. Sir John Maunde- 
ville, who travelled all over the world a hundred and fifty years after 
Villehardouin, is as contracted in his ideas as Villehardouin himself. 
Extraordinary legends and fables, every sort of credulity and ignor- 
ance, abound in his book. When he wishes to explain why Palestine 
has passed into the hands of various possessors instead of continuing 
under one government, he says that it is because God would not that 
it should continue longer in the hands of traitors and sinners, whether 
Christians or others. He has seen at Jerusalem, on the steps of the 
temple, the footmarks of the ass which our Lord rode on Palm Sunday. 
He describes the Ethiopians as a people who have only one foot, but so 
large that they can make use of it as a parasol. He instances one 
island ' where be people as big as gyants, of 28 feet long, and have 
no cioathing but beasts' skins;' then another island, * where there are 
many evil and foul women, but have precious stones in their eyes, and 
have such force that if they behold any man with wrath, they slay him 
with beholding, as the basilisk doth.' The good man relates ; that is 
all : hesitation and good sense scarcely exist in the world he lives in. 
He has neither judgment nor personal reflection ; he piles facts one on 
top 3f another, with no further connection ; his book is simply a mirror 
which reproduces recollections of his eyes and ears. * And all those 
who will say a Pater and an Ave Maria in my behalf, I give them an 
interest and a share in all the holy pilgrimages I ever made in my life,' 
That is his farewell, and accords with all the rest. Neither public 
morality nor public knowledge has gained anything from these three 
centuries of culture. This French culture, copied in vain throughout 
Europe, has but superficially adorned mankind, and the varnish with 



56 THE SOUllCE. BOOKI 

which it decked them, already fades away or scales off. It was worse 
in England, where the thing was more superficial and the application 
worse than in France, where strange hands daubed it on, and where it 
only half-covered the Saxon crust, which remained coarse and rough. 
That is the reason why, during three centuries, throughout the first 
feudal age, the literature of the Normans in England, made up of imi- 
tations, translations, and clumsy copies, ends in nothing. 

VL 

Meantime, what has become of the conquered people? Has the 
old stock on which the brilliant continental flowers were grafted, en- 
gendered no shoot of its own speciality? Did it continue barren 
during this time under the Norman axe, which stripped it of all its 
shoots? It grew very feebly, but it grew nevertheless. The subju- 
gated race is not a dismembered nation, dislocated, uprooted, sluggish, 
like the populations of the Continent, which, after the long Roman 
oppression, were delivered over to the disorderly invasion of bar- 
barians ; it remained united, fixed in its own soil, full of sap : its 
members were not displaced ; it was simply lopped in order to receive 
on its crown a cluster of foreign branches. True, it had suffered, but 
at last the wound closed, the saps mingled.^ Even the hard, stiff liga- 
tures with which the Conqueror bound it, henceforth contributed to its 
fixity and vigour. The land was mapped out ; every title verified, 
defined in writing ;* every right or tenure valued; every man registered 
as to his locality, condition, duty, resources, worth, so that the whole 
nation was enveloped in a network of which not a mesh would break. 
Its future development was according to this pattern. Its constitution 
was settled, and in this determinate and stringent enclosure men were 
bound to unfold themselves and to act. Solidarity and strife : these 
were the two effects of the great and orderly establishment which 
shaped and held together, on one side the aristocracy of the conquerors, 
on the other the conquered people ; even as in Rome the systematic 
importation of conquered peoples into the plebs, and the constrained 
organisation of the patricians in contrast Avith the plebs, enrolled the 
several elements in two orders, whose opposition and union formed the 
state. Thus, here as in Rome, the national character was moulded And 
completed by the habit of corporate action, the respect for written law, 
political and practical aptitude, the development of combative and 
patient energy. It was the Domesday Book which, binding this young 



1 



* Pictorial History, i. 666 ; Dialogue on the Exchequer, temp. Hem. u. 

^ Domesday Book. Froude's Hist, of England, 1858, i. 13 : * Through all theao 
arrangements a single aim is visible, that every man in England should have his 
definite place and definite duty assigned to him, and that no human being should 
be at liberty to lead at his own pleasure an unaccountable existence. The disci- 
pline of an army was transferred to the details of social life. * 



CHAP. ll.J THE NORMANS. 81 

society in a rigid discipline, made of the Saxon the Englishman we see 
in our own day. 

Gradually and slowly, through the gloomy complainings of the 
chroniclers, we find the new man fashioned by action, like a child whc 
cries because a steel instrument, though it improves his figure, gives hira 
pain. However reduced and downtrodden the Saxons were, they did not 
all sink into the populace. Some,^ almost in every county, remained 
lords of their estates, if they would do homage for them to the king. A 
great number became vassals of Norman barons, and remained proprie- 
tors on this condition. A greater number became socagers, that is, free 
proprietors, burdened with a tax, but possessed of the right of alienat- 
ing their property ; and the Saxon villeins found patrons in these, as 
the plebs formerly did in the Italian nobles who were transplanted to 
Rome. It w^as an effectual patronage, that of the Saxons who pre- 
served their integral position, for they were not isolated : marriages 
from the first united the two races, as it had the patricians and plebeians 
of Eome;'' a Norman, brother-in-law to a Saxon, defended himself in 
defending him. In those troublesome times, and in an armed com- 
munity, relatives and allies were obliged to stand close to one another 
for security. After all, it was necessary for the new-comers to consider 
their subjects, for these subjects had the heart and courage of a man . 
the Saxons, like the plebeians at Rome, remembered their native rank 
and their original independence. We can recognise it in the com- 
plaints and indignation of the chroniclers, in the growling and menaces 
of popular revolt, in the long b'tterness with which they continually 
recalled their ancient liberty, in the favour with which they cherished 
the daring and rebellion of the outlaws. There were Saxon families at 
the end of the twelfth century, who had bound themselves by a per- 
petual vow, to wear long beards from father to son, in memory of the 
national custom and of the old country. Such men, even though 
fallen to the condition of socagers, even sunk into villeins, had a stiffer 
neck than the wretched colonists of the Continent, trodden down and 
moulded by four centuries of Roman taxation. By their feelings as 
by their condition, they were the broken remains, but also the living 
elemeutj^ of a free people. They did not suffer the limits of oppression. 
They constitute the body of the nation, the laborious, courageous body 
which supplied its energy. The great barons felt that they must rely 

* Domesday Book, * tenants-in-chief. ' 

* Pict. Hist. i. 666. According to Ailred (temp. Hen. ii.), *a king, many 
bishops and abbots, many great earls and noble knights, descended both from 
English and Norman blood, constituted a support to the one and an honour to the 
ether.' * At present,' says another author of the same period, *as the English and 
Normans dwell together, and have constantly intermarried, the two nations are S9 
completely mingled together, that, at least as regards freemen, one can scarcely 
distinguish who is Norman, and who English. . . . The villeins attached t* 
the soil,' he says again, ' are alone of pure Saxon blood.' 



88 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

upon them in their resistance to the king. Very soon, m stipula- 
ting for themselves, they stipulated for all freemen,* even for the 
merchants and villeins. Thereafter 

* No merchant shall be dispossessed of his merchandise, no villein of the instra. 
ments of his labour ; no freeman, merchant, or villein shall be taxed unreasonably 
for a small crime ; no freeman shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised of his 
land, or outlawed, or destroyed in any manner, but by the lawful judgment of liia 
peers, or by the law of the land.' 

The red-bearded Saxon, with his clear complexion and great white 
teeth, came and sate by the Norman's side ; these were franklins like 
the one whom Chaucer describes : 

* A Frankelein was in this compagnie ; 
"White was his berd, as is the dayesie. 
Of his complexion he was sanguin, 
Wei loved he by the morwe a sop in win. 
To liven in delit was ever his wone. 
For he was Epicures owen sone, 
That held opinion that plein delit 
"Was veraily felicite parfite. 
An housholder, and that a grete was he, 
Seint Julian he was in his contree. 
His brede, his ale, was alway after on ; 
A better envyned man was no wher non. 
Withouten bake mete never was his hoiw. 
Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous. 
It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke, 
Of all deintees that men coud of thinke ; 
After the sondry sesons of the yere. 
So changed he his mete and his soupere. 
Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewe, 
And many a breme, and many a luce in stewe. 
Wo was his coke but if his sauce were 
Poinant and sharpe, and redy all his gera 
His table, dormant in his halle alway 
Stode redy covered alle the longe day. 
At sessions ther was he lord and sire. 
Ful often time he was knight of the shircb 
An anelace and a gipciere all of silk, 
Heng at his girdel, white as morwe milk. 
A shereve hadde he ben, and a contour. 
Was no wher swiche a worthy vavasour.'' ■ 

With him occasionally in the assembly, oftenest among the audience, 
were the yeomen, farmers, foresters, tradesmen, his fellow-countrymen, 
muscular and resolute men, not slow in the defence of their property, 
and in the support, with voice, blows, and weapons, of him who would 

' Magna Charta, 1215. 

* Chaucer's Woi'ks, ed. Sir H. Nicholas, 6 vols., 1845, Prologue to the Gan 
terh.iry Tales, ii. p. 11, v. 333. 



THE NORMANS ^^ 

take tlieir cause in hand. Is it likely that the ^content of such men 

eould be overlooked ? 

• The Miller was a stout carl for the nones, 
Ful bigge he was of brann, and eke of bones ; 
That proved wel, for over all ther he came, 
At -wrastling he wold bare away the ram. 
He was short slmldered brode, a thikke gnaiTft, 
Ther n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of ban-e, 
Or breke it at a renning with his hede. 
His herd as any sowe or fox was rede. 
And therto brode, as though it were a spade. 
Upon the cop right of his nose he hade 
A wert, and theron stode a tufte of heres, 
Rede as the bristles of a sowes eres : 
His nose-thirles blacke were and wide, 
A swerd and bokeler bare he by his side. 
His mouth as wide was as a forneis, 
He was a jangler and a goliardeis, 
And that was most of sinne, and harlotries. 
"Wel coude he stelen corne and tollen thiiea, 
And yet he had a thomb of gold parde. 
A white cote and a blew hode wered he. 
A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune. 
And therwithall he brought us out of tonne.'* 

Those arc the athletic forms, the square build, the jolly John Bulls 

of the period, such as we yet find them, nourished by meat and porter, 
sustained by bodily exercise and boxing. These are the men we 
must keep before us, if we will understand how political liberty has 
been established in the country. Gradually they find the simple 
knights, their colleagues in the county court, too poor to assist with 
the great barons at the royal assemblies, coalescing with them. They 
become united by community of interests, by similarity of manners, by 
nearness of condition ; they take them for their representatives, they 
elect them.^ They have now entered upon public life, and the advent 
of a new reinforcement, gives them a perpetual standing in their changed 
condition. The towns laid waste by the Conquest are gradually re- 
peopled. They obtain or exact charters ; the townsmen buy themselves 
out of the arbitrary taxes that were imposed on them; they get possession 
of the land on which their houses are built ; they unite themselves under 
mayors and aldermen. Each town now, within the meshes of the great 
feudal net, is a power. Leicester, rebelling against the king, summons 
two burgesses from each town to Parliament,^ to authorise and support 
him. Thenceforth the conquered race, both in country and town, has 

^ Prologue to the Canterhury Tales, ii. p. 17, v, 547. 

■ From 1214, and also in 1225 and 1254. Guizot, Origin of the Rq»re$erU<nUv« 
System in England, pp. 297-299. 
• In 1204. 



90 THE SOURCK [BOOK i 

risen tc political life. If they are taxed, it is with their consent; they 
pay nothing which they do not agree to. Early in the fourteenth cen- 
tury their united deputies compose the House of Commons ; and already, 
at the close of the preceding century, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
speaking in the name of the king, said to the pope, * It is the custom of 
the kingdom of England, that in all affairs relating to the state of this 
kingdom, the advice of all who are interested in them should be taken.' 

VII. 

If they have acquired liberties, it is because they have conquered 
them ; circumstances have assisted, but character has done more. The 
protection of the great barons and the alliance of the plain knights 
have strengthened them; but it was by their native roughness and 
energy that they maintained their independence. For, look at the con- 
trast they offer at this moment to their neighbours. What occupies 
the mind of the French people ? The fabliaux, the naughty tricks of 
Renard, the art of deceiving Master Ysengrin, of stealing his wife, of 
cheating him out of his dinner, of getting him beaten by a third party 
without danger to one's self; in short, the triumph of poverty and 
cleverness over power united to folly. The popular hero is already 
the artful plebeian, chaffing, light-hearted, who, later on, will ripen into 
Panurge and Figaro, not apt to withstand you to your face, too sharp 
to care for great victories and habits of strife, inclined by the nimble- 
ness of his wit to dodge round an obstacle ; if he but touch a man with 
the tip of his finger, that man tumbles into the trap. But here we have 
other customs : it is Robin Hood, a valiant outlaw, living free and bold 
in the green forest, waging frank and open war against sheriff and law.* 
If ever a man was popular in his countr}^, it was he, * It is he,' says an 
old historian, whom the common people love so dearly to celebrate in 
games and comedies, and whose history, sung by fiddlers, interests them 
more than any other.' In the sixteenth century he still had his com- 
memoration day, observed by all the people in the small towns and in 
the country. Bishop Latimer, making his pastoral tour, announced one 
day that he would preach in a certain place. On the morrow, pro- 
ceeding to the church, he found the doors closed, and waited more than 
an hour before they brought him the key. At last a man came and 
said to him, ' Syr, thys ys a busye day with us ; we cannot heare you : 
it is Robyn Iloodes Daye. The parishe are gone abrode to gather for 
Eobyn Hoode. ... I was fayne there to geve place to Robyn Hoode.'* 
The bishop was obliged to divest himself of his ecclesiastical garments 
and proceed on his journey, leaving his place to archers dressed in 
ajreen, who played on a rustic stage the parts of Robin Hood, Little 
fc ■)hn, and their band. In fact, he is the national hero. Saxon in the 



1 Aug. Thierry, iv. 56. Ritson's JioUn Hood, 1832. 

* Latimer's Sermons, ed. Arber 6th Sermon, 1369, p 173. 



CHAP. II. THE NORMANS. 91 

first place, and waging war against the men of law, against bishops and 
archbishops, wliose sway was so heavy ; generous, moreover, giving to a 
poor ruined knight clothes, horse, and money to buy back the land he 
bad pledged to a rapacious abbot ; compassionate too, and kind to the 
poor, enjoining his men not to injure yeomen and labourers ; tut before 
all rash, bold, proud, who would go and draw his bow under the 
sheriff's eyes and to his face ; ready with blows, whether to receive or 
to return them. He slew fourteen out of fifteen foresters who came to 
arresj him ; he slays the sheriff, the judge, the town gatekeeper ; he ia 
ready to slay plenty more ; and all this joyously, jovially, like an 
honest fellow who eats well, has a hard skin, lives in the open air, and 
revels in animal life. 

* In somer when the sliawes be sheyne, 

And leves be large and long, 
Hit is fulle mery in feyre foreste 
To here the foulys song.' 

Tliat 18 how many ballads begin ; and the fine weather, which makes 

the stags and oxen rush headlong with extended horns, inspires them 
witli the thought of exchanging blows with sword or stick. Robin 
dreamed that two yeomen were thrashing him, and he wants to go and 
find them, angrily repulsing Little John, who offers to go in advance^: 

* Ah John, by me thou settest noe store. 

And that I farley finde : 
How ofit send I my men before, 
And tarry myselfe behinde ? 

* It is no cunning a knave to ken, 

An a man hut heare him speake ; 
An it were not for bursting of my bowe, 
John, I thy head wold breake.'^ . , . 

He goes alone, and meets the robust yeoman, Guy of Gisborae: 

* He that had neyther beene kytlie nor kin, 

Might have seen a full fayre fight. 
To see how together these yeomen went 
With blades both browne and bright, 

*To see how these yeomen together they fonght 

Two howres of a summer's day ; 
Yett neither Eobin Hood nor sir Guy 
Them fettled to fiye away.'^ 

You see Guy the yeoman is as brave as Robin Hood ; he came to seek 

him in the wood, and drew the bow almost as well as he. This old 
popular poetry is not the praise of a single bandit, but of an entire 
c\-?<?% the yeomanry. ' God haffe mersey on Robin Hodys solle, and 
safTe all god yemanry.' That is how many ballads end. The strong 

» Ritson, Rolin Hood Ballads, i '.v. v. 41-48. * Ibid, v. 14.5-153, 



92 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

yeoman, innred to blows, a good archer, clever at sword and stick, u 
the favourite. There was also redoubtable, armed townsfolk, accus- 
tomed to make use of their arms. Here they are at work : 

** that were a shame," said jolly Robin, 

** We being three, and thou but one." 
The pinder^ leapt back then thirty good foot, 

'Twas thirty good foot and one. 

* He leaned his back fast unto a thorn, 

And his foot against a stone, 
And there he fought a long summer's day, 
A summer's day so long, 

'Till that their swords on their broad buckleni 
Were broke fast into their hands. ' * . . , 

Often even Robin does not get the advantage : 

* " I pass not for length," bold Arthur reply*d, 

*' My staff is of oke so free ; 
Eight foot and a half, it will knock down a cal^ 
And I hope it will knock down thee." 

* Then Robin could no longer forbear. 

He gave him such a knock. 
Quickly and soon the blood came down 
Before it was ten a clock. 

* Then Arthur he soon recovered himself, 

And gave him such a knock on the crown. 
That from every side of bold Robin Hood's head 
The blood came trickling down. 

* Then Robin raged like a wild boar, 

As soon as he saw his own blood : 
Then Bland was in hast, he laid on so fast, 
As though he had been cleaving of wood. 

'And about and about and about they went, 
Like two wild bores in a chase, 
Striving to aim each other to maim. 
Leg, arm, or any other place. 

*And knock for knock they lustily dealt, 

Which held for two hours and more, 
Till all the wood rang at every bang, 
They ply'd their work so sore. 

*** Hold thy hand, hold thy hand," said Robin Hood, 
"And let thy quarrel fall ; 
For here we may thrash our bones all to mesh, 
And get no coyn at all. 

* A pinder's task was to pin the sheep in the fold, cattle in the penfo'id ^2 
pound (Richardson). — Tii. 
« Riti»on, ii. 3, v. 17-36. 



CHAP. II. I THE NORMANS. 9g 

* •* And in the forest of merry Slierwood, 

Hereafter thou shalt be free." 
" God a mercy for nought, my freedom I bough I, 

I may thank my staff, and not thee.' " ' . . 

•Who are you, then ?' says Robin : 

* *' I am a tanner," bold Arthur reply'd, 

** In Nottingham long I have wrought ; 
And if thou'lt come there, I vow and swear, 
I will tan thy hide for nought." 

* ** God a mercy, good fellow," said jolly Kobin, 

** Since thou art so kind and free ; 
And if thou wilt tan my hide for nought, 
I will do as much for thee." '* 

With these generous offers, they embrace ; a free exchange of honeil 
blows always prepares the way for friendship. It was so Robin 
Hood tried Little John, whom he loved all his life after. Little John 
was seven feet liigh, and being on a bridge, would not give way. 
Honest Robin would not use his bow against him, but went and cut a 
stick seven feet long ; and they agreed amicably to fight on the bridge 
until one should fall into the water. They hit and smite to such a 
tune that * their bones did sound.' In the end Robin falls, and he feels 
nothing but respect for iSttle John. Another time, having a sword 
with him, he was thrashed by a tinker who had only a stick. Full of 
admiration, he gives him a hundred pounds. One time it was by a 
potter, who refused him toll ; another by a shepherd. They fight for 
pastime. Even now-a-days boxers give each other a friendly grip before 
meeting; they knock one another about in this country honourably, 
without malice, fury, or shame. Broken teeth, black eyes, smashed 
ribs, do not call for murderous vengeance ; it would seem that the 
bones are more solid and the nerves less sensitive in England than else- 
where. Blows once exchanged, they take each oth^ by the hand, and 
dance together on the green grass : 

'Then EoLin took them both by the hands, 
And danc'd round about the oke tree. 
** For tliree merry men, and three merry men^ 
And three merry men we be."' 

Observe, moreover, that these people, in each parish, practised the 
bow every Sunday, and were the best archers in the world, — that from 
the close of the fourteenth century the general emancipation of the 
villeins multiplied their number enormously, and you may understand 
how, amidst all the operations and changes of the great central powers, 
the liberty of the subject endured. After all, the only permanent and 
unalterable guarantee in every country and under every constitution 

' Ritson, ii. 6, v. 58-89. ^ Ibid. v. 94-101 



94 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

is this unspoken declaration in the heart of the mass of the people, 
which is well understood on all sides: *lf any one touclies my pro- 
perty, enters my house, obstructs or molests me, let him beware. I 
have patience, but I have also strong arms, good comrades, a good 
blade, and, on occasion, a firm resolve, happen what may, to plunge 
my blade up to its hilt in his throat.' 

VIII. 

Tlius thought Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of England undei 
Henry vi,, exiled in France during the Wars of the Roses, one of the 
eldest prose-writers, and the first who weighed and explained the con- 
stitution of his country.^ He says : 

* It is cowardise and lack of hartes and corage that kepeth the Frenchmen from 
rj-syng, and not povertye;' which corage no Frenche man hath like to the English 
man. It hath ben often seen in Englond that iij or iv thefes, for povertie, hath 
sett upon vij or viij true men, and rohbyd them al. But it hath not ben seen in 
Fraunce, that vij or viij thefes have ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wlier- 
for it is right seld that Frenchmen be hangyd for robberye, for that they have no 
hertys to do so tenyble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangyd in Englond, in 
a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such 
cause of crime in vij yers.'^ 

« 
This throws a sudden and terrible light on the violent condition of this 
armed community, where blows are an everyday matter, and where 
every one, rich and poor, lives with his hand on his sword. There 
were great bands of malefactors under Edward i., who infested the 
country, and fought with those who came to seize them. The inha- 
bitants of the towns were obliged to gather together with those of the 
neighbouring towns, with hue and cry, to pursue and capture them. 
Under Edward in. there were barons who rode about with armed 
escorts and archers, seizing the manors, carrying off ladies and girls of 
high degree, mutilating, killing, extorting ransoms from people in their 
own houses, as if they Tvere in an enemy's land, and sometimes coming 
before the judges at the sessions in such guise and in so great force 
that the judges were afraid and dare not administer justice.* Read 



* The Difference bettoeen an Absolute and Limited Monarchy — A learned Com-' 
mendation of the Politic Laws of England (Latin). I frequently quote from the 
second work, Avhich is complete. 

2 The courage which gives utterance here is coarse ; the English instincts arc 
combative and independent. The French raos, and the Gauls generally, are per- 
kaps the most reckless of life of any. 

^ The Difference, etc., 3d ed. 1724, ch. xiii. p. 98. There are now-a-days in 
France 42 highway robberies as against 738 in England. In 1843, there were ii 
England four times as many accusations of crimes and ofFencea as in France 
having regard to the number of inhabitants {Moreau de Jomiea) 

^ Statute of Winchester, 1285 ; Ordinance of 1378. 



CHAl' n \ THE NORMANS 9ft 

the letters of the Paston family, under Henry vt. and Edward rv., and 
you will see how private war was at every door, how it was necessary 
to defend oneself with men and arms, to be alert for the defence of 
one's property, to be self-reliant, to depend on one's own strength and 
courage. It is this excess of vigour and readiness to fight which, after 
their victories in France, set them against one another in England, in the 
butcheries of the Wars of the Roses. The strangers who saw them were 
astonished at their bodily strength and courage of heart, at the great 
pieces of beef ' which feed their muscles, at their military habits, their 
fierce obstinacy, as of savage beasts.'^ They are like their bulldogs, an 
untameable race, who in their mad courage ' cast themselves with shut 
eyes into the den of a Russian bear, and get their head broken like a 
rotten apple.' This strange condition of a military community, so full 
of danger, and requiring so much effort, does not make them afraid. 
King Edward having given orders to send disturbers of the peace to 
prison without legal proceedings, and not to liberate them, on bail or 
otherwise, the Commons declared the order ' horribly vexatious;' resist 
it, refuse to be too much protected. Less peace, but more independence. 
They maintain the guarantees of the subject at the expense of public 
security, and prefer turbulent liberty to arbitrary order. Better suffer 
marauders whom one can fight, than provosts under whom they would 
have to bend. 

This proud and persistent notion gives rise to, and fashions, For- 
tescue's whole work : 

* Ther he two kynds of kyngdomys, of the which that one ys a lordship callid 
in Latyne Doniiuium regale, and that other is callid Dominium politicum et regale.' 

The first is established in France, and the second in England. 

* And they dyversen in that the first may nile his people by such lawys as he 
makyth h3rmself, and therefor, he may set upon tliem talys, and other impositions, 
Buch as he wyl hymself, without their assent. The secund may not rule hys people 
by other laws than such as they assenten unto ; and therfor he may set upon 
them non impositions without their own assent, ' * 

In a state like this, the will of the people is the prime element of life. 
Sir John Fortescue says further : 

* A king of England cannot at his pleasure make any alterations in the lawa 
of the land, for the nature of his government is not only regal, but political.' 

* In the body politic, the first thing which lives and moves is the intention of 
the people, having in it the blood, that is, the prudential care and provision foi 
the public good, which it transmits and communicates to the head, as to the 
principal part, and to all the rest of the members of the said body politic, whereby 
it subsists and is invigorated. The law under which the people is incorporated 
may be compared to the nerves or sincAvs of the body natural. . . . And as th« 

* Denvenutc Cellini, quoted by Fronde, i. 20, Hist, of England. Shakspeare^ 
Htnry V. ; conversation of French lords before the battle of Agiacourt 

* TJu DiJJerevce, etc , p. i 



06 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

boues and all the other memhers of the body preserve their functions and discharge 
their several offices by t)ie nerves, so do the members of the community by the 
law. And as the head of the body natural cannot change its nerves or sinsws, 
cannot deny to the several parts their proper energy, their due proportion and ali ■ 
ment of blood, neither can a king who is the head of the body politic change tL« 
laws thereof, nor take from the people what is theirs by right, against their con- 
sents. . . . For he is appointed to protect his subjects in their lives, properties^ 
and laws ; for this very end and purpose he has the delegation of power from the 
people. ' 

Here we have all the ideas of Locke in the fifteenth century; so 
powerful is practice to suggest tneory! so quickly does man discover, 
in the enjoyment of liberty, the nature of liberty 1 Fortescue goes 
further: he contrasts, step by step, the Jcloman law, that heritage of all 
Latin peoples, with the English law, that heritage of all Teutonic 
peoples : one the work of absolute princes, and tending altogether to 
the sacrifice of the individual ; the other the work of the common will, 
tending altogether to protect the person. He contrasts the maxims of 
the imperial jurisconsults, who accord 'force of law to all which is 
determined by the prince,' with the statutes of England, which * are 
not enacted by the sole will of the prince, . . . but with the concurrent 
consent of the whole kingdom, by their representatives in Parliament, 
. . . more than three hundred select persons.' He contrasts the arbi- 
trary nomination of imperial officers with the election of the sherifiP, 
and says : 

*Tliere is in every county a certain oflScer, called the king's sheriff, who, 
amongst other duties of his office, executes within his county all mandates and 
judgments of the king's courts of justice : he is an annual officer ; and it is not 
lawlul for him, after the expiration of his year, to continue to act in his said olHce, 
neitlier shall he be taken in again to execute the said office within two years thence 
next ensuing. The manner of his election is thus : Every year, on the morrow of 
All-Souls, there meet in the King's Court of Exchequer all the king's counsellors, 
as well lords spiritual and temporal, as all other the king's justices, all the barons 
of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, and certain other officers, when all of 
them, by common consent, nominate three of every county knights or esquires, 
persons of distinction, and such as they esteem fittest qualified to bear the office ol 
sheriff of that county for the year ensuing. The king only makes choice of one out 
of the three so nominated and returned, who, in virtue of the king's letters patent, 
is constituted High Sheriff of that county. ' 

He contrasts the Roman procedure*, which is satisfied with two wit- 
nesses to condemn a man with the jury, the three permitted challenges, 
the admirable guarantees of justice with which the uprightness, num- 
ber, repute, and condition of the juries surround the sentence. About 
the juries he says: 

* Twelve good and true men being sworn, as in the manner above related, legally 
qualified, that is, having, over and besides their moveables, possessions in land 
Bufficient, as was said, wlierewith to maintain their rank and station ; neither 
^nRpe<;ted ]yy, nor at variance with either of the parties ; all of the ueigliborhood 



CHAP. IL] THE NORMANS. 97 

there shall be read to them, in English, by the Court, the record and nature of tht 
plea.'* 

Thus protected, the English commons cannot be other than flourishing. 
Consider, on the other hand, he says to the young prince whom he is 
instructing, the condition of the commons in France. By their taxes, 
tax on salt, on wine, billeting of soldiers, they are reduced to great 
naisery. You have seen them on your travels. . . . 

* The same Commons be so impoverishid and distroyyd, that they may jinnctli 
lyre. Thay drink water, thay eate apples, with bred right brown made of r5^e. 
They eate no lleshe, but if it be selden, a litill larde, or of the entrails or beds of 
bests sclayne for the nobles and merchants of the land. They weryn no woUyn, 
but if it be a pore cote under their uttermost garment, made of grete canvass, and 
cal it a frok. Their hosyn be of like canvas, and passen not their knee, wherfor 
they be gartrid and their thyghs bare. Their wifs and children gone bare fote. . . . 
For sum of them, that was wonte to pay to his lord for his tenement which he 
hyrith by the year a scute payth now to the kyng, over that scute, fyve skuts. 
Wher thrugh they be artyd by necessite so to watch, labour and grub in the 
ground for their sustenance, that their nature is much wasted, and the kynd of 
them brought to nowght. Thay gone crokyd and ar feeble, not able to fight nor 
to defend the realm ; nor they have wepon, nor monye to buy them wepon withal. 
. . . This is the frute first of hyre Jus regale. . . . But blessed be God, this land 
ys rulid under a batter lawe, and therfor the people therof be not in such penurye, 
nor therby hurt in their persons, but they be wealthie and have all things neces- 
sarie to the sustenance of nature. Wherefore they be myghty and able to resyste 
the adversaries of the realms that do or will do them wrong. Loo, this is the frut 
of Jus politicum et regale, under which we ly ve. ' ' * Everye inhabiter of the realme 
of England useth and enjoyeth at his pleasure all the fmites that his land or cattel 
beareth, with al the profits and commodities Avhich by his twue travayle, or by the 
labour of others, hae gaineth ; not hindered by the iniurie or wrong deteinement of 
anye man, but that hee shall bee allowed a reasonable recompence.' . . . Hereby it 
commeth to passe that the men of that lande are riche, havyng aboundaunce of golde 
and silver, and other thinges necessarie for the maintenaunce of man's life. They 
driuke no water, unlesse it be so, that some for devotion, and uppon a zeale of 
penaunce, doe abstaine from other drinks. They eate plentifully of all kindes of 
fleshe and fislie. They weare fine woollen cloth in all their apparel ; they have 
also abaundaunce of bed-coveringes in their liouses, and of all other woollen stufie. 
They have greate store of all hustlementes and implementes of householde, they are 
plentifully furnished with al instruments of husbandry, and all other things that 
are requisite to the accomplishment of a quiet and wealthy lyfe, according to their 
estates and degrees. Neither are they sued in the lawe, but onely before ordinary 
iudges, where by the lawes of the lande they are iustly intreated. Neither are they 

* The original of this very famous treatise, de Laudihus Legum Anglice, was 
written in Latin between 1464 and 1470, first published in 1537, and translated 
into English in 1737 by Francis Gregor. I have taken these extracts from the 
magnificent edition of Sir John Fortescue's works published in 1869 for private 
distribution, and edited by Thomes Fortescue, Lord Clermont. Some of the piecea 
quoted, left in the old spelling, are taken from an older edition. — Tr. 

' 0/an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, 3d ed., 1724, ch. iii. p. 1& 

■ Commines bears the same testimony. 

G 



98 THE SOURCE. [BOOK, i 

arrestf/d or impleaded for their moveables or possessions, or arraigned of any 
offence, bee it never so great and outragious, but after the lawes of the land» 
and before the iudges aforesaid.' ^ 

All this arises from the constitution of the country and the distribu- 
tion of the land. Whilst in other countries we find only a population 
of paapers, with here and there a few lords, England is covtied and 
filled with owners of lands and fields ; so that * therein so small a 
thorpe cannot bee founde, wherein dwelleth not a knight, an esquire, 
or suche a housholder as is there commonly called a franklayne, eii- 
ryched with greate possessions. And also other freeholders, and many 
yeomen able for their livelodes to make a juryc iv fourme afore-men- 
tioned. For there bee in that lande divers yeomen, which are able to 
dispende by the yeare above a hundred poundes.'^ Harrison says :' 

'This sort of people have more estimation than labourers and the common soit 
of artificers, and these commonlie live wealthilie, keepe good houses, and travell 
to get riches. They are for the most part farmers to gentlemen,' and keep servants 
of their own. * These were they that in times past made all France afraid. And 
albeit they be not called master, as gentlemen are, or sir, as to knights apper- 
teineth, but onelie John and Thomas, etc., yet have they beene found to have 
done verie good service ; and the kings of England, in foughten battels, were wont 
to remaine among them (who were their footmen) as the French kings dil among 
their horssemen: the prince thereby showing where his chiefe strength did consist.* 

Such men, says Fortescue, might form a legal jury, and vote, resist, be 
associated, do everything wherein a free government consists : for they 
were numerous in every district ; they were not down-trodden like the 
timid peasants of France ; they had their honour and that of their 
family to maintain ; * they be well provided with arms ; they remember 
that they have won battles in France.'* Such is the class, still obscure, 

* De Laudibus, etc., ch. xxxvi. 

* 'The might of the realme most stondyth upon archers which be not rich 
men.* Compare Hallam, ii. 482. All this takes us back as far as the Conquest, 
and farther. * It is reasonable to suppose that the greater part of those who 
appear to have possessed small freeholds or parcels of manors were no other than 
the original nation. ... A respectable class of free socagers, having in general 
full right of alienating their lands, and holding them probably at a small certain 
rent from the lord of the manor, frequently occurs in the Domesday Book. ' At 
all events, there were in Domesday Book Saxons ' perfectly exempt from villenage.' 
This class is mentioned with respect in the treatises of Glanvil and Bracton. As for 
the villeins, they were quickly liberated in the thirteenth or fourteenth centmy, 
either by their o^vn energies or by becoming copyholders. The Wars of the Rosea 
still further raised the commons ; orders were frequently issued, previous to a 
battle, to slay the nobles and spare the commoners. 

• Description of England, 275. 

• The following is a portrait of a yeoman, by Latimer, in the first sermon 
preached before Edward vi., 8th March 1549 : 'My father was a yeoman, and 
had no lands of his own; only he had a farm of £3 or £4 by year at the uttermost, 
and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a 
htttidred Sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did fintj 



imAP. II.J THE NORMANS. 99 

but more rich and powerful every century, who, founded on the 
degraded Saxon aristocracy, and sustained by the surviving Saxon 
character, ended, under the lead of the inferior Norman nobility, and 
under the patronage of the superior Norman nobility, in establishing 
and settling a free sonstitution, and a nation worthy of liberty. 

IX. 

When, as here, men are endowed with a serious character, strength- 
ened by a resolute spirit, and entrenched in independent habits, they 
meddle with their conscience as with their daily business, and end by 
laying hands on church as well as state. It is now a long time since 
the exactions of the Roman See provoked the resistance of the people,^ 
and a presuming priesthood became unpopular. Men complained that 
the best livings were given by the Pope to non-resident strangers ; that 
some Italian, unknown in England, possessed fifty or sixty benefices in 
England ; that English money poured into Rome ; and that the clergy, 
being judged only by clergy, gave themselves up to their vices, and 
abused their state of impunity. In the first years of Henry iii. there 
were reckoned nearly a hundred murders committed by priests still 
alive. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the ecclesiastical 
revenue was twelve times greater than the civil ; about half the soil 
was in the hands of the clergy. At the end of the century the 
commons declared that the taxes paid to the church were five times 
greater than the taxes paid to the crown ; and some years afterwards,* 

the king a harness, with himself and his horse ; while he came to the place that 
he should receive the king's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness 
when he went unto Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not 
been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now,- He married my 
Bisters with £5 or 20 nobles a-piece, so that he brought them up in godliness and 
fear of God ; he kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave 
to the poor ; and all this did he of the said farm. Where he that now hath it 
payetli £16 by the year, or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for 
himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor. ' 

This is from the sixth sermon, preached before the young king, 12tli April 
1 649 : * In my time n:y poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to 
learn (me) any other thing ; and so, I think, other men did their children. He 
taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with 
Btrength of arms, as other nations do, but with strength of the body. 1 had my 
bows bought me according to my age and strength ; as I increased in them, so my 
bows were made bigger and bigger ; for men shall never shoot well except they be 
brought uj in it. It is a goodly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much 
commended in physic' 

» PicL Hist. i.'802. In 1246, 1376. Thierry, iii. 79. 

' 1404-1409. The commons declared that with these revenues the king would 
be able to maintain 15 earls, 1500 knights, 6200 squires, and 100 hospitals: each 
earl receiving annually 300 marks ; each knight 100 marks, and the produce oi 
four ploughed lands ; each squire 40 marks, and the produce of two ploughei 
lands. Pict. Hist. ii. 142. 



100 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

considering that the wealth of the clergy only served to keep them io 
idleness and luxury, they proposed to confiscate it for the public 
benefit. Already the idea of the Keformation had forced itself upon 
them. They remembered how in the ballads Robin Hood ordered his 
folk to * spare the yeomen, labourers, even knights, if they are good 
fellows,* but never to pardon abbots or bishops. The prelates grievously 
oppressed the people with their laws, tribunals, and tithes ; and sud- 
denly, amid the pleasant banter and the monotonous babble of the 
Norman versifiers, we hear resound the indignant voice of a Saxon, a 
man of the people and a victim. 

It is the vision of Piers Ploughman, a carter, written, it is sup- 
posed, by a secular priest of Oxford.^ Doubtless the traces of French 
taste are perceptible. It could not be otherwise : the people from 
below can never quite prevent themselves from imitating the people 
above ; and the most unshackled popular poets. Burns and Beranger, 
too often preserve an academic style. So here a fashionable machi- 
nery, the allegory of the Roman de la Rose, is pressed into service. 
We have Do-well, Covetousness, Avarice, Simony, Conscience, and a 
whole world of talking abstractions. But in spite of these vain foreign 
phantoms, the body of the poem is national, and true to life. The old 
language reappears in part ; the old metre altogether ; no more rhymes, 
but barbarous alliterations; no more jesting, but a harsh gravity, a 
sustained invective, a grand and sombre imagination, heavy Latin texts, 
hammered down as by a Protestant hand. Piers Ploughman went to 
sleep on the Malvern hills, and there had a wonderful dream : 

'Thanne gan I meten — a merveillous swevene, 
That I was in a wildernesse — wiste I nevere where ; 
And as I biheeld into the eest, — an heigh to the sonno, 
I seigh a tour on a toft, — trieliche y-maked, 
A deep dale bynethe — a dongeon tlieieinne 
AVith depe diclies and derke — and dredfulle of sighte. 
A fair feeld ful of folk — fond I ther bitAvene, 
Of alle manere of men, — the meene and the riche, 
"Werchynge and wandrynge — as the world asketh. 
Some puttcn liem to the plough, — pleiden ful selde, 
In settynge and sowynge — swonken ful harde, 
And wonnen that wastoiu-s — with glotonye dystruyeth.** 

A gloomy picture of the world, like the frightful dreams which occni 
so often in Albert Durer and Luther. The first reformers were per- 
suaded that the earth was given over to evil ; that the devil had in it 
his empire and his officers ; that Antichrist, seated on the throne of 
Rome, spread out ecclesiastical pomps to seduce souls, and cast them 
into the fire of hell. So here Antichrist, with raised banner, enters a 
convent ; bells are rung ; monks in solemn procession go to meet him, 

1 About 1862. 

' Piers Plouf/hman's Vis'on. and Creed, ed. T. Wright, 185G, i. p. 2, v. ?l-44 



CHAP. IL THE NORMANS. 101 

and receive with congratulations their lord and father.* With sevei 
great giants, the seven deadly sins, he besieges Conscience ; and the 
assault is led by Idleness, who brings with her an army of more than 
a thousand prelates : for vices reign, more hateful from being in holy 
places, and employed in the church of God in the devil's service . 

* Ac now is Religion a rydere — a romere aboute, 
A ledere of love-dayes — and a lond-buggere, 
A prikere on a palfrey — fro manere to manere. . . . 
And but if his knave knele — that shal his coppe brynge, 
He loureth on hym, and asketh liym — who taughte hym curteisie.** 

But this sacrilegious show has its day, and God puts His hand on men 
in order to warn them. By order of Conscience, Nature sends up a 
host of plagues and diseases : 

* Kynde Conscience tho herde, — and cam out of the planetea, 
And sente forth his forreyours — feveres and fluxes, 
Coughes and cardiacles, — crampes and tooth-aches, 
Eeumes and radegundes, — and roynous scabbes, 
Biles and bocches, — and branny nge agues, 
Frenesies and foule yveles, — forageres of kynde. . , , 
There was "Harrow ! and Help ! — Here cometh Kynde! 
"With Deeth that is dredful — to undo us alle ! " 
The lord that lyved after lust — tho aloud cryde. . . . 
Deeth cam dryvynge after, — and al to duste passhed 
Kynges and knyghtes, — kaysers and popes, . . . 
Manye a lovely lady— and lemmans of knyghtes, 
Swowued and swelted for sorwe of hise dyntes. ' ^ 

Here is a crowd of miseries, like those which Milton has described 
in his vision of human life ; tragic pictures and emotions, such as the 
reformers delight to dwell upon. There is a like speech delivered 
by John Knox, before the fair ladies of Mary Stuart, which tears the 
veil from the human corpse just as brutally, in order to exhibit 
its shame. The conception of the world, proper to the people of the 
north, all sad and moral, shows itself already. They are never com- 
fortable in their country ; they have to strive continually against cold 
01 rain. They cannot live there carelessly, lying under a lovely sky, 
in a sultry and clear atmosphere, their eyes filled with the noble beauty 
and happy serenity of the land. They must work to live ; be attentive, 
exact, close and repair their houses, wade boldly through the mud 
behind their plough, light their lamps in the shops during the day. 
Their climate imposes endless inconvenience, and exacts endless en» 
durance. Hence arise melancholy and the idea of duty. Man naturally 
thinks of life as of a battle, oftener of black death which closes thii 



102 THE SOURCE. [BOOR 1 

deadly show, and leads so many plumed and disorderly processions tc 
the silence and the eternity of the grave. All this visible world is 
vain ; there is nothing true but human virtue, — the courageous energy 
with which man attains to self-command, the generous energy with 
which he employs himself in the service of others. On this view he 
fixes his eyes ; they pierce through worldly gauds, neglect sensual joys, 
to at tail. this. By such internal action the ideal is displaced; a new 
scurcs of action springs up — the idea of righteousness. What sets 
them against ecclesiastical pomp and insolence, is neither the envy of 
the pcor and low, nor the anger of the oppressed, nor a revolutionary 
desire to experimentalise abstract truth, but conscience. They tremble 
lest they should not work out their salvation if they continue in a cor- 
rupted church ; they fear the menaces of God, and dare not embark on 
the great journey with unsafe guides. *What is righteousness?' asked 
Luther anxiously, 'and how shall I obtain it?' With like anxiety 
Piers Ploughman goes to seek Do-well, and asks each one to show him 
where he shall find him. * With us,' say the friars. * Contra quath 
ich, Septies in die cadit Justus^ and ho so syngeth certys doth nat wel;' 
60 he betakes himself to * study and writing,' like Luther ; the clerks at 
table speak much of God and of the Trinity, ' and taken Bernarde to 
witnesse, and putteth forth presompcions . . . ac the earful mai crie and 
quaken atte gate, bothe a fyngred and a furst, and for defaute spille ys 
non so hende to have hym ya. Clerkus and knyghtes carpen of God 
ofte, and haveth hym muche in hure mouthe, ac mene men in herte;* 
and heart, inner faith, living virtue, are what constitute true re- 
ligion. This is what these dull Saxons had begun to discover; the 
Teutonic conscience, and English good sense too, had been aroused, 
with individual energy, the resolution to judge and to decide alone, by 
and for one's self. * Christ is our hede that sitteth on hie, Heddis ne 
ought M^e have no mo,' says a poem,^ attributed to Chaucer, and which, 
with others, claims independence for Christian consciences 

* We ben his membres bothe also, 
Father he taught us call him all, 
Maisters to call forbad he tho ; 
Al maisters ben wickid and fals.' 

Ml mediator between man and God. In vain the doctors state that they 
have authority for their words ; there is a word of greater authority, to 
wit, God's. We hear it in the foui*teenth century, this grand Avord. It 
quitted the learned schools, the dead languages, the dusty shelves on 
which the clergy suffered it to sleep, covered with a confusion of com- 
Q^entaries and Fathers.^ Wiclif appeared and translated it like Luther, 

* Piers Plowman's Crede ; the Plowman's T'ale, printed in 1550. There weri 
three editions in one year, it was so manifestly Protestant. 

^ Knighton, about 1400, wrote thus of Wiclif : 'Transtulit de Latino in angli- 
cam linguam, uou angelicani. Unde per ipsum fit vulgare, et magis apcrtum 



. II.] THE NORMANS. 103 

And in a spirit similar to Luther's. * Cristen men and wymnien, olde 
and yonge, shulden studie fast in the Newe Testameni, for it is of ful 
autorite, and opyn to undirstonding of simple men, as to the poyntis 
that be moost nedeful to salvacioun.' ^ Religion must be secular, in 
order to escape from the hands of the clergy, who forestall it ; each 
must hear and read for himself the word of God : he will be sure that 
it has not been corrupted in the passage ; he will feel it better, and 
more, he will understand it better ; for 

* ech place of holy writ, both opyn and derk, techith mekenes and charite ; and 
therfore he that kepith mekenes and charite hath the trewe undirstondyng and 
perfectioun of al holi wiit. . . . Thevfore no simple man of wit be aferd un- 
Diesurabli to studie in the text of holy writ . . . and no clerk be proude of the 
f«rrey nndirstondyng of holy writ, for whi undirstonding of hooly writ with outcn 
charite that kepith Goddis heestis, raakith a man depper dampned . . . and pride 
and covetise of clerkis is cause of her blindees and eresie, and priyeth them fro 
verrey undirstondyng of holy writ.' ^ 

These are the memorable words that began to circulate in the market? 
and in the schools. They read the translated Bible, and commented on 
it; they judged the existing Church after it. What judgments these 
serious and renovated minds passed upon it, with what readiness they 
pushed on to the true religion of their race, we may see from their 
petition to Parliament.* One hundred and thirty years before Luther, 
they said that the pope was not established by Christ, that pilgrim- 
ages and image-worship were akin to idolatry, that external forms are 
of no importance, that priests ought not to possess temporal wealth, 
that the doctrine of transubstantiation made a people idolatrous, that 
priests have not the power of absolving from sin. In proof of all this 
they brought forward texts of Scripture. Fancy these brave spirits, 
simple and strong souls, who began to read at night, in their sliops, 
by candle-light ; for they were shopmen — a tailor, and a furrier, and 
a baker — who, with some men of letters, began to read, and then to 
believe, and finally got themselves burned.* What a sight for the 
fifteenth century, and what a promise I It seems as though, with 
liberty of action, liberty of mind begins to appear; that these common 
f-^lk will think and speak ; that under a conventional literature, intro- 
duced from France, a new literature is dawning ; and that England, 
genuine England, half-mute since the Conquest, will at last find a voice. 

She had not found it. King and peers ally themselves to the 
Church, pass terrible statutes, destroy lives, burn heretics alive, often 

laicis et mulieribus legere scientibus quam solet esse clericis admodum litteratis, et 
bene intelligantibus. Et sic evangelica margerita spargitur et a porcis conculcatuJ 
. . . (ita) ut laicis commune seternum quod ante fuerat clericis et ecclesise doctori« 
"^ talentum supernum.' 
• Wiclif s Bible, ed. Forshall and Madden, 1850, preface to Oxford edit.' on, p. 2 
^Ihid. ' 2 1^1395^ 

' M^ William Sawtre, the first Lollard l)urned alive. 



104 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

with refinement of torture, — one in a barrel, another hung by an iron 
chain round his waist. The temporal wealth of the clergy had been 
attacked, and therewith the whole English constitution ; and the great 
establishment above crushed out with its whole weight the assailants 
from below. Darkly, in silence, while in the Wars of the Eoses the 
nobles were destroying each other, the commoners went on working 
and living, separating themselves from the official Church, maintaining 
their liberties, amassing their wealth,^ but not going beyond. Like a 
vast rock which underlies the soil, yet crops up here and there at distant 
intervals, they barely exhibit themselves. No great poetical or religious 
work displays them to the light. They sang ; but their ballads, first 
ignored, then transformed, reach us only in a late edition. They prayed; 
but beyond one or two indifferent poems, their incomplete and repressed 
doctrine bore no fruit. One may well see from the verse, tone, and 
drift of their ballads, that they are capable of the finest poetic origin- 
ality,^ but their poetry is in the hands of yeomen and harpers. We 
perceive, by the precocity and energy of their religious protests, that 
they are capable of the most severe and impassioned creeds ; but their 
faith remains hidden in the shop-parlours of a few obscure sectaries. 
Neither their faith nor their poetry has been able to attain its end or 
issue. The Renaissance and the Reformation, those two national ou^ 
breaks, are still far off; and the literature of the period retains to the 
end, like the highest ranks of English society, almost the perfect $tamp 
of its French origin and its foreign models. 

* Commines, v. eh. 19 and 20 : * In my opinion, of all kingdoms of the world of 
which I have any knowledge, where the public weal is best observed, and least 
violence is exercised on the people, and where no buildings are overthrown oi 
demolished in war, England is the best ; and the ruin and misfortune falls on them 
who wage the war. . . . The kingdom of England has this advantage beyond other 
nations, that the people and the country are not destroyed or burnt, nor the build- 
ings demolished ; and ill-fortune falls on men of war, and especially on the noble».' 

^ See the ballads of Ghevy Ghase, The Nut-Brown Maid, etc. Man;f ol 
them are admirable little dramas. 



THE NEW TONGUE. jQg 



CHAPTER III. 
The New Tongue. 

1 ChAno«i — His education — His political and social life — "Wherein his tslefst 

was serviceable — He paints tlie second feudal society. 
II. How the middle age degenerated — Decline of tlic serious element in manners, 
books, and works of art — Need of excitement — Analogies of architecture 
and literature. 

HI. Wherein Chaucer belongs to the middle age — Romantic and ornamental poems 
— Le Roman de la Hose — Troilus and Cressida — Canterbury Tales — Order of 
description and events — The House of Fame — Fantastic dreams and visions 
— Love poems — Troilus and Cressida — Exaggerated development of love in 
the middle age — Why the mind took this path — Mystic love — The Flower 
and the Leaf — Sensual love — Troilus and Cressida. 

IV. "Wherein Chaucer is French — Satirical and jovial poems — Canterbury Tales — 
The Wife of Bath and marriage — The mendicant friar and religion — Buf- 
foonery, waggery, and coarseness in the middle age. 
W» Wherein Chaucer was English and original — Idea of character and individual 
— Van Eyck and Chaucer contemporary — Prologue to Canterbury Tales — 
Portraits of the franklin, monk, miller, citizen, knight, squire, prioress, 
the good clerk — Connection of events and characters — General idea — Im- 
portance of the same — Chaucer a precursor of the Reformation — He halts 
by the way — Delays and Childishness — Causes of this feebleness— His prose, 
, and scholastic notion — How he is isolated in his age. 

VI. Connection of philosophy and poetry — How generel notions failed under 
the scholastic philosophy — Why poetry failed — Comparison of civilisa- 
tion and decadence in the middle age, and in Spain — Extinction of 
the English literature — Translators — Rhyming chronicles — Didactic poets 
—Compilers of molalities — Gower — Occleve— Lydgate — Analogy of taste 
in costume?, buildings, and literature— Sad notion of fate, and human 
misery— Hawes — Barclay — Skelton — Elements of the Reformation and of 
tiie Renaissance. 



AMID so many barren endeavours, thronghout the long impotence 
of Norman literature, which was content to copy, and of Saxon 
literature, which bore no fruit, a definite language was nevertheless 
attained, and there was room for a great writer. Geoffrey Chaucer 
appeared, a man of mark, inventive though a disciple, original though 
a translator, who by his genius, education, and life, was enabled to 
know and to depict a whole world, but above all to satisfy the chivalri^ 



106 THE SOURCE. [BOOR 1 

world and the splendid courts which shone upon the heights.^ He 
belonged to it, though learned and versed in all branches of scholastic 
knowledge ; and he took such part in it, that his life from end to end 
was that of a man of the world, and a man of action. We find him 
alternately in King Edward's army, in the king's train, husband of a 
queen's maid of honour, a pensioner, a placeholder, a deputy in pMrlia- 
ment, a knight, founder of a family which was hereafter lo become 
allied to royalty. Moreover, he was in the king's council, brclher-iD» 
law of the Duke of Lancaster, employed more than once in open 
emoassies or secret missions at Florence, Genoa, Milan, Flanders, com- 
missioner in France for the marriage of the Prince of Wales, high up 
and low down in the political ladder, disgraced, restored to place. 
This experience of business, travel, war, the court, was not like a book 
education. He was at the court of Edward iii., the most splendid in 
E arope, amidst tourneys, grand entrances, displays ; he took part in 
tl]e pomps of France and Milan ; conversed with Petrarch, perhaps with 
Boccacio and Froissart ; was actor in, and spectator of, the finest and 
most tragical of dramas. In these few words, Avhat ceremonies and pro- 
cessions are implied ! what pageantry of armour, caparisoned horses, 
bedecked ladies ! what display of gallant and lordly manners ! what a 
varied and brilliant world, well suited to occupy the mind and eyes of 
a poet I Like Froissart, better than he, Chaucer could depict the 
character of the nobles, their mode of lil'e, their amours, even other 
things, and please them by his portraiture. 

n. 

Two notions raised the middle age above the chaos of barbarism : 
one religious, which had fashioned the gigantic cathedrals, and swept 
the masses from their native soil to hurl them upon the Holy Land ; 
the other secular, which had built feudal fortresses, and set the man of 
courage armed, upon his feet, within his own domain : the one had 
produced the adventurous hero, the other the mystical monk ; the one, 
to wit, the belief in God, the other the belief in self. Both, running 
to excess, had degenerated by expenditure of force: the one had 
exalted independence into rebellion, the other had changed piety into 
enthusiasm : the first made man unfit for civil life, the second drew 
liim back from natural life : the one, sanctioning disorder, dissolved 
society ; the other, enthroning irrationality, perverted intelligence. 
Chivalry had need to be repressed before issuing in brigandage ; devo- 
tion restrained before inducing slavery. Turbulent feudalism grew 
feeble, like oppressive theocracy ; and the two great master passions, 
deprived of their sap and lopped of their stem, gave place by their 
weakness to the monotony of habit and the taste for worldliness, which 
shot forth in their stead and flourished under their name. 

» Born between 1328 and 1345, died in 1400 



CHAP III.J THE NiJW TONGUE^. 107 

Insensibly, the serious element declined, in books as in manners, in 
works of art as in books. Architecture, instead of being the hand- 
mnid of faith, became the slave of phantasy. It was exaggerated, 
confined to mere decoration, sacrificing general effect to detail, shot 
up ils steeples to unreasonable heights, festooned its churches -with 
canopies, pinnacles, trefoiled arches, open- worked galleries. ' Ita 
whole aim was continually to climb higher, to clothe the sacred edifice 
with a gaudy bedizenment, as if it were a bride on the wedding morn- 
ing.'^ Before this marvellous lacework, what emotion could one feel 
but a pleased astonishment ? What becomes of Christian sentiment 
before such scenic ornamentations ? In like manner literature seta 
itself to play. In the eighteenth century, the second age of absolute 
monarchy, we saw on one side garlanded top-knots and cupolas, on 
the other pretty vers de societe\ courtly and sprightly tales, taking the 
place of severe beauty-lines and noble writings. Even so in the four- 
teenth century, the second age of feudalism, they had on one side the 
stone fretwork and slender efflorescence of aerial forms, and on the 
other finical verses and diverting stories, taking the place of the old 
grand architecture and the old simple literature. It is no longer the 
overflowing of a true sentiment which produces them, but the craving 
for excitement. Consider Chaucer, his subjects, and how he select,? 
them. He goes far and wide to discover them, to Italy, France, to the 
popular legends, the ancient classics. His readers need diversity, and 
his business is to 'provide fine tales:' it Avas in those days the poet's 
business.** The lords at table have finished dinner, the minstrels come 
and sing, the brightness of the torches fails on the velvet and ermine, 
on the fantastic figures, the oddities, the elaborate embroidery of their 
long garments ; then the poet arrives, presents his manuscript, * richly 
illuminated, bound in crimson violet, embellished v/ith silver clasps 
and bosses, roses of gold:' they ask him for his subject, and he 
answers ' Love.' 

III. 

In fact, it is the most agreeable subject, fittest to make the evening 
hours How sweetly, amid the spiced goblets and the burning perfumes. 
('b:iucer translated first that great storehouse of gallantry, the Roman 
d« la Rose. There is no pleasanter entertainment. It is about a rose 
which the lover wished to pluck : the pictures of the May months, the 
groves, the flowery earth, the green hedgerows, abound and display 
their bloom. Then come portraits of the smiling ladies, Richesse, 
Fraunchise, Gaiety, and by way of contrast, two sad characters, 
Daungcr and Travail, all crowding, and minutely described, with de- 
tail of features, clothing, attitude ; they walk about, as in a piece of 

^ Renan, Be VArt au Moyen Age. 

* See Froissart, his life with the Count of Foix and wuh Kiuo^ Ricliard u 



108 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

tapestry, amid landscapes, dances, castles, with allegorical groups, in 
lively sparkling colours, displayed, contrasted, ever renewed and varied 
so as to entertain the sight. For an evil has arisen, unknown to 
serious ages — ennui: novelty and brilliancy followed by novelty and 
brilliancy are necessary to withstand it; and Chaucer, like Boccacio 
and Froissart, enters into the struggle with all his heart. He borrows 
from Boccacio his history of Palamon and Arcite, from Lollius his 
history of Troilus and Cressida, and re-arranges them. How the two 
young Theban knights, Arcite and Palamon, both fall in love with the 
beautiful Emily, and how Arcite, victorious in tourney, falls and dies,, 
bequeathing Emily to his rival; how the fine Trojan knight Troilua 
wins the favours of Cressida, and how Cressida abandons him for 
Diomedes — these are still tales in verse, tales of love. A little long 
they may be ; all the writings of this age, French, or imitated from 
French, are born of too prodigal minds ; but how they glide along I 
A winding stream, which flows smoothly on level sand, and glitters now 
and again in the sun, is the only image we can find. The characters 
speak too much, but then they speak so well I Even when they dis- 
pute, we like to listen, their anger and offences are so wholly based 
on a happy overflow of unbroken converse. Kemember Froissart, how 
slaughters, assassinations, plagues, the butcheries of the Jacquerie, the 
whole chaos of human misery, is forgotten in his fine uniform humour, 
so that the furious and raving figures seem but ornaments and choice 
embroiderings to relieve the train of shaded and coloured silk which 
forms the groundwork of his narrative ! 

But, in particular, a multitude of descriptions spread their gilding 
over all. Chaucer leads you among arms, palaces, temples, and halt! 
before each scene. Here : 

* The statue of Venus glorious for to see 

"Was naked fleting in the large see, 

And fro the navel doun all covered was 

"With wawes grene, and bright as any glas. 

A citole in hire right hand hadtle she, 

And on hire hed, ful semely for to see, 

A rose gerlond frcssh, and wel smelling, 

Above hire lied hire doves fleckering.** 

Fuither on, the temple of Mars : 

* First on the wall was peinted a forest, 
In which ther wonneth neyther man ne bee^ 
With knotty knarry barrein trees old 
Of stubbes and sharp and liidous to behold ; 
In which ther ran a romble and a swough, 
As though a storme shuld breston every bough ; 
And dounward from an hill under a bent, 
Ther stood the temple of Mars armipotent, 



Knight's Tale, ii. p. 59, v. 1957-1964. 



rUAP III] THE NEW TONGUE 109 

Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree 

Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see. 

And therout came a rage and swiclie a vise, 

That it made all the gates for to rise. 

The northern light in at the dore shone, 

For window on the wall ne was ther none, 

Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne. 

The dore was all of athamant eterne, 

Yclenched overthwart and endelong 

With yren tough, and for to make it strong. 

Every piler the temple to sustene 

Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene.'* 

Everywhere on the wall were representations of slaughter ; and in the 
sanctuary 

* The statue of Mars upon a carte stood 
Armed, and loked grim as he were wood, • • • 
A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete 
With eyen red, and of a man he ete.'* 

Are not these contrasts well designed to rouse the imagination ? You 
will meet in Chaucer a succession of similar pictures. Observe the 
train of combatants who came to joust in the tilting field for Axcite 
and Falamon : 

* With him ther wenten knightes many on, 
Som wol ben armed in an habergeon 
And in a brestplate, and in a gipon ; 
And som wol have a pair of plates large ; 
And som wol have a Pruce sheld, or a targ% 
Som wol ben armed on his legges wele. 

And have an axe, and som a mace of stele. . , • 
Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon 
Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace : 
Blake was his herd, and manly was his face. 
The cercles of his eyen in his hed 
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red. 
And like a griffon loked he about. 
With kemped heres on his browes stout ; 
His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, 
His shouldres brode, his amies round and longeu 
And as the guise was in his contree, 
Fnl highe upon a char of gold stood he, 
With foure white boUes in the trais. 
Instede of cote-armure on his harnais, 
With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold. 
He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old. 
His longe here was kempt behind his bak. 
As any raveues fether it shone for blake. 
A wreth of gold arm -gret, of huge weighty 
Upon his hed sate ful of stones bright, 



' Knight 8 Tale, ii. p. 59, v. 1977-1990. ^ Void. p. 61, v. 2043-3050. 



110 THE SOURCE. fBOOE I 

Of fine nibins and of diamants. 

About his char ther wenten white alauns. 

Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere, 

To hunteu at the leon or the dere, 

And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound, 

Colered witli gold, and torettes filed round. 

An hundred lordes had he in his route, 

Armed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoutei 

"With Arcita, in stories as men find, 

The gret Emetrius the king of Inde, 

Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele, 

Covered with cloth of gold diapred weie. 

Came riding like the god of armes Mars. 

His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars, 

Couched with perles, white, and round and gra^ 

His sadel was of brent gold new ybete ; 

A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging 

Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling. 

His crispe here like ringes was yronne. 

And that was yelwe, and glitered as the sonn^i 

His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin, 

ills lippes round, his colour was sanguin , . . 

And as a leon he his loking caste. 

Of five and twenty yere his age I caste. 

His herd was well begonnen for to spring ; 

His vols was as a trompe thondering. 

Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene 

A gerlond fresshe and lusty for to sene. 

Upon his bond he bare for his deduit 

An egle tame, as any lily whit. 

An hundred lordes had he with liim there, 

All armed save hir hedes in all hir gere, 

Ful richely in alle mauere thinges. . . . 

About this king ther ran on every part 

Ful many a tame leon and leopart. ' ^ 

A herald would not describe them better nor more fully. The lords 
and ladies of the time would recognise here their tourneys and 
masquerades. 

There is something more pleasant than a fine narrative, and that is 
a collection of fine narratives, especially when the narratives are all of 
different colourings. Froissart gives us such under the name of 
Chronicles ; Bcccacio still better ; after him the lords of the Cent Nou^ 
velles nonvelles; and, later still, Marguerite de Navarre. What more 
natural among people who meet, talk, and try to amuse themselves? 
The manners of the time suggest them ; fc^.- the habits and tastes of 
society had begun, and fiction thus conceived only brings into books the 
conversations which are heard in the hall and by the wayside. Chaucer 
describes a troop of pilgrims, people of every rank, who are going tc 



Knight's Tale, ii. p. 63, v. 2120-21««. 



CHAP. Ill] THE NEW TONGUE m 

Canterbury : a knight, a sergeant of law, an Oxford clerk, a doctor, a 
miller, a prioress, a monk, who agree to relate a story all round ; 

* For trewely comfort ne mirthe is non, 
To riden by the way domb as the ston.* 

They relate accordingly; and on this slender and flexible thread all the 
jovialities of the feudal imagination, true and false, come and contribute 
the'ir ncotley figures to the chain; alternately noble, chivalrous stciies: 
the miracle of the infant whose throat was cut by Jews, the trials of 
patient Griselda, Canace and the marvellous fictions of Oriental fancy, 
obscene stories of marriage and monks, allegorical or moral tales, the 
fable of the cock and hen, a list of great unfortunate persons : Lucifer, 
Adam, Samson, Nebuchadnezzar, Zenobia, Crossus, Ugolin, Peter of 
Spain. I leave out some, for I must be brief. Chaucer is like a 
jeweller with his hands full : pearls and glass beads, sparkling diamonds 
and common agates, black jet and ruby roses, all that history and 
imagination had been able to gather and fashion during three centuries 
in the East, in France, in Wales, in Provence, in Italy, all that had 
rolled his way, clashed together, broken or polished by the stream of 
centuries, and by the great jumble of human memory ; he holds in hia 
hand, arranges it, composes therefrom a long sparkling ornament, with 
twenty pendants, a thousand facets, which by its splendour, varieties, 
contrasts, may attract and satisfy the eyes of those most greedy foi 
amusement and novelty. 

He does more. The universal outburst of unchecked curiosity de- 
mands a more refined enjoyment ; reverie and fantasy alone can satisfy 
it; not profound and thoughtful fantasy as we find it in Shakspeare 
Dor impassioned and meditated reverie as we find it in Dante, but the 
reverie and fantasy of the eyes, ears, external senses, which in poetry as in 
architecture call for singularity, wonders, accepted challenges, victories 
gained over what is rational and probable, and which are satisfied only 
by what is dense and dazzling. When you look at a cathedral of that 
time, you feel a sort of fear. Substance is wanting ; the walls are hol- 
lowed out to make room for windows, the elaborate work of the porches, 
the wond^iful growth of the slender columns, the thin curvature of 
arches — everything seems to totter; support has been withdrawn to 
give way to ornament. Without external prop or buttress, and artificial 
aid of iron cla-mp-work, the building would have crumbled to pieces on 
the first day : as it is, it undoes itself; we have to maintain on the spot a 
colony of masons continually to ward off the continual decay. But our 
eyes lose themselves in following the wavings and twistings of the end • 
less fretwork; the dazzling centre-rose of the portal and the painted glass 
throw a diapered light on the carved stalls of the choir, the gold-work of 
the altar, the long array of damascened and glittering copes, the crowd 
of statues, gradually rising ; and amid this violet light, this quivering 
purple, amid these arrows of gold which pierce the gloom, the building 



112 THE SOURCE. ^BOOK 1 

is like the tail of a mystical peacock. So most of tlie poems of tha 

time are barren of foundation ; at most a trite morality serves them 

for mainstay : in short, the poet thought of nothing else than spreading 

out before us a glow of colours and a jumble of forms. They are 

dreams or visions ; there are five or six in Chaucer, and you will meet 

more on your advance to the Renaissance. Yet the show is splendid. 

Chaucer is transported in a dream to a temple of glass,^ where on the 

walls are figured in gold all the legends of Ovid and Virgil, an infinite 

train of characters and dresses, like that which, on the painted glass in 

the churches, still occupies the gaze of the faithful. Suddenly a golden 

eagle, which soars near the sun, and glitters like a carbuncle, descends 

with the swiftness of lightning, and carries him off in his talons above 

the stars, dropping him at last before the House of Fame, splendidly built 

of beryl, with shining windows and lofty turrets, and situated on a high 

rock of almost inaccessible ice. All the southern side was graven with 

the names of famous men, but the sun was continuously melting them. 

On the northern side, the names, better protected, still remained. On 

V,he turrets appeared the minstrels and jongleurs, with Orpheus, Orion, 

jmd the great harp-players, and behind them myriads of musicians, 

with horns, flutes, pipes, and reeds, in which they blew, and which 

filled the air; then all the charmers, magicians, and prophets. He 

enters, and in a high hall, wainscotted with gold, embossed with pearls, 

on a throne of carbuncle, he sees a woman seated, a * gret and noble 

quene,' amidst an infinite number of heralds, whose embroidered cloaks 

bore the arms of the most famous knights in the world, and heard the 

sounds of instruments, and the celestial melody of Calliope and her 

sisters. From her throne to the gate stretched a row of pillars, on 

which stood the great historians and poets; Josephus on a pillar of 

lead and iron; Statins on a pillar of iron stained with blood; Ovid, 

* Venus' clerk,* on a pillar of copper; then, on one higher than the 

rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey 

of Monmouth, and the other historians of the war of Troy. Must I 

go on copying this phantasmagoria, in which confused erudition mars 

picturesque invention, and frequent banter shows sign that the vision 

is (mly a planned amusement ? The poet and his reader have imagined 

foe half an hour decorated halls and bustling crowds ; a slender thread 

of conmion sense has ingeniously crept along the transparent golden mist 

which they amuse themselves with following. That suffices ; they tire 

pleased Avith their fleeting fancies, and ask nothing beyond. 

Amid this exuberancy of mind, amid these refined cravings, and 
this insatiate exaltation of imagination and sense, there was the passion 
of love, which, combining all, was developed in excess, and displayed in 
short the sickly charm, the fundamental and fatal exaggeration, which 
are the characteristics of the age, and which, later, the Spanish civilisa- 

Tlie House of Fame. 



CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. 113 

tion exhibits both in its flower and its decay. Long ago, the courts 
of love in Provence had established the theory. ' Each one who 
loves,' they said, ' grows pale at the sight of her whom he loves ; 
each action of the lover ends in the thought of her whom he loves. 
Love can refuse nothing to love.' ' This search after excessive sen- 
sation had ended in the ecstasies and transports of Guido Caval- 
canti, and of Dante ; and in Languedoc a company of enthusiasts 
had established themselves, love-penitents, who, in order to prove 
the violence of their passion, dressed in summer in furs and heavy 
garments, and in winter in light gauze, and walked thus about the 
country, so that many of them fell ill and died. Chaucer, in their 
wake, explained in his verses the craft of love,^ the ten command- 
ments, the twenty statutes of love, and praised his lady, his ' daies- 
eye,' his ' Margaruite,' his 'vermeil rose ;' depicted love in ballads, 
visions, allegories, didactic poems, in a hundred guises. This is 
chivalrous, lofty love, as it was conceived in the middle age ; above 
all, tender love. Troilus loves Cressida like a troubadour; without 
Pandarus, her uncle, he would have languished, and ended by dy- 
ing in silence. He will not reveal the name of her he loves. Pan- 
darus has to tear it from him, perform all the bold actions himself, 
plan every kind of stratagem. Troilus, however brave and strong 
in battle, can but weep before Cressida, ask her pardon, and faint. 
Cressida exhibits every delicacy. When Pandarus brings her 
Troilus' first letter, she begins by refusing it, and is ashamed to 
open it : she opens it only because she is told the poor knight is 
about to die. At the first words 'all rosy hewed tho woxe she; ' and 
though the letter is respectful, she will not answer it. She yields 
at last to the importunities of her ^uncle, and answer Troilus that 
she will feel for him the affection of a sister. As to Troilus, he 
trembles all over, grows pale when he sees the messenger return, 
doubts his happiness, and will not believe the assurance which is 
given him : 

' But right so as these holtes and these hayis 
That han in winter dead ben and dry, 
Revesten hem in grene, whan tliat May is. . . 
Right in that selfe wise, sooth for to sey, 
Woxe suddainly his herte full of joy.' ^ 

Slowly, after many pains, and thanks to the efforts of Pandarus, he 
obtains her confession ; and in this confession what a delightful 
grace ! 

' And as the newe abashed nightingale, 

That stinteth first, whan she beginneth sing, 

Whan that she heareth any heerdes tale, 

Or in the hedges any wight stearing, 

And after siker doeth her voice outring : 

' Andre le Chapelain, 1170. 

^ Also the Cou7't of Love, and perhaps 7%e Assemble of Ladies and La Belle 
Dame Sans Merci. 
^ Troilus and Cressida, vol. v. bk. 3, p. 13. 

H 



114 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

Fight so Creseide, whan that her drede stent, 
Opened her herte, and told him her entent.'* 

He, as soon as he perceived a hope from afar, 

* In chaunged voice, right for his very drede, 
"Which voice eke quoke, and thereto his manew^ 
Gcodly abasht, and now his hewes rede, 

Kow pale, unto Cresseide his ladie dere, 

Witli look doun cast, and humble iyolden chere, 

Lo, the alderfirst word that him astart 

"Was twice: "Mercy, mercy, my sweet herte !'"• 

Tl.is ardent love breaks out in impassioned accents, in bursts of happi- 
ness. Far from being regarded as a fault, it is the source of all virtue. 
Troilus becomes braver, more generous, more upright, through it ; his 
speech runs now on love and virtue ; he scorns all villany ; he honouri 
those who possess merit, succours those who are in distress ; and Cres- 
sida, delighted, repeats all day, with exceeding tenderness, tliis »ong, 
which is like the warbling of a nightingale: 

* Whom should I thanken but you, god of love, 
Of all this blisse, in which to bathe I ginne ? 
And thanked be ye, lorde, for that I love, 
This is the right life that I am inne. 

To flemen all maner vice and sinne : 

This doeth me so to vertue for to entende 

That dale by dale I in my will amende. 

And who that saieth that for to love is vice, . , • 

He either is envious, or right nice. 

Or is unmightie for his shreudnesse 

To loven. . . . 

But I with all mine herte and all my mighl^ 

As I have saied, woU love unto my last, 

My owne dere herte, and all mine owne knight, 

In whiclie mine herte growen is so fast, 

And his in me, that it shall ever last.'^ 

But misfortune comes. Her father Calchas demands her back, and the 

Trojans decide that they will give her up in exchange for prisoners. 
At this news she swoons, and Tro'ilus is about to slay himself. Their 
love at this time seems imperishable ; it sports with death, because it 
constitutes the whole of life. Beyond that better and delicious life 
which "t created, it seems there can be no other : 

* But as God would, of swough she abraide^ 
And gan to sighe, and Troilus she cride, 
And he answerde : ** Lady mine, Creseide, 
Live ye yet ?" and let his swerde doun glide: 
"Ye herte mine, that thanked be Cupide," 

' Troilus and Cressida, vol. v. bk. 3, p. 40. ' if>id, p. 4. 

« Ibid, vol. iv. bk. 2, p. 303. 



<JKAP III.] THE NEW TONGUE. l|5 

• (Quod slie), and therewithal she sore sight, 

And lie began to glade her as he might. 

Took her in armes two and kist her oft, 
And her to glad, he did al his entent, 
For which her gost, that flikered aie a loft, 
Into her wofuU herte ayen it went : 
But at the last, as that her eye glent 
Aside, anon she gan his sworde aspie, 
As it lay bare, and gan for feare crie. 

And asked him why had he it out draw. 

And Troilus anon the cause her told, 

And how himself therwith he wold have slaiii, 

For which Creseide upon him gan behold, 

And gan him in her armes faste fold. 

And. said : " mercy God, lo which a dede t 

Alas, how nigh we weren bothe dede ! " ' ^ 

At last they are separated, with what words and what tears ! and 
Troilus, alone Ih his chamber, murmurs : 

** Where is mine owne lady lefe and dere ? 

Where is her white brest, where is it, where * 

Where been her armes, and her eyen clere 

That yesterday this time with me were ? " . , . 

Nor there nas houre in al the day or night, 

Whan he was ther as no man might him here, 

That he ne sayd : " lovesome lady bright^ 

How have ye faren sins that ye were there t 

Welcome y wis mine owne lady dere ! " . , , 

Fro thence-forth he rideth up and doune, 

And every thing came liim to remembraunce. 

As he rode forth by the places of the toune. 

In which he whilom had all his pleasaunce : 

** Lo, yonder saw I mine owne lady daunoe. 

And in that temple with her eien clere, 

Me caught first my right lady dere. 

And yonder have I herde full lustely 

My dere herte laugh, and yonder play- 
Saw her ones eke ful blisfully. 

And yonder ones to me gan she say, 

•Now, good sweete, love me well I pray.* 

And yonde so goodly gan she me behold, 

That to the death mine herte is to her hold, 

And at the corner in the yonder house 

Herde I mine alderlevest lady dere. 

So womanly, with voice melodiouse, 

Singen so wel, so goodly, and so clere. 

That in my soule yet me thinketh I here 

The blissful sowne, and in that yonder place, 

My lady first me toke unto her grace.' "* 

' Trmhis and Cressida, vol. v. bk. 4, p. 97. » Ibid. bk. 5, p. 119 et paanm 



i \ THE SOURCE. [BOOK i 

None has since found more true and tender words. These arf the 
charming ' poetic branches ' which flourished amid the gross ignorance 
and pompous parades. Human intelligence in the middle age had 
blossomed on that side where it perceived the light. 

But mere narrative does not suffice to express his felicity and fancy i 
the poet must go where * shoures sweet of rain descended soft^* 

* And eve/y plaine was clothed faire 
With new greene, and maketh small floures 
To springen here and there in field and in mede, 
So very good and wholsome be the shoures, 
That it renueth that was old and dede, 
In winter time ; and out of ever}' sede 
Springeth the hearbe, so that every wight 
Of this season wexeth glad and light. . . . 

In which (grove) were okes great, stieiglit as a line, 
Under the which the grasse so fresh of hew 
Was newly sprong, and an eight foot or nine 
Every tree well fro his fellow grew.' 

He must forget himself in the vague felicity of the country, and, liko 
Dante, lose himself in ideal light and allegory. The dreams of love, to 
continue true, must not take a too visible form, nor enter into a too 
consecutive history ; they must float in a misty distance ; the soul 'l^ 
which they hover cannot think of the laws of existence; it inhabits 
another world ; it forgets itself in the ravishing emotion which troubles 
it, and sees its well-loved visions rise, mingle, come and go, as in 
summer we see the bees on a hill- slope flutter in a haze of light, and 
circle round and round the flowers. 

One morning,^ a lady sings, I entered at the dawn of day, I entered 
an oak-grove 

* With branches brode, laden with leves new, 
That sprongen out ayen the sunne-shene, 
Some very red, and some a glad light gi-ene. ... * 

And I, that all this pleasaunt sight sie. 
Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire 
Of the eglentere, that certainely 
There is no liert, I deme, in such dispaire, 
Ke with thoughts froward and contraire. 
So overlaid, but it should soone have bote, 
If it had 'ones felt this savour sote. 

And as I stood, and cast aside mine eie, 
I was ware of the fairest medler tree 
That ever yet in all my life I sie, 
As full of blossomes as it might be ; 
Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile 

' The Flower and the Leaf, vi. p. 344, v. 6-32. ^ 7/,^^ p 345^ ^33 



I 



«:hap. II! j the new tongue. 317 

Fro boiigh to bough ; and, as him list, he eet 
Here and there of buds and floures sweet. . . • 

And a3 I sat, the birds barkening thus, 
Methought that I heard voices sodainly. 
The most sweetest and most delicious 
That ever any wight, I trow truly, 
Heard in their life, for the armony 
And sweet accord was in so good musike^ 
That the voice to angels most was like.** 

Hien she sees arrive ' a world of ladies ... in surcotes white ol 
velvet ... set with emerauds ... as of great pearles round and 
orient, and diamonds fine and rubies red.' And all had on their head 
* a rich fret of gold . . . full of stately riche stones set,' with * a 
chapelet of branches fresh and grene . . . some of laurer, some of 
woodbind, some of agnus castus ; ' and at the same time came a train 
of valiant k^/lghts in splendid array, with 'harneis' of red gold, shining 
in the sun, and noble steeds, with trappings * of cloth of gold, and 
furred with ermine.' These knights and dames were the servants of 
the Leaf, and they sate under a great oak, at the feet of their queen. 

From the other side came a bevy of ladies as resplendent as the 
first, but crowned with fresli flowers. These were the servants of the 
Flower. They alighted, and began to dance in the meadow. But 
heavy clouds appeared in the sky, and a storm broke out. They 
wished to shelter themselves under the oak, but there was no more 
room; they ensconced themselves as they could in the hedges and 
brambles ; the rain came down and spoiled their garlands, stained their 
robes, and washed away their ornaments ; when the sun returned, they 
went to ask succour from the queen of the Leaf ; she, being merci- 
ful, consoled them, repaired the injury of the rain, and restored their 
original beauty. Thsn all disappears as in a dream. 

The lady W33 astonished, when suddenly a fair dame appeared 
and instructed her. She learned that the servants of the Leaf had 
lived like brave knights, and those of the Flower had loved idleness 
and pleasure. She promises to serve the Leaf, and came away. 

Is this an allegory ? There is at least a lack of wit. There is no 
ingenious enigma ; it is dominated by fancy, and the poet thinks only 
of displaying in soft verse the fleeting and brilliant train which had 
amused his mind and charmed his eyes. 

Chaucer himself, on the first of May, rises and goes out into the 
meadows. Love enters his heart with the warm sweet air ; the land- 
scape is transfigured, and the birds begin to speak : 

* There sate I downe among the faire floura^ 
And saw the birds trip out of hir bom's, 

» The Flower and the Leaf, vi. p. 246, v. 78-13a 



H8 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

Tliere as they rested hem all the night. 
They were so joy full of the dayes light, 
They began of May for to done honoura. 

They coud that service all by rote, 
There was many a lovely note. 
Some song loud as they had plained. 
And some in other manner voice yfained 
And some all out with the ful throte. 

The proyned hem and made hem right gay, 
And daunceden, and lepten on the spray, 
And evermore two and two in fere, 
Kight so as they had chosen hem to yere. 
In Feverere upon saint Valentines day. 

And the river that I sate upon. 
It made such a noise as it ron, 
Accordaunt with the birdes armony, 
Methought it was the best melody 
That might ben yheard of any mon.'* 

This confused harmony of vague noises troubles the sense ; a secret 
languor enters the soul. The cuckoo throws his monotonous voice 
like a mournful and tender sigh between the white ash-tree boles ; the 
nightingale makes his triumphant notes roll and rush above the leafy 
canopy ; fancy breaks in unsought, and Chaucer hears them dispute of 
Love. They sing alternately an antistrophic song, and the nightingale 
weeps for vexation to hear the cuckoo speak in depreciation of Love. 
He is consoled, however, by the poet's voice, seeing that he also sxiffers 
with him : 

* ** For love and it hath doe me much wo." 
** Ye, use " (quod she) "this medicine 
Every day this May or thou dine 
Go looke upon the fresh daisie. 
And though thou be for wo in point to die, 
That shall full greatly lessen thee of thy pine. 

** And looke alway that thou be good and trew, 

And I wol sing one of the songes new, 

For love of thee, as loud as I may crie : ** 

And than she began this song full hie, 

** I shrewe all hem that been of love untrue.'* *• 

To such exquisite delicacies love, as with Petrarch, had carried 
poetry ; by refinement even, as with Petrarch, it is lost now and then 
in its wit, conceits, clenches. But a marked characteristic at once 
separates it from Petrarch. Chaucer, if over-excited, is also graceful, 
polished, full of light banter, half-mockeries, fine sensual gaiety, some* 

* The Cuckow and NigJitingale, vi. p. 121, ■o. 37-85. 
Ibid. p. 126, V, 230-241. 



OHAP. lll.l THE NEW TONGUE. 119 

whiit gossipy, as the Frencli always paint love. He follows his true 
masters, and is himself an elegant speaker, facile, ever ready to smile, 
loving choice pleasures, a disciple of the Roman de la Rose, and much 
less Italian than French.^ The bent of French character makes of love 
not a passion, but a gay feas-t, tastefully arranged, in which the service 
is elegant, the food exquisite, the silver brilliant, the two guests in full 
dress, in good humour, quick to anticipate and please each other, know- 
ing how to keep up the gaiety, and when to part. In Chaucer, without 
doubt, this other altogether worldly view runs side by side with the 
sentimental element. If Tro'ilus is a weeping lover, his uncle Pandarus 
is a lively rascal, who volunteers for a singular service with amusing 
urgency, frank immorality, and carries it out carefully, gratuitously, 
thoroughly. In these pretty attempts Chaucer accompanies him as far 
as possible, and is not shocked. On the contrary, he makes fun out of 
it. At the critical moment, with transparent hypocrisy, he shelters 
himself under his character as author. If you find the particulars free, 
he says, it is not my fault ; * so writen clerks in hir bokes old,' and ' I 
mote, aftir min auctour, telle . . .* Not only is he gay, but he jests 
from end to end of the tale. He sees clearly through the tricks of 
feminine modesty ; he laughs at it maliciously, knowing well what is 
behind ; he seems to be saying, finger on lip : ' Hush I let the grand 
words roll on, you will be edified presently.' We are, in fact, edified ; 
BO is he, and in the nick of time he goes away, carrying the light: 

* For ought I can aspies, this light nor I ne serven here of nought.' 

* Tro'ilus,' says uncle Pandarus, *if ye be wise, sweveneth not now, 
lest more folke arise.' Tro'ilus takes care not to swoon ; and Cres- 
sida at last, being alone with him, speaks wittily and with prudent 
delicacy; there is here an exceeding charm, no coarseness. Their 
happiness covers all, even voluptuousness, as with profusion and per« 
fume of heavenly roses. At most a slight spice of malice flavours it : 
*and gode thrift he had full oft.' Tro'ilus holds his mistress in his 
arms : * with worse hap God let us never mete.' The poet is almost as 
well pleased as they : for him, as for the men of his time, the sovereign 
good is love, not damped, but satisfied ; they ended even by thinking 
such love a merit. The ladies declared in their judgments, that when 
0R8 loved, one could refuse nothing to the beloved. Love has the: force 
Cif law ; it is inscribed in a code ; they combine it with religion ; and 
there is a sacrament of love, in which the birds in their anthems sing 
matins.^ Cliaucer curses with all his heart the covetous wretches, the 
business men, who treat it as a folly : 

• As would God, the wretches that despise 
Service of love had eares also long 
As had Mida, ful of covetise, . . . 

* Stendhal, On Love : the difference of Love-taste and Love-passion. 
' The Court of Love, about 1353 et seq. See also the TeMamevt of Lox^ 



120 THE SOURCE. ;;book I 

To tcachen hem, that they been in the vice 
And lovers not, although they hold hem nice^ 
. . . God yeve hem mischaimce, 
And every lover in his trouth avaunce,'* 

He clearly lacks severity, so rare in southern literature. The Italian! 
in the middle age made joy into a virtue ; and you perceive that the 
world of chivalry, as conceived by the French, expanded morality so af 
to confound it with pleasure. 

IV. 

There are other characteristics still more gay. The true Gallic 
literature crops up ; obscene tales, practical jokes on one's neighbour, 
not shrouded in the Ciceronian style of Boccacio, but related lightly by a 
man in good humour;^ above all, active malice, the trick of laughing at 
your neighbour's expense. Chaucer displays it better than Rutebeuf, 
and sometimes better than La Fontaine. He does not knock his men 
down; he pricks them as he passes, not from deep hatred or indigna- 
tion, but through sheer nimbleness of disposition, and quick sense of 
the ridiculous ; he throws his jokes at them by handfuls. His man of 
law is more a man of business than of the world : 

* Nowher so besy a man as he ther n'as, 
And yet he semed besier than he was. ' • 

His three burgesses : 

* Everich, for the wisdom that he can 
"VVas shapelich for to ben an alderman. 
For catel hadden they ynough and rent, 
And eke hir wives wolde it wel assent. ' * 

Of the mendicant Friar he says : 

* His wallet lay beforne him in his lappe, 
Bret-ful of pardon come from Rome al bote.** 

The mockery here comes from the heart, in the French manner, with 
out effort, calculation, or vehemence. It is so pleasant and so natural 
to banter one's neighbour I Sometimes the lively vein becomes so abun* 
dant, that it furnishes an entire comedy, indelicate certainly, but so free 
and easy 1 Such a one is the portrait of the Wife of Bath, who h&J 
buried five husbands : 

* Bold was hire face, and fayre and rede of hew. 

She was a worthy woman all hive live ; 
Housbondes at the chirclie dore had she had five, 
AVithouten other compagnie in youthe. . . . 

' Troilus and Cressida, vol. v. iii. pp. 44, 45. 

* The st )iy of the pear-tree (Merchant's Tale), and of the cradle (Reeve's Tale\ 
for instance, in the Canterbury Tales. 

' Ibid. prol. D. 10. v. 333. * Ibid, p. 12, d. 373. » Ibid, t 31 o 688. 



rUAP. 1]!.] THE NEW TONGUE. 12| 

In all the parish wif ne was ther non, 
That to the offring before hire shulde gon. 
And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, 
That she was out of alle charitee. ' * 

What a tongue she has ! Impertinei*, full of vanity, boW, cliattering, 
unbridled, she silences everybody, and holds forth for an hour before 
coining to her tale. We hear her grating, high-pitched, loud, clear 
voice, wherewith she deafened her husbands. She continually harps 
upon the same ideas, repeats her reasons,, piles them up and con* 
founds them, like a stubborn mule who runs along shaking and ringing 
his bells, so that the stunned listeners remain open-mouthed, wondering 
that a single tongue can spin out so many words. The subject was 
worth the trouble. She proves that she did well to marry five hus- 
bands, and she proves it clearly, like a woman used to arguing : 

* God had us for to wex and multiplie ; 
That gentil text can I wel understond ; 
Eke wel I wot, he sayd, that min husbond 
Shuld leve fader and moder, and take to me ; 
But of nc noumbre mention made he, 
Of bigamie or of octogamie ; 
Why shuld men than speke of it vilanie ? 
Lo here the wise king Dan Solomon, 
I trow he hadde wives mo than on, 
(As wolde God it leful were to me 
To be refreshed half so oft as he, ) 
Which a gift of God had he for alle his wiv^ f . , . 
Blessed be God that I have wedded five. 
Welcome the sixthe whan that ever he shall. . . • 
He (Christ) spake to hem that wold live parfitly. 
And lordings, (by your leve) that am nat I ; 
I wol bestow the flour of all myn age 
In th' actes and the fruit of mariage. . , , 
An husbond wol I have, I wol not lette, 
Which shal be both my dettour and my thrall. 
And have his tribulation withall 
' Upon his flesh, while that I am his wif.'* 

Here Cbnucer has the freedom of Moliere, and we possess it no 
longer. His good wife justifies marriage in terms just as technical as 
Sganarelle. It behoves us to turn the pages quickly, and follow in the 
lump only this Odyssey of marriage. The experienced wife, who has 
journeyed through life with five husbands, knows the art of taming 
them, and relates how she persecuted them with jealousy, suspicion, 
grumbling, quarrels, blows given and received ; how the husband, non- 

* Canterbury Tales ii. prologue, p. 14 «• 460. 

« Ibid. ii. Wife of Bath's Prologue, p. 168, v. 5610-5739. 



laa THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

plussed by the continuity of the tempest, stooped at last, accepted the 
halter, and turned the domestic mill like a conjugal and resigned ass: 

* For as an liors, I coude bite and whine ; 

I coude plain, and I was in the gilt. . • • 

I plained first, so was our werre ystint. 

They were ful glad to excusen hem ful blivo 

Of thing, the which they never agilt hir live, . « • 

I swore that all my walking out by night 

"Was for to espien wenches that he dight. . , • 

For though the pope had sitten hem beside, 

I wold not spare hem at hir owen bord. . , • 

But certainly I made folk swiche chere, 

That in his OAVcn grese I made him frie 

For anger, and for veray jalousie. 

By God, in erth I was his purgatorie, 

For which I hope his soule be in glorie. ' * 

She saw the fifth first at the burial of the fourth : 

* And Jankin oure clerk was on of tho : 

As helpe me God, whan that I saw him go 
Aftir the here, me thought he had a pairo 
Of legges and of feet, so clene and faire, 
That all my lierte I yave unto his hold. 
He was, I trow, a twenty winter old. 
And I was fourty, if I shal say soth. • • • 
As helpe me God, I was a lusty on, 
■ And faire, and riche, and yonge, and well begon.'* 

What a speech! "Was human delusion ever more happily painted? 
How lifelike is all, and how facile I It is the satire of marriage. Yow 
will find it twenty times in Chaucer. Nothing more is wanted to ex- 
haust the two subjects of French mockery, than to unite with the satire 
of marriage the satire of religion. 

It is here; and Rabelais is not more bitter. The monk whom 
Chaucer paints is a hypocrite, a jolly fellow, who knows good inns and 
jovial hosts better than the poor and the houses of charity : 

* A Frere there was, a wanton and a mery . • • 
Ful wel beloved, and familier was he 

With frank eleins over all in his con tree, 

And eke with worthy wimmen of the toun. . • • 

Full swetely herde he confession, 

And plesant was his absolution. 

He was an esy man to give penance, 

Ther as he wiste to han a good pitance : 

For unto a poure ordre for to give 

Is signe that a man is wel y shrive. . . . 

And knew wel the tavernes in every toun, 

^ Qmterlury Tales, ii. Wife of Bath's Prologue, p. 170 t. 5968-6073 ,~~^ 
» Ibid. p. 185, V. 6177-6188. 



I 'HA p. in.] THE NEW TO.NGUE. 193 

And every hosteler and gay tapstere, 
Better than a lazar and a beggere. . . . 
It is not honest, it may not avance, 
As for to delen with no swich pouraille, 
But all with riche and sellers of ritaille. . . • 
For many a man so hard is of his herte. 
He may not wepe, although him sore smerta. 
Therfore in stede of weping and pvaieres, 
Men mote give silver to the poure freres. ' * 

This lively irony had an exponent before in Jean de ^Teung. But 
Chaucer pushes it further, and sets it in action. His monk begs from 
house to house, holding out his wallet : 

* In every hous he gan to pore and prie, 

And begged mele and chese, or elles corn. ... 

** Yeve us a bushel whete, or malt, or reye, 

A Goddes kichel, or a trippe of chese, 

Or elles what you list, we may not chese ; 

A Goddes halfpeny, or a masse peny ; 

Or yeve us of yoiir braun, if ye have any, 

A dagon of your blanket, leve dame, 

Our suster dere, (lo here I write your name)." . . . 

And whan that he was out at dore, anon, 

He planed away the names everich on. ' * 

He has kept for the end of his tour, Thomas, one of his most liberal 
clients. He finds him in bed, and ill ; here is an excellent fruit to suck 
and squeeze : 

* "God wot," quod he, "laboured have I ful sore, 
And specially for thy salvation, 

Have I sayd many a precious orison. . . . 

I have this day ben at your chirche at messe . • , 

And ther I saw our dame, a, wher is she ? *" • 

The dame enters : 

* This frere ariseth up ful curtisly, 

And hire embraceth in his armes narwe, 

And kisseth hire swete and chirketh as a sparwe.** . • • 

Then, in his sweetest and most caressing voice, he compliments her, 
and says : 

* " Thanked be God that you yaf soule and lif. 
Yet saw I not this day so faire a wif 

In all the chirche, God so save me.'"* 

Have we not here already Tartuffe and Elmire ? But the monk is with 
a farmer, and can go more straight and quick to his task. Complimenti 

• Canterbury Tales, prologue, ii. p. 7, v. 208 et passim. 

• lUd. The Sompnoures Tole, ii. p. 220, 'v. 7319-7340. 

• Thid. p. 221 V. 736G. < Ibid. p. 221, r\ 7384. " Bid. p. 222, v /389. 



124 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

ended, he thinks of the substance, and asks the lady to let him talk 
alone with Thomas. He must inquire after the state of his soul : 

• ** I wol with Thomas speke a litel throw; 
Thise curates ben so negligent and slow 
To gropen tendrely a conscience. . , , 

Now, dame," quod he, **^'eo vous die sanz doute^ 

Have I nat of a capon but tlie liver, 

And of your white bred nat but a shiver, 

And after that a rosted pigges hed, 

(But I ne wolde for me no beest were ded,) 

Than had I with you homly suffisance. 

I am a man of litel sustenance. 

My spirit hath his fostring in the Bible. 

My body is ay so redy and penible 

To waken, that my stomak is destroied.'"* 

Poor man, he raises his hands to heaven, and ends with a sigh 

The wife tells him her child died a fortnight before. Straightway 
he composes a miracle ; was he not earning his money ? He had a 
revelation of this death in the * dortour ' of the convent ; he saw the 
child carried to paradise ; he rose with liis brothers, ' with many a tere 
trilling on our cheke,' and they sang a Te Deum : 

* ** For, sire and dame, trusteth me right wel. 
Our orisons ben more eflfectuel, 

And more we seen of Cristes secree thinges 

Than borel folk, although that they be kinges. 

We live in poverte, and in abstinence. 

And borel folk in richesse and dispence. . . . 

Lazar and Dives liveden diversely. 

And divers guerdon hadden they therby.*"' 

Presently he spurts out a whole sermon, in monkish style, with mam 
fest intention. The sick man, wearied, replies that he has already 
given half his fortune to all kinds of monks, and yet he continually 
suffers. Listen to the grieved exclamation, the true anger of the 
mendicant monk, who sees himself threatened by the meeting with a 
brother to share his client, his revenue, hi? booty, his food-suppliet: 

*The frere answered : ** Thomas, dost thou so? 
AVliat nedeth you diverse freres to seche ? 
What nedeth him that hath a parfit leche, 
To sechen other leches in the toun ? 
Your inconstance is your confusion. 
Hold ye than me, or elles our covent, 
To pray for you ben insufficient ? 
Thomas, that jape n' is not worth a mite, 
Your maladie is for we han to lite.*"* 



' Canterbury Tales, ii. The Sompnoures Tale, p. 232, v. 7397-7429. 
• Ihid. p. 223 ». 7450-7460. » lUd. p. 226, ». 7536-7544. 



CHAP III. THE NEW TONGUE. 125 

Recognise the great orator ; he employs even the grand style to keep 
the supplies from being cut off : 

* " A, yeve that coveut half a quarter otes ; 
And yeve that covent four and twentj" grotea ; 
And yeve that frere a peny, and let him go j 
Nay, nay, Thomas, it may no thing be so. 
What is a ferthing worth parted on twelve ? 
Lo, eche thing that is oned in himselve 
Is more strong, than whan it is yscatered . . « 
Thou woldest han our labour al for nought."** 

Ihen ne begins again his sermon in a louder tone, shouting At ea«h 
word, quoting examples from Seneca and the classics, a terrible fluency, 
a trick of his trade, which, diligently applied, must draw money from 
the patient. He asks for gold, * to make our cloistre,' 

•...** And yet, God wot, uneth the fundament 
Parfourmed is, ne of our pavement 
N' is not a tile yet within our wones : 
By God, we owen fourty pound for stones. 
Now help, Thomas, for him that harwed helle, 
For elles mote we oure bokes selle, 
And if ye lacke oure predication, 
Than goth this world all to destniction. 
For who so fro this world wold us hereve, 
So God me save, Thomas, by your leve. 
He wold hereve out of this world the sonne."** 

In the end, Thomas, in a rage, promises him a gift, tells him to put his 
hand in the bed and take it, and sends him away duped, mocked, and 
defiled. 

We have descended now to popular farce : when amusement must 
be had at any price, it is sought, as here, in broad jokes, even in 
filthiness. We can see how these two coarse and vigorous plants have 
blossomed in the dung of the middle age. Planted by the cunning 
men of Champagne and Ile-de-France, watered by the trouveres, they 
were destined fully to expand, bespattered and ruddy, in the hands of 
Rabelais. Meanwhile Chaucer plucks his nosegay irom it. Deceived 
husbands, tricked innkeepers, accidents in bed, kicks, and robberies,— 
these s\ifFiee to raise a hearty laugh. Side by side with noble pictit'es 
of chiv ilry, he gives us a train of Flemish grotesque figures, carpen- 
ters, joiners, friars, summoners; blows abound, fists descend on fleshy 
backs; many nudities are shown; they swindle one another out of 
their corn, their wives ; they pitch one another out of a window ; they 
brawl and quarrel. A bruise, a piece of open filthiness, passes in such 
society for a sign of wit. The summoner, being rallied by the friar, 
gives him tit for tat : 

» Cantrrhury Tales, ii. The Sompnourea Tale, p. ?.26, 'O. 7545-7553 
« Ibid. p. 330. V. 7685-7G95. 



lati THE SOURCE. [BiJOK 1 

• "This Frere hostetli that he knoweth helle, 
And, God it \t'ot, that is but litcl wonder, 
Freres and fendes ben but litel asonder. 
For parde, ye ban often time herd telle 
How that a Frere ravished was to helle 
In spirit ones by a visioun, 
And as an angel lad him up and doun. 
To shewen him the peines that ther were, ... 
And unto Satlianas he lad him doun. 
(And now hath Sathanas," saith he, " a tayl 
Broder than of a carrike is the sayl.) 
Hold up thy tayl, thou Sathanas, quod he, 

and let the Frere see 

Wher is the nest of Freres in this place. 
And er than half a furlong way of space, 
Right so as bees out swarmen of an hive. 
Out of the devils . . . ther gonnen to drive, 
A twenty thousand Freres on a route, 
And thurghout hell they swarmed al aboute, 
And com agen, as fast as they may gon.'** * 

Such were the coarse buffooneries of the popular imaginatioa, 

V. 

It is high time to return to Chaucer himself. Beyond the two 
notable characteristics whicli settle his place in his age and school if 
poetry, there are others which take him out of his age and school. If 
he was romantic and gay like the rest, it was after a fashion of his own. 
He observes characters, notes their differences, studies the coherence of 
their parts, endeavours to bring forward living and distinct persons, — 
a thing unheard of in his time, but which the renovators in the six- 
teenth century, and first amongst them Shakspeare, will do afterw\irds. 
It is the English positive good sense, and aptitude for seeing the inside 
of things, beginning to appear. A new spirit, almost manly, pierces 
through, in literature as in painting, with Chaucer as with Van Eyck, 
with both at the same time ; no longer the childish imitation of 
chivalrous life* or monastic devotion, but the grave spirit of inquiry 
and craving for deep truths, whereby art becomes complete. For the 
first tim^>, in Chaucer as in Van Eyck, character stands out in relief; 
its parts are held together ; it is no longer an unsubstantial phantom. 
You may comprehend its past and see its present action. Its externals 
manifest the personal and incommunicable details of its inner nature, 
and the infinite complexity of its economy and motion. To this day, 
after four centuries, that character is individuaUsed, and typical; it 
remains distinct in our memory, like the creations of Shakspeare and 

' Canterbury Tales, ii. The Sompnour's Prologue, p. 217, v. 7254-7279. 
• See in The Canterbury Tales the Rhyme of Sir Topas, a parody on the chivat 
ie histories. Each character there seems a precursor of Cervantes. 



c'HAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. • 127 

Rubens. We observe this growth in the very act. Not only does 
Chaucer, like Boccacio, bind his tales into a single history ; but in 
addition — and this is wanting in Boccacio — he begins witli tlie portrait 
of all his narrators, knight, summoner, man of law, monk, bailiff or 
reeve, host, about thirty distinct figures, of every sex, condition, age, 
each painted with his disposition^ face, costume, turns of speech, littlo 
significant actions, habits, antecedents, each maintained in his character 
by his talk and subsequent actions, so well, that we can discern here, 
before any other nation, the germ of the domestic novel as we write 
it to-day. Think of the portraits of the franklin, the miller, the men- 
dicant friar, and merchant. There are plenty of others Avhich show the 
broad brutalities, the coarse tricks, and the pleasantries of vulgar life, as 
well as the gross and plentiful feastings of sensual life. Here and there 
honest old soldiers, who double their fists, and tuck up their sleeves ; 
or the contented beadles, who, when they have drunk, Avill speak 
nothing but Latin. But by the side of these there are select characters ; 
the knight, who went on a crusade to Granada and Prussia, brave and 
courteous : 

* And though that he was worthy he was wise, 
And of his port as meke as is a niayde. 

He never yet no vilanie ne sayde 

Jn alle his lif, unto no manere wight, 

He was a veray parfit gentil knight.'* 

* With him, ther was his sone, a yonge Squier, 
A lover, and a lusty bacheler, 

"With lockes crull as they were laide in prease. 
Of twenty yere ot age he was I gesse. 
Of his stature he was of even lengthe, 
And wonderly deliver, and grete of strengtha 
And he hadde be somtime in chevachie. 
In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie, 
And borne him wel, as of so litel space, 
In hope to stonden in his ladies grace. 

Embrouded was he, as it were a mede 
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede. 
Singing he was, or floyting alle the day. 
He was as fresshe, as is the monetli of May. 
Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide. 
Wel conde he sitte on hors, and fajo-e ride. 
He coude songes make, and wel endite, 
Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write. 
So hote he loved, that by nightertale 
He slep no more than doth the nightingale. 
Curteis he was, lowly and servisable. 
And carf befor his fader at the table. '' 

There is also a poor and learned clerk of Oxford ; and finer still, snt! 
» Prologue to Canterhury Tales, ii. p. 3, v. 6S-72. * Ibid. p. 3, v. 79-100- 



128 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

more worthy of a modern hand, the Prioress, * Madame Eglantine,* wha 
fts a nun, a maiden, a great lady, is ceremonious, and shows sign of 
exquisite taste. Would a better be found now-a-days in a German 
chapter, amid the most modest and lively bevy of sentime».*al aad 
Ulerary canonesses ? 

* Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, 
That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy ; 
Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy ; 
And she was cleped Madame Eglentine, 
Fill wel slie sange the service devine, 
Entuned in hire nose ful swetely ; 
And Frenche she spake ful fayi-e and fetidy, 
After the scole of Stratford-atte-bowe, 
For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. 
At mete was she wel ytauglite withalle ; 
She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, 
Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. 
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe, 
Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest. 
In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest. 
Hir over lippe wiped she so <lene, 
That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene 
Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught, 
Ful semely after hire mete she raught. 
And sikerly she was of grete disport, 
And ful plesant, and amiable of port, 
And peined hire to contrefeten chere 
Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, 
And to ben holden digne of reverence.'* 

Are you offended by these provincial affectations ? On the contrary, it 

is delightful to behold these nice and pretty ways, these little affecta- 
tions, the waggery and prudery, the half-worldly, half-monastic smile. 
We inhale a delicate feminine perfume, preserved and grown eld under 
the stomacher : 

* But for to speken of hire conscience, 

She was so charitable and so pitous, 

She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous 

Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. 

Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde 

With rested flesh, and milk, and wastel brede* 

But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, 

Or if men smote it with a yerde smert : 

And all was conscience and tendre hert*.'* 

Many elderly ladies throw themselves into such affections as these, tat 
lack of others. Elderly I what an objectionable word have I employed I 
She was not elderly : 

» Prologue to Canterbury Tales, ii. p. 4, v. 118-141. » Ibid. p. 5, « 142-150 



<^UAP III.] THE NEW TONGUE. 



129 



• Ful sejttely hire wimple yplnched «ras, 
Hire nose tretis ; hire eyen grey as glas ; 
Hire mouth ful smale, and therto soft and red ; 
But sikerly she hadde a fayre forehed. 
It was almost a spanne brode I trowe ; 
For harcily she was not undergrowe. 

Ful fetise was hire cloke, as I was ware. 
01' small corall aboute hire arm she bare 
A pair of bedes, gauded al with grene ; 
And thereon heng a broche ot gold ful sheuo, 
On wliiche was first ywriten a crouned A, 
And after, Amor vincit omnia/ ^ 

A pretty ambiguous device for gallantry or devotion; the lady wai 
botli of the world and the cloister : of the world, you may see it in her 
dress; of the cloister, you gather it from 'another Nonne also with 
hire hadde she, that was hire chapelleine, and Preestes thre;' from the 
Ave Maria which she sings, the long edifying stories which she relates. 
She is like a fresh, sweet, and ruddy cherry, made to ripen in the 
sun, but which, preserved in an ecclesiastical jar, is candied and made 
msipid in the syrup. 

Such is the reflection which begins to dawn, such the high art. 
Chaucer studies here, rather than aims at amusement; he ceases to 
gossip, and thinks; instead of surrendering himself to the f^icility of 
glowing improvisation, he plans. Each tale is suited to the teller: the 
young squire relates a fantastic and Oriental history ; the tipsy miller 
a loose and comical story ; the honest clerk the touching legend of 
Griselda. All these tales are bound together, and that much better 
than by Boccacio, by little veritable incidents, which spring from the 
»;haracters of the personages, and such as we light upon in our travels. 
The horsemen ride on in good humour in the sunshine, in the open 
country ; they converse. The miller has drunk too much ale, and will 
speak, * and for no man forbere.' The cook goes to sleep on his beast, 
and they play practical jokes on him. The monk and the summoner 
get up a dispute about their respective lines of business. The host 
restores peace, makes them speak or be silent, like a man who has 
long presided in the inn parlour, and who has often had to check 
brawlers. They pass judgment on the stories they listen to: declaring 
that there are few Griseldas in the world; laughing at the misadven- 
tures of the tricked carpenter ; drawing a lesson from the moral tale. 
The poem is no longer, as in contemporary literature, a mere procession, 
but a painting in which the contrasts are arranged, the attitudes chosen, 
the general effect calculated, so that life is invigorated ; we forget our- 
selves at the sight, as in the case of every life-like work ; and we con- 
ceive the desire to get on horsjjback on a fine sunny morning, and 

* Prologue to Ganterhm'y Tales, v. 151-162. 
I 



130 THE SOURCE. JsUi)tL 1 

canter along green meadows with the pilgrims to the shrine of the good 
saint of Canterbury. 

AVeigh the value of this general effect. Is it a dream or not, in 
its maturity or infancy ? The whole future is before us. Savages or 
half savages, warriors of the Heptarchy or knights of the middle-age; 
up to this period, no one had reached to this point. They had strange 
emotions, tender at times, and they expressed them each according t<? 
the gift of his race, some by short cries, others by continuous babblo. 
But they did not command or guide their impressions ; they sang oi 
conversed by impulse, at hazard, according to the bent of their disposi- 
tion, leaving their ideas to present themselves, and to take the lead ; 
and when they hit upon order, it was ignorantly and involuntarily. 
Here for the first time appears a superiority of intellect, which at the 
instant of conception suddenly halts, rises above itself, passes judgment, 
and says to itself, * This phrase tells the same thing as the last — remove 
it; these two ideas are disjointed — bind them together; this descrip- 
tion is feeble — reconsider it.' When a man can sj^eak thus he has an 
idea, not learned in the schools, but personal and practical, of the 
human mind, its process and needs, and of things also, their composi- 
tion and combinations ; he has a style, that is, he is capable of making 
everything understood and seen by the human mind. He can extract 
from every object, landscape, situation, character, the special and signi- 
ficant marks, so as to group and arrange them, to compose an artificia? 
work which surpasses the natural work in its purity and completeness 
He is capable, as Chaucer was, of seeking out in the old common forest 
of the middle-ages, stories and legends, to replant them in his own soil, 
and make them send out new shoots. He has the right and the power,. 
as Chaucer had, of copying and translating, because by dint of retouch- 
ing he impresses on his translations and copies his original mark ; h( 
recreates what he imitates, because through or by the side of worn-out 
fancies and monotonous stories, he can display, as Chaucer did, the 
charming ideas of an amiable and elastic mind, the thirty master-forms 
of the fourteenth century, the splendid freshness of the moist landscape 
and spring-time of England. He is not far from conceiving an idea of 
huth and life. He is on the brink of independent thought and fertile 
discovery. This was Chaucer's position. At the distance of a century 
and a half, he has affinity with the poets of Elizc.beth^ by his gallery 
of pictures, and with the reformers of the sixteenth century by his 
portrait of the good parson. 

Afiinity merely. He advanced a few steps beyond the threshold d 

' Tennyson, in his Dream of Fair Women, sings : 

* Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath 
Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill 
The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
With sounds that echo still.' — Tr. 



CUiiP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. 13] 

his art, but he paused in the vestibule. He half opens the great door 
of the temple, but does not take his seat there ; at most, he sat down 
at intervals. In Arcite and Palamon, in Tro'ilus and Cressida, he 
sketches sentiments, but does not create characters ; he easily and 
ingeniously traces the winding course of events and conversations, but 
does not mark the precise outline of a striking figure. If occasionally, 
as in the description of the temple of Mars, after the Thehaid of Statins, 
feeimg at his back the glowing breeze of poetry, he draws out his i^tt^ 
clogged with the mud of the middle-age, and at a bound stands upon 
the poetic plain on which Statins imitated Virgil and equalled Lucan, 
he, at other times, again falls back into the childish gossip of the 
trouveres, or the stale pedantry of learned clerks — to ' Dan Phebus or 
ApoUo-Delphicus.' Elsewhere, a commonplace remark on art intrudes 
in the midst of an impassioned description. He uses three thousand 
verses to conduct Troilus to his first interview. He is like a preco- 
cious and poetical child, who mingles in his love-dreams quotations 
from his prayer-book and recollections of his alphabet.^ Even in the 
Canterbury Tales he repeats himself, unfolds artless developments, for- 
gets to concentrate his passion or his idea. He begins a jest, and 
scarcely ends it. He dilutes a bright colouring in a monotonous stanza. 
His voice is like that of a boy breaking into manhood. At first a 
manly and firm accent is maintained, then a shrill sweet sound shows 
that his growth is not finished, and that his strength is subject to weak- 
ness. Chaucer sets out as if to quit the middle-age ; but in the end he 
is there still. To-day he composes the Canterbury Tales ; yesterday he 
was translating the Roman de la Hose. To-day he is studying the com- 
plicated machinery of the heart, discovering the issues of primitive 
education or of the ruling disposition, and realising the comedy of 
manners ; to-morrow, he will have no pleasure but in curious events, 
smooth allegories, amorous discussions, imitated from the French, or 
learned moralities from the ancients. Alternately he is an observer 
and a trouvere ; instead of the step he ought to have advanced, he has 
but made a Iialf-step. 

Who tJis prevented him, and the others who svirround him ? We 
meet with the obstacle in his tale of Melibeus, of the Parson^ in his 
Testament of Love; in short, so long as he writes verse, he is at his 
ease ; as soon as he takes to prose, a sort of chain winds around his feet 
and stops him. His imagination is free, and his reasoning a slave. 
The rigid scholastic divisions, the mechanical manner of arguing and 

' Speaking of Cressida, iv., book i. p. 236, he says : 
' Right as our first letter is now an a, 
In beautie first so stood slie makeles. 
Her goodly looking gladed all the prees, 
Nas never seene thing to be praised so derre, 
Nor under cloude blacke so bright a sterre.* 



132 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

replying, the ergo, the Latin quotations, the authority of Aristotle and 
the Fathers, come and weigh down his budding thought. His native 
invention disappears under the discipline imposed. The servitude is 
so heavy, that even in his Testament of Love^ amid the most touching 
plaints and the most smarting pains, the beautiful ideal lady whom he 
lias always served, the heavenly mediator who appears to him in a 
vision. Love, sets her theses, establishes that the cause of a cause is 
the cause of the thing caused, and reasons as pedantically as thsy 
would at Oxford. In what can talent, even genius, end, when it load.'i 
itself with such shackles? What succession of original truths and ne?/ 
doctrines could be found and proved, when in a moral tale, like that 
of Meliheus and his wife Pi adence, it was thought necessary to estab- 
lish a formal controversy, to quote Seneca and Job, to forbid tears, to 
bring forward the weeping Christ to authorise tears, to enumerate every 
proof, to call in Solomon, Cassiodorus, and Cato ; in short, to write a 
book for schools ? The public has only pleasant and lively thoughts ; 
not serious and general ideas ; they are retained in the possession of 
others. As soon as Chaucer gets into a reflective mood, straightway 
Saint Thomas, Peter Lombard, the manual of sins, the treatise on defi- 
nition and syllogism, the army of the ancients and of the Fathers, 
descend from their glory, enter his brain, speak in his stead ; and the 
trouvere's amiable voice becomes, though he has no suspicion of it, the 
dogmatic and sleep-inspiring voice of a doctor. In love and satire he 
has experience, and he invents; in what regards morality and philosophy 
he has learning, and remembers. For an instant, by a solitary leap, he 
entered upon the close observation and the genuine study of man ; he 
could not keep his ground, he did not take his seat, he took a poetic 
excursion; and no one followed him. The level of the century is 
lower; he is on it himself for the most part. He is in the company ol 
narrators like Froissart, of elegant speakers like Charles of Orleans, of 
gossipy and barren verse-writers like Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve. 
There is no fruit, but frail and fleeting blossom, many useless branches, 
still more dying or dead branches; such is this literature. And why? 
Because it had no longer a root ; after three centuries of efl'ort, a heavy 
instrument cut it underground. This instrument was the Scholastic 
Piiilosophy. 

VL 

Beneath every literature there is a philosophy. Beneath every work 
ef art is an idea of nature and of life; this idea leads the poet. Whether 
i,he author knows it or not, he writes in order to exhibit it ; and the 
characters which he fashions, like the events which he arranges, only 
serve to bring to light the dim creative conception which raises and com- 
bines them. Underlying Homer appears the noble life of heroic pagan- 
ism and of happy Greece. Underlying Dante, the sad and violent life of 
fanatical Catholicism and of the much-hating Italians. From either we 



CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. 133 

might draw a theory of man and of the beautiful. It is so with others; 
and this is how, according to the variations, the birth, blossom, death, 
or sluggishness of the master-idea, literature varies, is born, flourishes, 
degenerates, comes to an end. Whoever plants the one, plants the 
other ; whoever undermines the one, undermines the other. Place in 
all the minds of any age a new grand idea of nature and life, so that 
they feel and produce it with their whole heart and strength, and you 
will see them, seized with the craving to express it, invent forms of art 
and groups of figures. Take away from these minds every grand new 
idea of nature and life, and you will see them, deprived of the craving 
to express all-important thoughts, copy, sink into silence, or rave. 

What has become of these all-important thoughts ? What labour 
worked them out? What studies nourished them? The labourers 
did not lack zeal. In the twelfth century the energy of their minds 
was admirable. At Oxford there were thirty thousand scholars. No 
building in Paris could contain the crowd of Abelard's disciples ; when 
he retired to solitude, they accompanied him in such a multitude, that the 
desert became a town. No suffering repulsed them. There is a story 
of a young boy, who, though beaten by his master, was wholly bent 
on remaining with him, that he might still learn. When the terrible 
encyclopedia of Aristotle was introduced, all disfigured and unintelli- 
gible, it was devoured. The only question presented to them, that of 
universals, so abstract and dry, so embarrassed by Arabic obscurities 
and Greek subtilties, during three centuries, was seized upon eagerly. 
Heavy and awkward as was the instrument supplied to them, I mean 
syllogism, they made themselves masters of it, rendered it still more 
heavy, used it upon every object, in every sense. They constructed 
monstrous books, by multitudes, cathedrals of syllogism, of unheard of 
architecture, of prodigious exactness, heightened in effect by intensity 
of intellectual power, which the whole sum of human labour has only 
twice been able to match.^ These young and valiant minds thought 
they had found the temple of truth ; they rushed at it headlong, in 
legions, breaking in the doors, clambering over the walls, leaping into 
thf- interior, and so found themselves at the bottom of a moat. Three 
ceaturies of labour at the bottom of this black moat added no single 
id ia to the human mind. 

For consiier the questions which they treat of. They seem to be 
inarching, but are merely marking time. One would say, to see them 
moil and toil, that they Avill educe from heart and brain some great 
original creed ; all belief was imposed upon them from the outset. 

* Under Proclus and Hegel. Dnns Scotiis, at the age of thirty- one, died, leaving 
beside his sermons and connrientaries, twelve folio volumes, in a small close hand- 
writing, in a style like Hegel's, on the same subject as Proclus treats of. Similarly 
with Saint Thomas and the whole train of schoolmen. No idea can be formed of 
»ueh a labour before handling the books themselves. 



134 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 

The system was made ; they could only arrange and comment upon il 
The conception comes Hot from them, but from Constantinople. In- 
finitely complicated and subtle as it is, the finishing work of Orientoi 
mysticism and Greek metaphysics, so disproportioned to their young 
understanding, they exhaust themselves to reproduce it, and moreoTer 
burden their unpractised hands with the weight of a logical inslrameni 
which Aristotle created for theory and not for practice, and which ought 
to have remained in a cabinet of philosophical curiosities, without beh.'g 
ever carried into the field of action. ' Whetlier the divine essence 
engendered the Son, or was engendered by the Father ; why the three 
persons together are not greater than one alone ; attributes determine 
persons, not substance, that is, nature ; how pro[,erties can exist in 
the nature of God, and not determine it; if created spirits are local 
and circumscribed ; if God can know more things than He is aware 
of;'^ — these are the ideas which they moot : what trutli could is3U6 
thence? From hand to hand the chimera grows, and spreads wider ita 
gloomy wings. ' Can God cause that, the place and body being re- 
tained, the body shall have no position, that is, existence in place?-— 
Whether the impossibility of being engendered is a constituent property 
of the First Person of the Trinity — Whether identity, similitude, and 
equality are real relations in God.'^ Duns Scotus distinguishes three 
kinds of matter : matter Avhich is firstly first, secondly first, thirdly first. 
According to him, we must clear this triple hedge of thorny abstractions 
in order to understand the production of a sphere of brass. Under 
such a regimen, imbecility soon makes its appearance. Saint Thomas 
himself considers, ' whether the body of Christ arose with its wounds,— 
whether this body moves with the motion of the host and the chalice in 
consecration, — whether at the first instant of conception Christ had the 
use of free judgment, — whether Christ was slain by Himself or by 
another ? * Do you think you are at the limits of human folly ? Listen. 
He considers ' whether the dove in which the Holy Spirit appeared was 
a real animal, — whether a glorified body can occupy one and the same 
place at the same time as another glorified body, — whether in the state 
of innocence all children were masculine?' I pass over others as to the 
digestion of Christ, and some still more untranslatable,^ Ihis is the 
point reached by the most esteemed doctor, the most judicious m'.nfl, 
the Bossuet of the middle-age. Even in this ring of inanities tLft 

' Peter Lombard, Booh of Sentences. It was the classic of the inidd',e-age. 

» Duns Scotus, ed. 1639. 

' Utrum angelus diligat se ipsum dilectione natural! vel electiva ? Utnrrri in 
statu innocentice fuerit generatio per coitum ? Utrur.i omnes fuissent nati in sexu 
masculino? Utrum coguitio angeli posset dici malutina et vespertina? Utrum 
martyribus aureola debeatur ? Utrum virgo Maria fuerit virgo in concipiendo ? 
Utrum remanserit virgo post partum ? The reader would do well to look out iu 
the text the reply to these last two questions. (S. Thomas, Sumrna Theologhaf «d. 
1677.) 



CHAP III.] THE NEW TONGUE. 135 

answers are laid d(;wn. Eoscelin and Aoelard were excomintinicated, 
exiled imprisoned, because they swerved from it. There is a complete 
rninuts dogma which closes all issues; tliere is no means of escaping; 
after a hundred wriggles and a hundred efforts, you must come and 
tumble into a formula. If by mysticism you try to fly over their heads, 
if by experience you endeavour to creep beneath, powerful talons 
await you at your exit. The wise man passes for a magician, the en- 
lighteuL'd man for a heretic. The Waldenses, the Cathari, the dis- 
ciples of John of Parma, were burned ; Roger Bacon died only just in 
time, otherwise he might have been burned. Under this constraint 
men ceased to t^iink; for he who speaks of thought, speaks of an eQbrt 
at invention, an individual creation, an energetic action. They lecite 
a lesson, or sing a catechism ; even in paradise, even in ecstasy and the 
divinest raptures of love, Dante thinks himself bound to show an exact 
memory and a scholastic orthodoxy. How then with the rest? Some, 
like Raymond LuUy, set about inventing an instrument of reasoning to 
serve in place of the understanding. About the fourteenth century, 
under the blows of Occam, this verbal science began to totter ; they 
saw that it had no other substance but one of words ; it was discredited. 
In 1367, at Oxford, of thirty thousand students, there remained six thou- 
sand ; they still set their Barbara and Felapton, but only in the way of 
routine. Each one in turn mechanically traversed the petty region of 
threadbare cavils, scratched himself in the briars of quibbles, and bur- 
dened himself with his bundle of texts ; nothing more. The vast body 
of science which was to have formed and vivified the whole thought of 
man, was reduced to a text-book. 

So, little by little, the conception which fertilised and ruled all 
others, dried up ; the deep spring, whence flowed all poetic streams, 
was found empty ; science furnished nothing more to the world. 
What further works could the world produce ? As Spain, kiter on, 
renew^ing the middle-age, after having shone splendidly and vainly 
by her chivalry and devotion, by Lope de Vega and Calderon, Loyola 
and St. Theresa, became enerv.ited through the Inquisition and through 
■casuistry, and ended by shiki'ig ^nto a brutish silence ; so the middle- 
age, outstripping Spain, after displaying the senseless heroism of the 
crusades, and the poetical ecstasy of the cloister, after producing 
chivalry and saintshiy», Francis of Assisi, St. Louis, and Danto, 
languished under the Inquisition and the scholastic learning, and 
became extinguished in idle raving and inanity. 

Must we quote all these good people who speak without having 
anything to say ? You may find them in Warton ; ^ dozens of trans- 
lators, importing the poverties of French literature, and imitating 
imitations ; rhyming chroniclers, most commonplace of men, whom 
we only read because we must accept history from every quarter, 

' Hist, of English Poetry, vol. ii. 



l36 THE SOURCE. [BOOK J 

even from imbeciles; spinners and spinsters of didactic stories, wlio 
pile up verses on the training of falcons, on armour, on chemistry; 
editors of moralities, who invent tlie same dream ovei again for th« 
hundredth time, and get themselves taught universal history by the 
goddess Sapience. Like the writers of the Latin decadence, these 
folk only think of copying, compiling, abridging, constructing ext' 
books, in rhymed memoranda, the encyclopedia of their times. 

Will you hear the most illustrious" the grave Gower — * niorall 
Gower,' as he was called ? ^ Doubtless here and there he contains a 
remnant of brilliancy and grace. He is like an old secretary of a 
Court of Love, Andre le Chapelain or any other, who would pass the 
day in solemnly registering the sentences of ladies, and in the evening, 
partly asleep on his desk, would see in a half-dream their sweet smile 
and their beautiful eyes.^ The ingenious but exhausted vein of 
Charles of Orleans still flows in his French ballads. He has the same 
fine delicacy, almost a little finicky. The poor little poetic spring 
flows yet in thin transparent films under the smooth pebbles, and 
murmurs with a babble, pretty, but so weak that at times you cannot 
hear it. But dull is the rest ! His great poem, Confessio A mantis^ is 
a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, imitated chiefly from 
Jean de Meung, having for object, like the Roman de la Rose, to 
explain and classify the impediments of love. The superannuated 
theme is always reappearing, and beneath it an indigested erudition. 
You will find here an exposition of hermetic science, a treatise on the 
philosophy of Aristotle, a discourse on politics, a litany of ancient and 
modern legends gleaned from the compilers, marred in the passage by 
the pedantry of the schools and the ignorance of the age. It is a cart- 
load of scholastic rubbish ; the sewer tumbles upon this feeble spirit, 
which of itself was flowing clearly, but now, obstructed by tiles, bricks, 
plaster, ruins from all quarters of the globe, drags on darkened and 
slackened. Gower, one of the most learned of his time,^ supposed 
that Latin was invented by the old prophetess Carmens ; that ^he 
grammarians, Aristarchus, Donatus, and Didymus, regalated its 
syntax, pronunciation, and pros'ody ; that it was adorned by Cicero 
with the flowers of eloquence and rhetoric ; then enriched by trans- 
lations from the Arabic, Chaldean, and Greek ; and that at last, aftej 
much labour of celebrated writers, it attained its final perfection in 
Ovid, the poet of love. Elsewhere he discovers thitt Ulysses learned 
rhetoric from Cicero, magic from Zoroaster, astronomy from Ptolemy, 
and philosophy from Plato. And what a style I so long, so dull,* so 



^ Contemporary with Chaucer. The Confessio Amantis dates from 1393. 

* History of Rosiplielc. Ballads. 

* Warton, ii. 240. 

* See, for instance, his description of the sun's crown, the most poe^ico 
passage in book vii 



CHAP m.] THE NEW TONGUE. I37 

draAvn out by repetitions, the most minute details, garnished with 
references to his text, like a man who, with his eyes glued to hia 
Aristotle and his Ovid, a slave of his musty parchments, can do 
nothing but copy and string his rhymes together. Scholars even in 
old age, they seem to believe that every truth, all wit, is in their 
great wood-bound books ; that they have no need to find out and 
inv< nt for themselves ; that their whole business is to repeat ; that 
tliis is, in fact, man's business. The scholastic system had enthroned 
the dahd letter, and peopled the world with dead understandings. 

After Gower come Occleve and Lydgate.* * My father Chaucer 
would willingly have taught me,' says Occleve, * but I was dull, and 
learned little or nothing.' He paraphrased in verse a treatise of 
Egidius, on government ; these are moralities. There are others, on 
compassion, after Augustine, and on the art of dying ; then love-tales ; 
a letter from Cupid, dated from his court in the month of May. Love 
and moralities,^ that is, abstractions and refinements, were the taste 
of the time ; and so, in the time of Lebrun, of Esmenard, at the close 
of contemporaneous French literature,* they produced collections of 
didactic poems, and odes to Chloris. As for the monk Lydgate, he 
had some talent, some imagination, especially in high-toned descrip- 
tions : it was the last flicker of a dying literature ; gold received a 
golden coating, precious stones were placed upon diamonds, ornaments 
multiplied and made fantastic ; as in their dress and buildings, so 
in their style.* Look at the costumes of Henry iv. and Henry v., 
monstrous heart-shaped or horn-shaped head-dresses, long sleeves 
covered with ridiculous designs, the plumes, and again the oratories, 
armorial tombs, little gaudy chapels, like conspicuous flowers under 
the naves of the Gothic perpendicular. When we can no more speak 
to the soul, we try to speak to the eyes. This is what Lydgate does, 
nothing more. Pageants or shows are required of him, 'disguisings' 
for the Company of goldsmiths ; a mask before the king, a May-enter- 
tainment for the sheriffs of London, a drama of the creation for the 
f^jiival of Corpus Christi, a masquerade, a Christmas show ; he gives 
Ikha plan and furnishes the verses. In this matter he never runs drj^ ; 
two hundred and fifty-one poems are attributed to him. Poetry thus 
conceived becomes a manufacture ; it is composed by the yard. Such 
was the judgment of the Abbot of St. Albans, who, having got him to 
translate a legend in verse, pays a hundred shillings for the whole, 
verse, writing, and illuminations, placing the three works on a level. 



> 1420, 1430. 

* This is the title Froissart (1397) gave to his collection when presenting it to 
Richard 11. 

» Lebnm, 1729-1807 ; Esmenard, 1770-1812. 

* Lydgate, The Destruction of Troy — description of Hector's chapel 
Especially read the Pageants or Solemn Entries. 



138 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I 

In fact, no more thought was required for one than for the others, 
His three great works, I'he Fall of Princes, The Destruction of Troy^ 
and The Siege of Thehes, are only translations or paraphrases, verbose, 
erudite, descriptive, a kind of chivalrous processions, coloured for the 
twentieth time, in the same manner, on the same vellum. The only 
point which rises ibove the average, at least in the first poem, is tha 
idea of Fortune,^ and the violent vicissitudes of human life. If there 
was a philosophy at this time, this was it. They willingly narrated 
horrible and tragic histories ; gather them from antiquity down to 
their own day ; they were far from the trusting and passionate piety 
which felt the hand of God in the government of the world ; they savr 
that the world went blundering here and there like a drunken man. 
A s.T,d and gloomy world, amused by external pleasures, oppressed 
with a dull misery, which suffered and feared without consolation or 
hope, isolated between the ancient spirit in which it had no living 
hope, and the modern spirit whose active science it ignored. Fortune, 
like a black smoke, hovers over all, and shuts out the sight of heaven. 
They picture it as follows :— 

* Her face semyag cruel and terrible 
And by disdayne menacing of loke, . • • 
An hundred handes she had, of eche part . . • 
Some of her handes lyft up men alofte, 
To hye estate of worldlye dignite ; 
Another hande griped ful iinsoftc, 
"Which cast another in grete adversite. ' • 

They look upon the great unhappy ones, a captive king, a dethroned 
queen, assassinated princes, noble cities destroyed,^ lamentable spec- 
tacles as exhibited in Germany and France, and of which there 
will be plenty in England ; and they can only regard them with a 
harsh resignation. Lydgate ends by reciting a commonplace of 
mechanical piety, by way of consolation. The reader makes the sign 
of the cross, yawns, and goes away. In fact, poetry and religion 
are no longer capable of suggesting a genuine sentiment. Authors 
copy, and copy again. Hawes* copies the Hcuse of Fame of Chauc(ir, 
and a sort of allegorical amorous poem, after the JRovian de la l^osc. 
Barclay ^ translates the Mirror of Good Manners and the Ship of Fools. 
Continually we meet with dull abstractions, used up and barren ; it is 
the scholastic phase of poetry. If anywhere there is an accent of 



* See the Vision of Fortune, a gigantic figure. In this painting he shows loth 
feeling and talent. 

* Lydgate, Fall of Princes. Warton, ii. 280. 
' The War of the Hussites, The Hundred Years' War, and The War of the 

ses. 

* About 1506. The TempU of Glass. Passetyme of Pleasure, 
» About 1500. 



CSAP. IIl.j THE NEW TONGUE. 139 

greater originality, it is in this Ship of Fools, and in Lyclgate*s Dance of 
Death, bitter buffooneries, sad gaieties, which, in the hands of artists 
and poets, were having their run throughout Europe. They mock at 
each other, grotesquely and gloomily ; poor, dull, and vulgar figures, 
shut up in a ship, or made to dance on their tomb to the sound of a 
fiddle, played by a grinning skeleton. At the end of all this mouldy 
talk, and amid the disgust which they have conceived for each other, 
a clown, a tavern Triboulet,^ composer of little jeering and macaronic 
verse-s Skelton ^ makes his appearance, a virulent pamphleteer, who, 
jumbling together French, English, Latin phrases, with slang, and 
fashionable words, invented words, intermingled with short rhymes, 
fabricates a sort of literary mud, with which he bespatters Wolsey 
and the bishops. Style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every kind, is 
at an end ; beneath the vain parade of official style there is only a heao 
of rubbish. Yet, as he says, 

* Though my rhyme he ragged 
Tattered and gagged, 
Rudely rain beaten, 
Rusty, moth-eaten, 
Yf ye take welle therewitho. 
It hath in it some pithe.' 

It is full of political animus, sensual liveliness, English and popular 
instincts ; it lives. It is a coarse life, still elementary, swarming witli 
ignoble vermin, like that which appears in a great decomposing body. 
It is life, nevertheless, with its two great features which it is destined 
to display: the hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is tho 
Reformation ; the return to the senses and to natural life, which is the 
Renaissance. 

^ The court fool in Victor Hugo's drama of Le Roi g'amuse. — Tr. 

2 Died 1529 ; Poet Laureate 1489. His Bouge of Court, his Crovm of Lam^ 

hia Ekgi,' on the Death of tht Earl of Northumherlaiid, are well written ajic 
befiong t« official pwtry. 



BOOK n. 

THE HElSTAISSAISraE. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Pagan Renaissance* 

1. Manners of the Tdcs. 

I. Men which men had formed of the world, since the dissolution of Vht rtd 
society — How aud why human inventiveness reappears — The form oi the 
spirit of the Renaissance — The representation of objects is imitative, T>ha- 
racteristic, and complete. 
IL Why the ideal changes — Improvement of the state of man in Euro^© — In 
England — Peace — Industry — Commerce — Pasturage — Agriculture — 
Growth of public wealth — Buildings and furniture — The palace, meals 
and habits — Court pageantries — Celebrations under Elizabeth — Masques 
under James I. 

III. Manners of the people — Pageants — Theatres — Village feasts — Pagan develop- 

ment. 

IV. Models — The ancients — Translation and study of classical authors — Sym- 

pathy for the manners and mythology of the ancients — The moderns — 
Taste for Italian writings and ideas — Poetry and painting in Italy were 
pagan— The ideal is the strong and happy man, limited by the preseat 
World. 

2. Poetry. 

I. The English Eenaissance is the Renaissance of the Saxon genins. 
II. The forerunners — The Earl of Surrey — His feudal and chivalrous life — Hia 
English individual character — His serious and melancholy poems — His 
conception of intimate love. 

III. His style — His masters, Petrarch and Virgil — His progi-ess, power, preco- 

cious perfection — Birth of art^— Weaknesses, imitation, research — Art in- 
complete. 

IV. Growth and completion of art — Euphues and fashion — Style and spirit of the 

Renaissance — Copiousness and irregularity — How manners, style, and 
spirit correspond— Sir Philip Sydney — His education, life, character — His 
learning, gravity, generosity, forcible expression — The Arcadia — Exaggera- 
tion and mannerism of sentiments and style — Defence ofPoesie — Eloquence 
and energy — His sonnets — Wherein the body and the passions of the 



142 THE RENAISSANOB. [BOOK II 

Renaissance differ from those of the moderns — Sensual love — Mystical 
love. 
V. Pastoral poetry — The great number of poets— Spirit and force of the poetry 
— State of mind which produces it — Love of the country — Reappearance of 
the ancient gods — Enthusiasm for beauty — Picture of ingenuous and happy 
love — Shakspeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Drayton, Marlowe, Warner, Breton, 
Lodge, Greene — How the transformation of the people transforms art. 

VI. Ideal poetry — Spenser — His life — His character — His platonism — His Hymm 
of Love and Beauty — Copiousness of his imagination — How far it was suited 
for the epic — Wherein it was allied to the * faiirie ' — His tentatives — Shep • 
hercVi Calendar — His short poems— His masterpiece — The Faerie Queene 
— His epic is allegorical and yet life-like — It embraces Christian chivalry 
and the Pagan Olympia — How it combines these. 

VII. The Faerie Queene — Impossible events — How they appear natural — Belphcebe 
and Chrysogone — Fairy and gigantic pictures and landscapes — Why they 
must be so — The cave of Mammon, and the gardens of Acrasia— How 
Spenser composes — Wherein the art of the Renaissance is complete, 

8. Prose. 

I. Limit of the poetry — Changes in society and manners — ^How the return to 

nature becomes an appeal to the senses — Corresponding changes in poetry 
— How agreeableness replaces energy — How pvettiness replaces the beautiful 
— Refinements — Carew, Suckling, Herrick — Affectation— Quarles, Herbert, 
Babington, Donne, Cowley — Beginning of the classic style, and the draw- 
ing-room life. 
II. How poetry passed into prose — Connection of science and art— In Italy — la 
England — How the triumph of nature develops the exercise of the natural 
reason — Scholars, historians, speakers, compilers, politicians, antiquarians, 
philosophers, theologians — The abundance of talent, and the rarity of fine 
works — Superfluous n ess, punctiliousness, and pedantry of the style — 
Originality, precision, energy, and richness of the style — How, unlike th« 
classical writers, they represent the individual, not the idea. 

III. Robert Burton — His life and character — Vastness and confusion of his ac- 

quirements — His subject, the Anatomy of Melancholy — Scholastic divisions 
— Medley of moral and medical science. 

IV. Sir Thomas Browne — His talent — His imagination is that of a ]^orth-maa— 

Hydriotaphia, Religio Medici — His ideas, curiosity, and doubts belong to 
the age of the Renaissance — Pseudodoxia — Effects of this activity and 
this direction of the public mind. 
V. Francis Bacon — His talent — His originality — Concentration and brightness 
of his style — Comparisons and aphorisms — The Essays — His style not 
argumentative, but intuitive — His practical good sense — Turning-point of 
his philosophy — The object of science is the amelioration of the condition 
of man — New Atlantis — The idea is in accordance with the state of affairs 
and the spirit of the times — It completes the Renaissance — It introduces* a 
new method — The Organum — Where Bacon stopped — Limits of the spirit 
of the age — How the conception of the world, which had been poetic, be- 
came mechanical — How the Renaissance ended in the establishmoni ot 
positive s'^ionce. 



r:HAP. I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE, 143 

1. Manners of the Time 

I. 

FOR seventoen centuries a deep and sad thought had weighed upon 
the spirit of man, first to overwlielm it, then to exalt and to 
weaken it, never loosing its hold throughout this long space of time. 
It was the id(>a of the impotence and dec^d-^nce of man. Greek cor- 
laipticn, Rr/man oppression, and the dissoiaiijn of *he old wcrld, had 
given it birth ; it, in its turn, had produced a stoical resignaticn, an 
epicurean indifference, Alexandrian mysticism, and the Christian hope 
in the kingdom of God. ' The world is evil and lost, let us escape by 
insensibility, amazement, ecstasy.* Thus spoke the philosophers ; and 
religion, coming after, announced that the end was near: * Prepare, for 
the kingdom of God is at hand.' For a thousand years universal ruin 
incessantly drove still deeper into their hearts this gloomy thought ; 
and when man in the feudal state raised himself, by sheer force of 
courage and arms, from the depths of final imbecility and genei'al 
misery, he discovered his thought and his work fettered by the crush- 
ing idea, which, forbidding a life of nature and worldly hopes, erected 
into ideals the obedience of the monk and the dreams of fanatics. 

It degenerated of itself. For the natural result of such a concep- 
tion, as of the miseries which engender it, and the discouragement 
which it gives rises to, is to paralyse personal action, and to replace 
originality by submission. From the fourth century, gradually the 
dead letter was substituted for the living faith. Christians resigned 
themselves into the hands of the clergy, they into the hands of the Pope. 
Christian opinions were subordinated to theologians, and theologiany 
to the Fathers. Christian faith was reduced to the accomplishment 
of works, and works to the accomplishment of ceremonies. Religion 
flowing during the first centuries, had become hardened and ■jrystal- 
lised, and the coarse contact of the barbarians placed on i^ in addition, 
a layer of idolatry : theocracy and the Inquisition manifested themselves, 
the monopoly of the clergy and the prohibition of the Scriptures, the 
worship of relics and the purchase of indulgences. In place of Chris- 
tianity, the church ; in place of free belief, an imposed orthodoxy ; in 
place of moral fervour, determined religious practices ; in place oi 
heart and energetic thought, external and mechanical discipline : these 
are the characteristics of the middle -age. Under thiis constraint a 
thinking society had ceased to think ; philosophy was turned into a text- 
book, and poetry into raving; and mankind, slothful and crouching, 
made over their conscience and their conduct into the hands of their 
priests, and were as puppets, capable only of reciting a c&techism and 
chanting a hymn.^ 

^ See, at Bru<yes, the pictures of Hemling '^fifteenth century). No painting' 
enables us to understand so well the eccle?.iastical piety of thB middle agB 
whlcli was ultoflfcthcr like that of the Buddhists. 



U4 THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK U 

At last invention makes another start ; and it malcts it by the 
efforts of the lay society, which rejected tlieocracy, kept the State free, 
and which presently discovered, or re-discovered, one after another, the 
industries, sciences, and arts. All was renewed ; America and the 
Indies were added to the map ; the shape of the earth was ascertained, the 
system of the universe propounded, modern philology was inaugurated, 
the experimental sciences set on foot, art and literature shot forth like a 
harvest, religion was transformed: there was no province of human intelli- 
gence and action which was not refreshed and fertilised by this universal 
effort. It was so great, that it passed from the innovators to the laggards, 
and reformed Catholicism in the face of Protestantism which it fornied 
It seems as though men had suddenly opened their eyes, and seen. In 
fact, they attain a new and superior kind of intelligence. It is the 
proper feature of this age, that men no longer make themselves masters 
of objects by bits, or isolated, or through scholastic or mechanical classi- 
fications, but as a whole, in general and complete views, with the eager 
grasp of a sympathetic spirit, which, being placed before a vast object, 
penetrates it in all its parts, tries it in all its relations, appropriates and 
assimilates it, impresses upon himself its living and potent image, so 
life-like and so powerful, that he is fain to translate it into externals 
through a work of art or an action. An extraordinary warmth of soul, 
a superabundant and splendid imagination, reveries, visions, artists, 
believers, founders, creators, — that is what such a form of intellect pro- 
duces ; for to create we must have, as had Luther and Loyola, Michael 
Angelo and Shakspeare,^ an idea, not abstract, partial, and dry, but well 
defined, finished, sensible, — a true creation, which acts iuAvardly, and 
struggles to appear to the light. This was Europe's grand age, and the 
most notable epoch of human growth. To this day we live from its 
sap, we only carry on its pressure and efforts. 

IL 
When human power is manifested so clearly and in such great 
works, it is no wonder if the ideal changes, and the old pagan idea 
recurs. It recurs, bringing with it the v/orship of beauty and vigour, 
first in Italy ; for this, of all countries in Europe, is the most pagan, 
the nearest to the ancient civilisation ; thence in France and Spain, in 
Flanders, even in Germany ; and finally in England. How is it pro- 
pagated? What revolution of manners reunited mankind at this timn^ 
in every country, under a sentiment which they had forgotten for 
fifteen hundred years ? Merely that their condition had improved, and 
they felt it. The idea ever expresses the actual situation, and the 
creatures of the imagination, like the conceptions of the spirit, only 
manifest the state of society and the degree of its welfare ; there is a 

* Van Orley, Micliel Coxie, Franz Floris, tlie de Vos' the Si^dlers, Cv^spit 
de Pass, and the artists of Nuremberg. 



I 



CHAP. 1.J THE PAGaN RENAISSANCE. 145 

fixed connection tetween what man admires and what he is. While 
misery overwhehiis him, while the decadence is visible, ,ind hope shut 
out, he is inclined to curse his life on earth, and seek consolation in 
another sphere. As soon as his sufferings are alleviated, his power 
made manifest, his perspective enlarged, he begins once more to love 
the present life, to be self-confident, to love and praise energy, genius, 
all the effective faculties which labour to procure him happiness. 
Abont the twentieth year of Elizabeth's reign, the nobles gave up shield 
and two-handed sword for the rapier ; ^ a little, almost imperceptibli* 
fact, yet vast, for it is like the change which, sixty years ago, made us 
give up the sword at court, to leave us with our arms swinging about 
in our black coats. In fact, it was the close of feudal life, and the 
beginning of court-life, just as to-day court-life is at an end, and the 
democratic reign has begun. With the two-handed swords, heavy 
coats of mail, feudal dungeons, private warfare, permanent dis- 
order, all the scourges of the middle-age retired, and were wiped out 
'n the past. The English had finished with the Wars of the Roses. 
They no longer ran the risk of being pillaged to-morrow for being 
rich, and hung the next day for being a traitor ; they have no further 
need to furbish up their armour, make alliances with powerful nations, 
lay in stores for the winter, gather together men-at-arms, scour the 
country, to plunder and hang others.^ The monarchy, in England as 
throughout Europe, established peace in the community,^ and with 
peace appeared the useful arts. Domestic comfort follows civil security ; 
and man, better furnished in his home, better protected in his hamlet, 
takes pleasure in his life on earth, which he has changed, and means 
to change. 

Toward the close of the fifteenth century * the impetus was given ; 
commerce and the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such^an 
enormous one that corn-fields were changed into pasture-lands, * whereby 
the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and come 
into riches and wealthy livings,'* so that in 1553, 40,000 pieces of 
cloth were exported in English ships. It was already the England which 
we see to-day, a land of meadows, green, intersected by hedgerows, 
crowdcid with cattle, abounding in ships, a nijinufaGturing opulent 
land, with a people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they 

1 The first carriage was in 1564. It caused much astonishment. Some said 
that it was * a great sea-shell brought from China ;' others, * that it was a temple 
in which cannibals worshipped the devil.' 

2 For a picture of this state of things, see Fen's Paston Letters. 

' liouis XI. in France, Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, Henry vii. in England. 
In Italy the feudal regime ended earlier, by the establishment of repubhcs and 
principalities. 

* 1488, Act of Parliament on Enclosures 

^ A (jompt odious Examination, 1581, by William Strafford. Act of Parli* 

ment, 1541. 

K 



24-6 THE RENAISSANCE. jBOOK 11 

enrich themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that 
in half a century ^ the produce of an acre was doubled.^ They grew 
so rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles i. the Commons 
represented three times the wealth of the Upper House. The ruin of 
Antwerp® by the Duke of Parma sent to England Hhe third part of 
the meroliants and manufacturers, who made silk, damask, stockings, 
taffetas, and serges.' The defeat of the Armada and the decadence of 
Spain opened the seas to their merchants.* The toiling hive, who would 
dare, attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was about 
to reap its advantages and set out on its voyages, buzzing over the 
universe. 

At the base and on the summit of society, in all ranks of life, 
in all grades of human condition, this new welfare became visible. In 
1534, considering that the streets of London were * very noyous and 
foul, and in many places thereof very jeopardous to all people passing 
and repassing, as well on horseback as on foot,' Henry viii. began 
the paving of the city.* New streets covered the open spaces where 
the young men used to run and fight. Every year the number of 
taverns, theatres, rooms for recreation, places devoted to bear-baiting, 
increased. Before the time of Elizabeth the country-houses of gentle- 
men were little more than straw-thatched cottages, plastered with the 
coarsest clay, lighted only by trellises. *Howbeit,' says Harrison 
(1580), * such as be latehe builded are commonlie either of bricke 
or hard stone, or both ; their roomes large and comelie, and houses 
of office further distant from their lodgings.' The old wooden houses 
were covered with plaster, * which, beside the delectable whitenesse 
of the stuffe itselfe, is laied on so even and smoothlie, as nothing 
in my judgment can be done with more exactnesse.'^ This open 
admiration shows from what hovels they had escaped. Glass was 
at last employed for windows, and the bare walls were covered with 
tapestries, on which visitors might see, with delight and astonish- 
ment, plants, animals, figures. They began to use stoves, and experi- 
enced the unwonted pleasure of being warm. Harrison notes three 
important changes which had taken place in the farm-houses of his 
time ; — 

* One !«, the multitude of chimnies lately erected, whereas in their yoong dai«« 



1 Pict. History, ii. 902. 

2 Between 1377 and 1583 the increase was two millions and a half. 

* In 1585; Ludovic Guicciardini. 

* Henry viii. at the beginning of his reign had but one ship of war. Elizabeth 
Bent out one bundled and fifty against the Armada. In 1553 was founded a 
company to trade with. Russia. In 1578 Drake circumnavigated tlie globe. Ip 
1600 tbe East India Company was founded. 

^ Pict. Hist. ii. 781. 

* Nathan Drake, Shakspcare and Ms Times, 1817, i. v. 72 et pa«nm. 



CHAP [J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 14 • 

there were not abore two or three, if so manie, in most uplandishe townes of the 

realme. . . . The second is the great amendment of lodging, although not generall, for 
our fathers, (yea and we ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on 
rough mats covered onelie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain, or hop- 
harlots, and a good round log under their heads, insteed of a bolster or pillow. If 
it were so that the good man of the house, had within seven yeares after his mar* 
riage purchased a matteres or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his 
head upon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne. . . . 
Pillov/es (sai-i they) were thought meet onelie for ~- ^naen in childbed. . . . The third 
Ibing is the exehtrge Df vessell, as of tisets ],,i.itters into pewter, and woddeu 
spoones into silver or tin ; for so common was all sorts of treene stuff in old time, 
that a man should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was perad venture 
a salt) in a good farmers house.'* 

It is not pos!?ession, but acquisition, which gives men pleasure and 
senfie of power ; they observe sooner a small happiness, new to them, 
than a great happuiess which is old. It is not when all is good, but 
when all is better, that they see the bright side of life, and are tempted 
to make a holiday of it. This is why at this period they did make a> 
holiday of it, a splendid show, so like a picture that it fostered painting 
in Italy, so like a representation, that it produced the drama in England. 
Now that the battle-axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten down 
the independent nobility, and the abolition of the law of maintenance 1 ,aJ 
destroyed the petty royalty of each great feudal baron, the lords quitted 
their sombre castles, battlemented fortresses, surrounded by stagnant 
water, pierced with narrow windows, a sort of stone breastplates of no 
use but to preserve the life of their masters. They flock into new 
palaces, with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with fantastic and 
manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and vast staircases, with 
gardens, fountains, statues, such as were the palaces of Henry viii. 
and Elizabeth, half Gothic and half Italian,^ whose convenience, gran- 
deur, and beauty announced already habits of society and the taste for 
pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old manners; tha 
four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity were reduced to 
two ; gentlemen soon became refined, placing their glory in the elegance 
and singularity of their amusements and their clothes. They dressed 
magnificently in splendid materials, with the luxury of men who rustle 
silk and make gold sparkle for the first time : doublets of scarlet satin ; 
cloaks of sable costing a thousand ducats ; velvet shoes, embroidered 
with gold and silver, covered with rosettes and ribbons ; bo its with 
falling tops, from whence hung a cloud of lace, embroidered with figures 
of birds, animals, constellations, flowers in silver, gold, or precious 
gtones; ornamented shirts costing ten pounds. * It is a common thing 
to put a thousand goats and a hundred oxen on a coat, and to carry a 

* Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and Ms Times, i. v. 103. 

' This was called the Tudor style. Under James i., in the hands of Inigc 
Jone?i, it became entirely Italian, approaching the antique. 



H8 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

whole manor on one's back.' * The costumes of the time were like 
shrines. When Elizabeth died, they found three thousand dresses in 
her wardrobe. Need we speak of the monstrous ruffs of the ladies, 
their puffed out dresses, their stomachers stiff with diamonds? As a 
singular sign of the times, the men were more changeable and mort 
bedecked than they. Harrison says : 

'Such is our ."nutabilitie, that to daie there is none to the Spanish giiis«, Ui 
morrow the French toies are most fine and delectable, yer long no such apparell aa 
th it wliich is after the high Alman fashion, by and by the Turkish maner is gene- 
rallie best liked of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the Barbarian sleeves . . . and 
the short French breeches. . . . And as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it 
is a world to see the costlinesse and the curiositie ; the excesse and the vanitie ; 
the pompe and the braverie ; the change and the varietie ; and finallie, the fickle- 
nesse and the follie that is in all degrees. '* 

Folly, it may have been, but poetry likewise. There was something 
more than puppyism in this masquerade of splendid costume. Tiie 
overflow of inner sentiment found this issue, as also in drama and poetry. 
It was an artistic spirit which induced it. There was an incredible 
outgrowth of living forms from their brains. They acted like their 
engravers, who give us in their frontispieces a prodigality of fruits, 
flowers, active figures, animals, gods, and pour out and confuse the 
whole treasure of nature in every corner of their paper. They must 
enjoy the beautiful ; they would be happy through their eyes ; they 
perceive in consequence naturally the relief and energy of forms. From 
the accession of Henry viii. to the death of James i. we find nothing 
but tournaments, processions, public entries, masquerades. First come 
the royal banquets, coronation displays, large and noisy pleasures of 
Henry vm. Wolsey entertains him 

* In so gorgeous a sort and costlie maner, that it was an heaven to behold. There 
wanted no dames or damosels meet or apt to danse with the maskers, or to garnish 
the place for the time : then was there all kind of musike and harmonic, with fine 
voices both of men and children. On a time the king came suddenlie thither in a 
maske with a dozen maskers all in garments like sheepheards, made of fine clotls of 
gold, and crimosin sattin paned, . . . having sixteene torch-bearers. ... In 
came a new banket before the king wherein were served two hundred divei'e 
Jishes, of costlie devises and subtilities. Thus passed they foorth the night svith 
banketting, dansing, and other triumphs, to the great comfort of the king, ar>d 
pleasant regard of the nobilitie there assembled.'^ 

Count, if you can,* the mythological entertainments, the theatrical re- 

' Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 12th ed. 1821. Stubbes, Anatomie oj 
Abuses, ed. Turnbull, 1836. 

' Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and Ms Times, ii. 6, 87. 

8 Holinshed (1586), 1808, 6 vols. iii. 763 et passim. 

* Holinshed, iii., Reign of Henry VIII Elizabeth and Jamef PrcgreueM 
by Nichola 



CHAP. I.] THE PACjTAN RENAISSANCE. ]4S 

ceptions, the open-air operas played before Elizabeth, James, and their 
great lords. At Kenilworth the pageants lasted ten days. There waa 
everything learned recreations, novelties, popular plays, sanguinary 
spectacles, larse farces, juggling and feats of skill, allegories, mytho- 
logies, chivairic exhibitions, rustic and national commemorations. At 
tlie same time, in this universal outburst and sudden expanse, men be- 
come interested in themselves, find their life desirable, worthy of being 
represented and put on the stage complete ; they play with it, delight 
in looking upon it, love its heights and depths, and make of it a work 
of art. The qneen is received by a sibyl, then by giants of the time of 
Arthur, then ly the Lady of the Lake, Sylvanus, Pomona, Ceres, and 
Bacchus, every divinity in turn presents her with the first fruits of his 
empire. Next day, a savage, dressed in moss and ivy, discourses before 
her with E'jho in her praise. Thirteen bears are set fighting against 
dogs. An Itpiian acrobat performs wonderful feats before the whole 
assembly. A rustic marriage takes place before the queen, then a 
sort of comic ^ght amongst the peasants of Coventry, who represent the 
defeat of the Danes. As she is returning from the chase, Triton, 
rising from the lake, prays her, in the name of Neptune, to deliver the 
enchanted la^ly, pursued by ruthless Sir Bruce. Presently the lady 
appears, surrounded by nymphs, followed close by Proteus, who is 
borne by an enormous dolphin. Concealed in the dolphin, a band of 
musicians with a chorus of ocean-deities, sing the praise of the power- 
ful, beautiful, chaste queen of England. You perceive that comedy is 
not confined to the theatre ; the great of the realm and the quec her- 
self become actors. The cravings of the imagination are so keen, that 
the court becomes a stage. Under James i., every year, on Twelfth- 
day, the queen, the chief ladies and nobles, played a piece called a 
Masque, a sort of allegory combined with dances, heightened in effect 
by decorations and costumes of great splendour, of which the mytho 
logical paintings of Rubens can alone give an idea :— 

* The attire of the lords was from the antique Greek statnes. On their heads 
they wore Persic crowns, that were with scrolls of gold plate turned outward, and 
wreathed about with a carnation and silver net-lawn. Their "bodies were of car- 
nation cloth of silver; to express the naked, in manner of che Greek thorax, girt 
a uder the breasts with a broad belt of cloth of gold, fastened with jewels ; the mantles 
were of coloured silks ; the first, sky-colour ; the second, pearl-colour ; the third, 
flame-colour ; the fourth, tawny. The ladies attire was of white cloth of silver, 
wrought with Juno's birds and fruits ; a loose under garment, full gathered, of 
carnation, striped with silver, and parted with a golden zone ; beneath that, another 
flowing garment, of watchet cloth of silver, laced with gold ; their hair carelessly 
bound under the circle of a rare and rich coronet, adorned with all variety, and 
choice of jewels ; from the top of which flowed a transparent veil, down to the 
ground. Their shoes were azure and gold, set with rubies and diamonds.'* 

I abridge the description, which is like a fairy tale. Fancy rnat all 
» Ben Jonson's works, ed. GifTord, 1816, 9 vols. Masque of flymen, vol. vii. 76. 



150 THE RENAIdSANCB. [BOOK II 

these costumes, tliis glitter of materials, this sparkling of diamonds, thi« 
splendour of nudities, was displayed daily at the marriage of the great, 
to the bold sounds of a pagan epithalaniium. Think of the feasts which 
the Earl of Carlisle introduced, where was served first of all a table 
loaded with sumptuous viands, as high as a man could reach, in order 
to remove it presently, and replace it by another similar table. Thi« 
prodigality of magnificence, these costly follies, this unbridling of th© 
imagination, this intoxication of eye and ear, this comedy played by thu 
ioids of the realm, showed, like the pictures of Rubens, Jordaens, and 
their Flemish contemporaries, so open an appeal to the senses, so com- 
plete a return to nature, that our chilled and gloomy age is scarcely 
able to imagine it.* 

III. 

To vent the feelings, to satisfy the h(^art and eyes, to set free boldly 
on all the roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this was 
the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was 'merry 
England,' as they called it then. It was not yet stern and constrained. 
It expanded widely, freely, and rejoiced to find itself so expanded. No 
longer at court only was the drama found, but in the village. Strolling 
companies betook themselves thither, and the country folk supplied any 
deficiencies^ when necessary. Shakspeare saw, before he depicted them, 
stupid fellows, carpenters, joiners, bellow-menders, play Pyramus and 
Thisbe,^ represent the lion roaring as gently as possible, and the wall, 
by stretching out their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in which 
townspeople, workmen, and children bore their parts. They were actors 
by nature. When the soul is full and fresh, it does not express its 
ideas by reasonings ; it plays and figures them ; it mimics them ; tha< 
is the true and original language, the children's tongue, the speech oi 
artists, of invention, and of joy. It is in this manner they please them- 
selves with songs and feasting, on all the symbolic holidays with which 
tradition has filled the year.^ On the Sunday after Twelfth-night the 
labourers parade the streets, with their shirts over their coats, decked 
with ribbons, dragging a plough to the sound of music, and dancing a 
sword-dance ; on another day they draw in a cart a figure made of e&n 
of corn, with songs, flutes, and drums ; on another, Father Christmas 
and his company ; or else they enact the history of Eobin Hood, the 
bold poacher, around the May-pole, or the legend of Saint George and 
the Dragon. We might occupy half a volume in describing all these 
hohdays, such as Harvest Home, All Saints, Martinmas, Sheepsh earing, 



• Certain private letters also describe the court of Elizabeth as a place whew 
there was Utile piety or practice of religion, and where all enormities reigaed ii 
the highest degree. 

• Midsummer Night's Dream. 

• Nathan Drake, Shckspcare and hU Times, chap, v. and vi. ' 



CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 15^ 

above all Christmas, which lasted twelve days, and sometimes six weeks 
They eat and drink, junket, tumble about, kiss the girls, ring the bells, 
satiate themselves with noise : coarse drunken revels, in which man is 
an unbridled animal, and which are the incarnation cf natural life. The 
Puritans made no mistake about that. Stubbes says : 

* First, all the wilde heades of the parishe, conventying together, chuse them a 
ground capitaine of misclieef, whan they innoble with the title of my Lorde of 
JMisserule, and hym they crown with great solemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. 
This kyng anoynted, chuseth for the twentie, fourtie, three score, or a liundi{\l 
lustie guttes like to hymself to waite uppon his lordely maiestie. . . . Then hava 
tliey their hobbie horses, dragons, and other antiques, together with their baudie 
pipers and thunderyng drommers, to strike up the devilles daunce withall ; then 
marche these heathen companie towardes the churche and churche-yarde, their 
pipers pip3''ng, their drommers thonderyng, their stumppes dauncyng, their belles 
rynglyng, their handkerchefes swyngyng about their heades like madmen, their 
hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishyng amongest the throng ; and in this 
sorte they goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or preachyng), 
dauncyng, and swingyng their handkercheefes over their heades, in the chiurche, 
like devilles incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne 
voice. Then the foolishe people they looke, they stare, they laugh, they fieere, and 
mount upon formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in this sort. 
Then after this, aboute the churche they goe againe and againe, and so forthe into 
the churche-yarde, where they have commonly their sommer haules, their bowers, 
arbours, and banquettyng houses set up, wherein they feast e, banquet, and daunce 
all that dale, and peradventure all that night too. And thus these terrestrial furies 
spend the Sabbaoth dale ! . . . An other sorte of fantasticall fooles bringe to these 
helhoundes (the Lorde of Misrule and his complices) some bread, some good ale, 
some newe cheese, some olde clieese, some custardes, some cakes, some flaunes, some 
tartes, some creame, some meate, some one thing, some an other.* 

He continues thus : 

'Against ^laie, every parishe, towne and village assemble themselves together, 
hothe men, women, and children, olde and yong, even all indifferently ; they goe 
to tlie woodes where they spende all the night in pleasant pastymes, and in the 
mornyng they returne, bringing with them birch, bowes, and branches of trees, to 
deck their assemblies withall. But their cheefest iewell they bringe from thence is 
theii Male ])oole, whiche they bring home with great veneration, as thus : They 
hsve twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen, every ox havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers 
tyed on the tippe of his homes, and these oxen drawe home this Maie poole (this 
stiuckyng idoll rather) . . . and thus beyng reared up, they strawe the grounde 
aboute, binde greene boughes about it, sett up sommer haules, bowers, and arbours 
hard by it ; and then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, 
a3 the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles. ... Of a hundred 
maides goyng to the woode over night, there have scarcely the third j tirte returned 
Lome againe unde filed. ' ^ 

* On Shrove Tuesday,' says another,* * at the sound of a bell, the 

* Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, p. 168 et passim. 

' Hentzner's Travels in England (Bentley's translation). He thought that 
•he figure carried about in the Harvest Home represented Ceres. 



152 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

folk become insane, thousands at a time, and forget all decency and 
common sense. ... It is to Satan and the devil that they pay homage 
and do sacrifice in these abominable pleasures.' It is in fact to nature, 
to the ancient Pan, to Freya, to Hertha, her sisters, to the old Teutonic 
deities who survived the middle-age. At this period, in the tfmporavy 
decay of Cnristianity, and the sudden advance of corporal well-being, 
man adored himself, and there endured no life within him but that ol 
paganism. 

IV. 

To sum up, observe the process of ideas at this time. A few sec- 
taiians, chiefly in the tDwns and of the people, clung gloomily to the 
Bible. But the court and the men of the world sought their teachera 
and their heroes from pagan Greece and Rome. About 1490 ^ they 
began to read the classics ; one after the other they translated them ; 
it was soon the fashion to read them in the original. Elizabeth, Jane 
Grey, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Countess of Arundel, many other 
ladies, were conversant with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero in the original, 
and appreciated them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men were 
raised to the level of the great and healthy minds who had freely 
handled ideas of all kinds fifteen centuries ago. They comprehended 
not only their language, but their thought ; they did not repeat lessons 
from, but held conversations with them ; they were their equals, and 
found in them intellects as manly as their own. For they were not 
scholastic cavillers, miserable compilers, repulsive pedants, like the pro- 
fessors of jargon whom the middle-age had set over them, like gloomy 
Duns Scotus, whose leaves Henry viii.'s Visitors scattered to the 
winds. They were gentlemen, statesmen, the most polished and best 
educated men in the world, who knew how to speak, and drew their 
ideas not from books, but from things, living ideas, and which entered 
of themselves into living souls. Across the train of hooded schoolmen 
and sordid cavillers the two adult and thinking ages Avere united, and 
the moderns, silencing the infantine or snuffling voices of the middle- 
age, condescended oaly to converse with ths noble ancients. They 
accepted their gods, at least they understand them, and keep them by 
their side. In poems, festivals, tapestries, almost all ceremonies, they 
appear, not restored by pedantry merely, but kept alive by sympathy, 
and glorified by the arts of an age as flourishing and almost as profound 
as that of their earliest birth. After the terrible night of the middle-age, 
and the dolorous legends of spirits and the damned, it was a delight to 
see again Olympus shining upon us from Greece ; its heroic and beauti- 
ful deities once more ravishing the heart of men ; they raised and in- 

' Warton, vol. ii. sect. 35. Before 1600 all the great poets were translated 
Into English, aud between 1550 and 1616 all the great historians of Gref re and 
Home. Lyly in 1500 first taught Qrsek in public 



CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 153 

itructed tliis yom.g world by speaking to it the language of passion and 
genius ; and the age of strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, 
had only to follow its own bent, in order to discover in them the eternal 
promoters of liberty and beauty. 

Nearer still was another paganism, that of Italy ; the more seductive 
because more modern, and because it circulates fresh sap in an ancient 
stock the more attractive, because more sensuous and present, with 
its worship of force and genius, of pleasure and voluptuousness. The 
ligorlsts knew this well, and were shocked at it Ascham writes •. 

*ll:ese bee the inchantementes of Circes, brought out of Italic to marre menij 
manen in England ; mucli, by example of ill life, but more by preceptes of foncid 
bookes, of late translated out of Italian into English, sold in every shop in 
London. . . . There bee moe of these ungratious bookes set out in Printe M-ytliin 
these fewe monethes, than have bene sene in England many score yeares before. 
. . . Than they have in more reverence the triumphes of Petrarche : than the 
Genesis of Moses : They make more account of TuUies offices, than S. Paulea 
epistles : of a tale in Bocace than a storie of the Bible.'* 

In fact, at that time Italy clearly led in everything, and civilisation was 
to be drawn thence, as from its spring. What is this civilisation which 
is thus imposed on the whole of Europe, whence every science and 
every elegance comes, whose laws are obeyed in every court, in which 
Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare sought their models and their 
materials? It was pjignn in its elements and its birth; in its language, 
which is but slightly different from Latin ; in its Latin traditions and 
recollections, which no gap has come to interrupt ; in its constitution, 
whose old municipal life first led and absorbed the feudal life ; in the 
genius of its race, in which energy and enjoyment always abounded. 
More than a century before other nations, from the time of Petrarch, 
Rienzi, Boccacio, the Italians began to recover the lost antiquity, to de- 
liver the manuscripts buried in the dungeons of France and Germany, 
to restore, interpret, comment upon, study the ancients, to make them- 
selves Latin in heart and mind, to compose in prose and verse with the 
polish of Cicero and Virgil, to hold spirited converse and intellectual 
pleasures as the ornament and the fairest flower of life.^ They adopt 
not merely the externals of the old existence, but the elements, that is, 
preoccupation with the present life, forgetfulness of the future, the 
appeal to the senses, the renunciation of Christianity. ' We must en- 
joy,' sang their first poet, Lorenzo de Medici, in his pastorals and 
triumphal songs : ' there is no certainty of to-morrow.' In Pulci the 
mocking incredulity breaks out, the bold and sensual gaiety, all the 
audacity of the free-thinkers, who kicked aside in disgust the worn-out 

* Ascham, The Scholemaster (1570), ed. Arber, 1870, first book, 78 et passim. 

' Ma il vero e principal ornemento dell' animo in ciascuno penso io che siano 1« 
lettere, benche i Francliesi solamente cono^cano la nobilita deH'arrae . . . et tutti 
i litterati tengon per vilissimi huomini. Castiglione, il Cort \glano, e- 1585 
p. 113. 



154 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

monkish frock of the middle-age. It was he who, in a joiting poem, 
puts at the beginning of each canto a Hosanna, an In principio, or 
a sacred text from the mass-book.^ When he liad been inquiring what 
the soul was, and how it entered the body, he compared it to jam 
covered up in wliite bread quite hot. What would become of it in the 
other world ? ' Some people think they will there discover fig-peckers, 
plucked ortolans, excellent wine, good beds, and therefore they follow 
the monks, walking behind them. As for us, dear friend, we shall go 
into the black valley, wher* we shall hear no more Alleluias.' If you 
wish for a more serious thhiker, listen to the great patriot, the Thucy- 
dides of the age, Machiavelli, who, contrasting Christianity and paganism, 
says that the first places ' supreme happiness in humility, abnegation, 
contempt for human things, while the other makes the sovereign good 
consist in greatness of soul, force of body, and all the qualities which 
make men to be feared.' Whereon he boldly concludes that Chris- 
lianity teaches man * to support evils, and not to do great deeds;' he 
discovers in that inner weakness the cause cf all Dppressions ; declares 
that ' the wicked saw that they could tyrannise without fear over men, 
who, in order to get to paradise, were more disposed to suffer than to 
avenge injuries.' From this time, and in spite of his constrained genu- 
flexions, you can see which religion he prefers. The ideal to which all 
efforts were turning, on which all thoughts depended, and which com- 
pletely raised this civilisation, was the strong and happy man, fortifitd 
by all powers to accomplish his wishes, and disposed to use them in 
pursuit of his happiness. 

If you would see this idea in its grandest operation, you must seek 
it in the arts, such as Italy made them and carried throughout Europe, 
raising or transforming the national schools with such originality and 
vigour, that all art likely to survive is derived from hence, and the 
population of living figures with which they have covered our walls, 
denotes, like Gothic architecture or French tragedy, a unique epoch of 
the human intelligence. The attenuated mediaeval Christ — a miserable, 
distorted, and bleeding earth-worm ; the pale and ugly Virgin — a poor 
old peasant woman, fainting beside the gibbet of her Son; ghastly 
martyrs, dried up with fasts, with entranced eyes; knotty-fingered 
Baints with sunken chests, — all the touching or lamentable visions of 
the middle -age have vanished ; the train of godheads which are now 
developed show nothing but flourishing frames, noble, regular features, 
and fine easy gestures ; the names, the names only, are Christian. The 
new Jesus is a ' crucified Jupiter, as Pulci called him ; the Virgins which 
Raphael designed naked, before covering them with garments,^ are 

1 See Burchard, the Pope's Steward, account of the festival at which Lucretia 
Borgia assisted. Letters of Aretiniis, L^fe of CelUni, etc. 

^ See Ids sketches at Oxford, and the sketches of Fra Bartoloraeo at FlcrencOi 
See also the Martyrdom of £1, Laurence, by Baccio Bandinelli 



CHAP. I.] irlE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. ]5| 

beautiful girls, quite earthly, relatives of the Fornarina. The saints 

which Michael Angelo arranges and contorts in heaven on the judgment- 
day are an assembly of athletes, capable of fighting well and daring much. 
A martyrdom, like that of Saint Laurentius, is a fine ceremony in which 
a beautiful young man, without clothing, lies amidst fifty men dressed 
and grouped as in an ancient gymnasium. Is there one of them who 
had macerated himself ? Is there one who had thought with anguish and 
tears of the judgment of Gocl, who had worn down and subdued his flesh, 
who had filled his heart with the sadness and sweetness of the gospel? 
Tliey are too vigorous for that, they are in too robust health; their clothes 
fit them too closely ; they are too ready for prompt and energetic action. 
We might make of them strong soldiers or proud courtesans, adnnrable 
in a pageant or at a ball. So, all that the spectator accords to their 
halo of glory, is a bow or a sign of the cross ; after which his eyes find 
pleasure in them ; they are there simply for the enjoyment of the eyes. 
What the spectator feels at the sight of a Florentine Madonna, is the 
splendid Virgin, whose powerful body and fine growth bespeak her 
race and her vigour ; the artist did not paint moral expression as nowa- 
days, the depth of a soul tortured and refined by three centuries of 
culture. They confine themselves to the body, to the extent even of 
speaking enthusiastically of the spinal column itself, ' which is magni- 
ficent;' of the shoulder-blades, which in the movements of the arm 
* produce an admirable effect.' ' You will next design the bone which 
is situated between the hips. It is very fine, and is called the sacrum.'^ 
The important point with them is to represent the nude welL Beauty 
with them is that of the complete skeleton, sinews which are linked 
together and tightened, the thighs which support the trunk, the strong 
chest breathing freely, the pliant neck. What a pleasure to be naked ! 
How good it is in the full light to rejoice in your strong body, your 
well-formed muscles, your gay and bold soul ! The splendid goddesses 
reappear in their primitive nudity, not dreaming that they aie nude ; 
you see from the tranquillity of their look, the simplicity of their ex- 
pression, that they have always been thus, and that shame has not yet 
leached them. The soul's life is not here contrasted, as amongst uo, with 
the body's life; the one is not so lowered and degraded, that we daie 
Hot show its actions and functions ; they do not hide them ; man doe?3 
not dream of being all spirit. They rise, as of old, from the luminous 
8Ca, with their rearing steeds tossing up their manes, grinding the bit, 
inhaling the briny savour, whilst their companions wind the sounding- 
«heil; and the spectators,^ accustomed to handle the sword, to combat 



* Benvenuto Cellini, PHndples of the Art of Design. 

Life of Cellini. Compare also these exercises \vhich Castiglione prescrihea 

for a well-educated man, in his Cortegiano, ed. 1585, p. 55: — * Peru voglio che il 

nostro cortegiano sia perfetto cavaliere d'ogni sella. . . . Et perche degii Italiani 

k peculiar laude il cavalcare bene alia brida, il maneggiar cor raggione massim»« 



150 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

naked with the dagger or double-handled blade, to ride on periloui 
roads, sympathise with the proud shape of the bended back, the effort 
of the arm abou*, to strike, the long quiver of the muscles which, from 
neck to heel, 6well out, to brace a man, or to throw him, 

2. Poetry. 

I. 

Transplanted into different races and climates, this paganism 
deceives from each, distinct features and a distinct character. In 
England it becomes English ; the English Renaissance is the Renais- 
sance of the Saxon genius. Invention recommences ; and to invent is 
to express one's genius. A Latin race can only invent by expressing 
Latin ideas ; a Saxon race by expressing Saxon ideas ; and we shall 
find in the new civilisation and poetry, descendants of Casdmon and 
Adhelm, of Piers Plowman, and Robin Hood. 

IL 

Old Puttenham says : 

* In the latter end of the same king (Henry the eight) reigne, sprong up ft 
new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th' elder and Henry 
Earle of Surrey were the two cliieftaines, who having travailed into Italic, and 
there tasted the sweete iind stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie, a» 
novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they 
greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had 
bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our 
English meetre and stile. ' ^ 

Not that their style was very original, or openly exhibits the new 
spirit : the middle-age is nearly ended, but it was not yet finished. By 
their side Andrew Borde, John Bale, John Heywood, Skelton himself, 
repeat the platitudes of the old poetry and the coarseness of the old style. 
Their manners, half refined, were still half feudal ; on the field, before 
Landrecies, the English commander wrote a letter to the French governor 
of Terouanne, to ask him 'if he had not some gentlemen disposed to break 
a lance in honour of the ladies,' and promised to send six champions to 
meet them. Parades, combats, wounds, challenges, love, appeals to the 
judgment of God, penances, — all these were found in the life of Surrfjy 
as in a chivalric romance. A great lord, an earl, a relative of t'lfe 
king, who had figured in processions and ceremonies, had made war, 
commanded fortresses, ravaged countries, mounted to the assault, falhn 

mente cavalli aspri, il corre lance, il giostare, sia in questo de meglior Italiani. 
. . . Nel torneare, toner un passo, combattere una sharra, sia buono tra il migliol 
francesi. . . . Nel giocare a canne, correr torri, lanciar haste e dardi, sia tra Spag- 
nuoli eccellente. . . . Conveniente h ancor sapere saltare, e correre ; . . . ancoi 
nobile exereitio il gisco di palla. . . . Non di minor laude estimo il voltegi ir x 
cavallo. ' 
» Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Arber, 1869, bk. i. ch. 31. p. ~4 



<^iiAP. i.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 157 

in the oreach, had been saved by his servant, magnificent, sumptuous, 
irritable, ambitious, four times imprisoned, finally beheaded. At the 
coronation of Ann of Cleves he was one of the challengers of the 
tourney. Denounced and placed in durance, he offered to fight un- 
armed against an armed adversary. Another time he was put in 
prison for having eaten flesh in Lent. No wonder if this prolonga- 
tion of chivalric manners brought with it a prolongation of chivalric 
poetry ; if in an age which had known Petrarch, poets displayed the 
eentiments of Petrarch. Lord Berners, Lord Sheffield, Sir Thomas 
Wyatt, and Surrey in the first rank, were, like Petrarch, plaintive 
and platonic lovers. It was pure love to which Surrey gave expres- 
sion ; for his lady, the beautiful Geraldine, like Beatrice and Laura, 
was an ideal personage, and a child of thirteen years. 

And yet, amid this languor of mystical tradition, a personal feeling 
had sway. In this spirit which imitated, and that badly at times, 
which still groped for an outlet, and now and then admitted into its 
polished stanzas the old, simple expressions and stale metaphors of 
heralds of arms and trouveres, there was already visible the Northern 
jaeJancholy, the inner and gloomy emotion. This feature, Avhich 
presently, at the finest moment of its richest blossom, in the splendid 
expansiveness of natural life, spreads a sombre tint over the poetry of 
Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, already in the first poet separates this 
pagan yet Teutonic world from the other, all in all voluptuous, which 
in Italy, with lively and refined irony, had no taste, except for art 
and pleasure. Surrey translated the Ecclesiastes into verse. Is it not 
singular, at this early hour, in this rising dawn, to find such a book in 
his hand ? A disenchantment, a sad or bitter dreaminess, an innate con- 
sciousness of the vanity of human things, are never lacking in this country 
and in this race ; the inhabitants support life with difficulty, and know 
how to speak of death, Surrey's finest verses bear witness thus soon to 
his serious bent, this instinctive and grave philosophy. He records his 
griefs, regretting his beloved Wyatt, his friend Clere, his companion the 
young Duke of Richmond, all dead in their prime. Alone, a prisoner at 
Windsor^ he recalls the happy days they have passed together : 

* So cruel prison how could betide, alas. 

As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy, 
With a Kinges son, my cliildisli years did pass, 
In greater feast than Priam's son of Troy. 

Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour. 

The large green courts, where we were Avont to hovo^ 

With eyes cast up into the Maiden's tower. 
And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love. 

The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue. 

The dances short, long tales of great delight, 
With words and looks, that tigers could but rue ; 

Where each of us did plead the other's right. 



158 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK Si 

The palii.5-play, where, despoiled for the game, 

"With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love 
Have miss'd the hall, and got sight of our dame, 

To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above. . , « 
The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust ; 

Tlie wanton talk, the divers change of play ; 
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just^ 

Wherewith we past the mnter night away. 

And with his thought the blood forsakes the fue ; 

The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue : 
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas I 

Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew : 

O place of bliss ! renewer of my woes ! 

Give me account, where is my noble fere ? 
Whom in thy walls thou dost each night enclose ; 

To other lief ; but unto me most dear. 

Echo, alas ! that doth my sorrow rue, 

Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint. ' * 

So in love, it is the sinking of a weary soul, to which he gives vew ? 

* For all things having life, sometime hath quiet rest ; 
The bearing ass, the drawing ox, and eveiy other beast ; 
The peasant, and the post, that serves at all assays ; 
The ship-boy, and the galley-slave, have time to take their ease ; 
Save I, alas ! whom care of force doth so constrain, 
To wail the daj, and wake the night, continually in pain, 
From pensiveness to plaint, from plaint to bitter tears, 
From tears to painful plaint again ; and thus my life it weaw.** 

That which brings joy to others brings him grief: 

* The soote season, that bud and bloom forth bringg^ 
With green hath clad the hill, and eke tlie vale. 
The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; 
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. 
Summer is come, for every spray now springs ; 
The hart has hung his old head on the pale ; 
The buck in brake his winter coat he slings ; 
The fishes flete with new repaired scale ; 
The adder all her slough away she slings ; 
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ; 
The busy bee her honey now she mings ; 
Winter is worn that Avas the flowers' bale. 
And thus 1 see among these pleasant things 
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs ! *• 

' Surrey's Poems, Pickering, 1831, p. 17. 

' Ibid. ' The faithful lover declareth his pains and uncertain joys, and with 
only hope recomforteth his woful heart,' p. 53. 

* Ibid. ' Description of Spring, wherein every thing renews, save only the 
lover,' p. 3. 



(JIIAP. I.] THE PAGAN RE^^ AISSANCE. 



159 



For all that, he will love on to his last sigh. 

' Yea, rather die a thousand times, than once to false my faith 5 

And if my feeble corpse, through weight of wofiil smart 
Do f?al, or faint, my will it is tliat still she keep my heart. 
And Avhen this carcass here to earth shall be refar'd, 
I do bequeath my wearied ghost to serve her afterward.** 

Ad infinite love, and pure as Petrarch's ; and she is worthy of it 
In the midst of all these studied or imitated verses, an admirable por- 
trait remains distinct, the simplest and truest we can imagine, a work 
of the heart now, and not of the memory, which behind the dame of 
chivalry shows the English wife, and behind the feudal gallantry do- 
mestic bliss. Surrey alone, restless, hears within him the firm tones of 
A good friend, a sincere counsellor, Hope, who speaks to him thus 

* For 1 assure thee, even by oath, 
And thereon take ray hand and troth. 
That she is one the worthiest. 
The truest, and the faithfullest ; 
The gentlest and the meekest of mind 
That here on earth a man may find : 
And if that love and truth were gone, 
In her it might be found alone. 
For in her mind no thought there is, 
But how she may be true, I wis ; 
And tenders thee and all thy heal, 
And wishes both thy health and weal ; 
And loves thee even as far forth than 
As any woman may a man ; 
And is thine own, and so she says ; 
And cares for thee ten thousand ways. 
Of thee she speaks, on thee she thinks ; 
"With thee she eats, with thee she drinks , 
With thee she talks, with thee she moans ; 
With thee she sighs, with thee she groans ; 
With thee she says " FarcAvell mine own!" 
When thou, God knows, full- far art gone. 
And even, to tell thee all aright, 
To thee she says full oft *' Good night 1 " 
And names thee oft her own most dear, 
Her comfort, weal, and all her cheer ; 
And tells her pillow all the tale 
How thou hast done her woe and bale ; 
And how she longs, and plains for thee, 
And says, " Why art thou so from mef 
Am I not she that loves thee best ? 
Do I not wish thine ease and rest ? 
Seek 1 not how I may thee^ please? 
Why art thou so from thine ease ? 

' Surrey's Poems, p. 56. 



160 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

If I be she for whom thou carest, 
For whom in torments so thou fareat, 
^las ! thou knowest to find me here. 
Where I remain thine own most dear, 
Thine own most true, thine own most just, 
Thine own that loves thee still, and must ; 
Thine own that cares alone for thee, 
As thou, I think, dost care for me ; 
And even the woman, she alone, 
That is full bent to be thine own.'* 

Certainly it is of his wife^ that he is thinking here, not of «ny 
imaginary Laura. The poetic dream of Petrarch has become the exact 
picture of deep and perfect conjugal affection, such as yet survives in 
England ; such as all the poets, from the authoress of the Nut-browil 
Maid to Dickens,* have never failed to represent. 

III. 

An English Petrarch : no juster title could be given to Surrey, 
for it expresses his talent as well as his disposition. In fact, like 
Petrarch, the oldest of the humanists, and the earliest exact writer 
of the modern tongue, Surrey introduces a new style, a manly style, 
which marks a great transformation of the mind ; for this new form 
of writing is the result of a superior reflection, which, governing the 
primitive impulse, calculates and selects with an end in view. At 
last the intellect has grown capable of self-criticism, and actually 
criticises itself. It corrects its unconsidered works, infantine and in- 
coherent, at once incomplete and superabundant ; it strengthens and 
binds them together ; it prunes and perfects them ; it takes from them 
the master idea, to set it free and in the light of day. This is what 
Surrey does, and his education had prepared him for it ; for he had 
studied Virgil as well as Petrarch, and translated two books of the 
jEneicl^ almost verse for verse. In such company one cannot but select 
one's ideas and arrange one's phrases. After their example, he gauges the 
means of striking the attention, assisting the intelligence, avoiding fatigue 
and weariness. He looks forward to the last line whilst writing the 
first. He keeps the strongest word for the last, and shows the symmetry 
*ii ideas by the symmetry of phrases. Sometimes he guides the intelli- 
gence by a continuous series of contrasts to the flnal image ; a kind of 
sparkling casket, in which he means to deposit the idea which he 



* Ibid. * A description of the restless state of the lover when absent from thf 

mistress of his heart,' p. 78. 

^ In another piece. Complaint 'on the Absence of her Lover being upon the SeOt 
he speaks in exact terms of his wife, almost as affectionately. 

• Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Shakspeare, Ford, Otway 
Richardson, De Foe, Ficldhig, Dickens, Thackeray, otc. 



I 



CHAP. L] 'i'HE PAGAN liENAISSANCE. 161 

carries, and to whiclr he directs our attention from tlie first.* Some- 
times he leads his reader to the close of a long flowery description, and 
th(?n suddenly checks him with a sorrowful phrase.^ He arranges his 
process, and knows how to produce effects; he uses classical expres- 
sions, in which two substantives, each supported by its adjective, are 
balanced on either side of the verb.^ He collects his phrases in har- 
monious periods, and does not neglect the delight of the ears any 
more than of the mind. By his inversions he adds force to his ideas, 
and weight to his argument. He selects elegant or noble terms, reject! 
idle words and redundant phrases. Every epithet contains an idea, 
every metaphor a sentiment. There is eloquence in the regular de- 
velopment of his thought ; music in the sustained accent of his verse. 

Such is the new-born art. Those who have ideas, now possess an 
instrument capable of expressing them. Like the Italian painters, who 
in fifty years had introduced or discovered all the technical tricks of 
the pencil, English writers, in half a century, introduce or discover 
all the artifices of language, period, style, heroic verse, stanza, so 
effectually, that a little later the most perfect versifiers, Dryden, and 
Pope himself, says Dr.'Nott, will add scarce anything to the rules, 
invented or applied, which were employed in the earliest efforts.'* Even 
Surrey is too near to these authors, too constrained in his models, not 
sufficiently free : he has not yet felt the great current of the age ; we do 
not find in him a bold genius, an impassioned writer capable of wide 
expansion, but a courtier, a lover of elegance, who, penetrated by the 
beauties of two complete literatures, imitates Horace and the chosen 
masters of Italy, corrects and polishes little morsels, aims at speaking 
perfectly a fine language. Amongst semi-barbarians he wears a dress- 
coat becomingly. Yet he does not wear it completely at his ease : he 
keeps his eyes too exclusively on his models, and does r.ot venture to 
permit himself frank and free gestures. He is still a scholar, makes 
too great use of hot and cold, wounds and martyrdom. Although a 
lover, and a genuine one, he thinks too much that he must be so iu 
Petrarch's manner, that his phrase must be balanced and his image 
kept up. I had almost said that, in his sonnets of disappointed love, 
he thinks less often of the strength of love than of the beauty of 
his writing. He has conceits, ill-chosen words ; he uses trite ex- 
pressions ; he relates how Nature, having formed his lady, broke the 
mould ; he assigns parts to Cupid and Venus ; he employs the old 
machinery of the troubadours and the ancients, like a clever man who 
wishes to pass for a gallant. Scarce any mind dares be at first quite 
itself: wh(»n a new art arises, the first artist listens not to his heart, but 

* The Frailty and Murtfulness of Beauty. 

* Description of Spring. A Vow to love faithfuUy 
' Complaint of the Lover disdained. 

* Surrey, ed. Nott. 



162 'i'HE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK Ii 

to his mastei'S, and aslcs himself at every step wliethfer he be setting fool 
on solid ground, or whether he is not stumbling. 

IV. 

Insensibly the growth becomes complete, and at the end of tKe 
century all was changed. A ncw, strange, overloaded style had been 
formed, destined to remain in force until the Restoration, not only in 
poetry, but also in prose, even in ceremonial speech and theological 
discourse,^ so suitable to the spirit of the age, that we meet with it 
throughout Europe, in Ronsard and d'Aubigne, in Calderon, Gongora, 
and Marini. In 1580 appeared Eupkues, the Anatomy of Wit, by Lyly, 
which was its text-book, its masterpiece, its caricature, and was received 
with universal admiration.^ * Our nation,' says Edward Blount, *are in 
his debt for a new English which hee taught them. All our ladies 
were then his scollers ; and that beautie in court who could not parley 
Euphuesme was as little regarded as shee which now there speakes not 
French.' The ladies knew the phrases of Euphues by heart: strange, 
studied, and refined phrases, enigmatical ; whose author seems of set 
purpose to seek the least natural expressions and the most far-fetched, full 
of exaggeration and antithesis, in which mythological allusions, illustra- 
tions from alchemy, botanical and astronomical figures, all the rubbish and 
medley of learning, travels, mannerism, roll in a flood of conceits and 
comparisons. Do not judge it by the grotesque picture that Walter Scott 
drew of it. Sir Piercie Shaf ton is but a pedant, a cold and dull copyist ; it 
is its warmth and originality which give this style a true force and an 
accent of its own. You must conceive it, not as dead and inert, such 
as we have it to-day in old books, but springing from the lips of ladies 
and young lords in pearl-bedecked doublet, quickened by their vibrat- 
ing voices, their laughter, the flash of their eyes, the motion of their 
hands as they played with the hilt of their swords or with their satin 
cloaks. They were witty, their heads full to overflowing; and they 
amused themselves, as our sensitive and eager artists do, at their ease 
in the studio. They did not speak to convince or be understood, but 
to satisfy their excited imagination, to expend their overflowing wit.' 
They played with words, twisted, put them out of shape, rejoiced in 
sudden views, strong contrasts, which they produced one after another, 
ever and anon, in quick succession. They cast flower on flower, tinsel 
on tinsel ; everything sparkling delighted them ; they gilded and em- 
broidered and plumed their language like their garments. They cared 
nothing for clearness, order, common sense; it was a festival and a 

1 The Speaker's address to Charles ii. on his restoration. Compare it with th« 
•peech of M. de Fontanes under the Empire. In each case it was the close of a 
literary epoch. Read for illustration the speech before the University of Oxford, 
AihencB Oxonicmc.s^ i. 193. 

* His second work, Euphues and his England, appeared in 1581. 

• See Shakspeare's young men, Mercutio especially. 



\JBAP. I.l THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. l^y 

folly; absurdity pleased them. They knew nothing more tempting 
than a carnival of splendours and oddities ; all was huddled together : 
a coarse gaiety, a tender and sad Avord, a pastoral, a sounding flourish 
of unmeasured boasting, a gambol of a Jack-pudding. Eyes, ears, all 
the senses, curious and excited, are satisfied by the jingle of syllables, 
the display of fine high-coloured words, the unexpected concurrence A 
droll or familiar images, the majestic roll of balanced periods. Every 
one had his oaths, his elegances, his style. ' One would say,' remarks 
Heylyn, Hhat they are ashamed of their mother-tongue, and do not 
find it sufficiently varied to express the whims of their mind.' We no 
longer imagine this inventiveness, this boldness of fancy, this ceaseless 
fertility of a nervous sensibihty ; there was no genuine prose; the 
poetic flood swallowed it up. A word was not an exact symbol, as 
with us ; a document which from cabinet to cabinet carried a precise 
thought. It was part of a complete action, a little drama ; when they 
read it, they did not take it by itself, but imagined it with the in- 
tonation of a hissing and shrill voice, with the puckering of the lips, 
the knitting of the brows, and the succession of pictures which crowd 
behind it, and which it calls forth in a flash of lightning. Each one 
mimics and pronounces it in his own style, and impresses his own 
8oul upon it. It was a song, which, like the poet's verse, contains a 
thousand things besides the literal sense, and manifests the depth, 
warmth, and sparkling of the source whence it came. For in that 
time, even when the man was feeble, his work lived : there is some 
pulse in the least productions of this age ; force and creative fire sig- 
nalise it ; they penetrate through bombast and affectation. Lyly him- 
self, so fantastic that he seems to write purposely in defiance of common 
sense, is at times a genuine poet, a singer, a man capable of rapture, 
akin to Spenser and Shakspeare ; one of those introspective dreamers, 
who see dancing fairies, the purpled cheeks of goddesses, drunken, 
amorous woods, as he says : 

* Adorned with the presence of my love, 
The woods I fear such secret power shall proT«^ 
As they'll shut up each path, hide every way, 
Because they still would have her go astray. ' ^ 

The reader must assist me, and assist himself. I cannot otherwise give 
him to understand what the men of this age had the felicity to experience. 
Luxuriance and irregularity were the two features of this spirit 
and this literature, — features common to all the literatures of the Re- 
naissance, but more marked here than elsewhere, because the German 
race is not confined, like the Latin, by the taste for harmonious forms, 
and prefers strong impression to fine expression. We must select 
amidst this crowd of poets ; and here is one amongst the first, who 
will exhibit, by his writings as well as by his life, the greatness and th« 

' lyie Maid her Mctamornho.vM. 



164 THE RENAISSANCE. |BOOK II 

folly of the prevailing manners and the public taste : Sir Philip Sidney, 
nephew of the Earl of Leicester, a great lord and a man of action, 
uccomplished in every kind of culture ; who, after a good training in 
polite literature, travelled in France, Germany, and Italy ; read Plato 
and Aristotle, studied astronomy and geometry at Venice ; pondered 
over the Greek tragedies, the Italian sonnets, the pastorals of Monto- 
mayor, the poems of Konsard ; displaying an interest in science, keeping 
lip an exchange of letters with the learned Hubert Languet ; and withal 
a man of the Avorld, a favourite of Elizabeth, having had enacted itk 
her honour a flattering and comic pastoral ; a genuine ' jewel of the 
Court;' a judge, like d'Urfe, of lofty gallantry and fine language; 
above all, chivalrous in heart and deed, who had desired to follow 
maritime adventure with Drake, and, to crown all, fated to die an early 
and heroic death. He was a cavalry oificer, and had saved the English 
army at Gravelines. Shortly after, mortally wounded, and dying of 
thirst, as some water was brought to him, he saw by his side a soldier 
still more desperately hurt, who was looking at the water with anguish 
»n his face : ' Give it to this man,' said he ; ' his necessity is yet greater 
than mine.' Do not forget the vehemence and impetuosity of the 
middle-age ; — one hand ready for action, and kept incessantly on the hilt 
of the sword or poniard. *Mr. Molineux,' wrote he to his father's secre- 
tary, ' if ever I know you to do as much as read any letter I write to 
my father, without his commandment or my consent, I will thrust my 
dagger into you. And trust to it, for I speak in earnest.' It was the 
same man who said to his uncle's adversaries that tliey Mied in their 
throat;' and to support his words, promised them a meeting in three 
months in any place in Europe. The savage energy of the preceding 
age remains intact, and it is for this reason that poetry took so firm a 
hold on these virgin souls. The human harvest is never so fine as 
when cultivation opens up a new soil. Impassioned to an extreme, 
melancholy and solitary, he naturally turned to noble and ardent 
fantasy ; and he was so much the poet, as to be so beyond his verges. 

Shall 1 describe his pastoral epic, the Arcadia? It is but a recrea- 
tion, a sort of poetical romance, written in the country for the amuse- 
ment of his sister ; a work of fashion, which, like Ci/rus and C'Sli'e,^ 
is not a monument, but a relic. This kind of books shows only the 
externals, the current elegance and politeness, the jargon of the world 
of culture, — in short, that which should be spoken before ladies ; and 
yet we perceive from it the bent of the general spirit. In Clelie^ 
oratorical development, fine and collected analysis, the flowing converse 
of men seated quietly on elegant arm-chairs; in the Arcadia^ fantastic 
imagination, excessive sentiments, a medley of events which suited 
jaeiL scarcely recovered from barbarism. Indeed, in London they stil* 

' Two French novels of the age of Louis xiv each hi +en voiunieSj aod 
ftrritleii by Madenioifielle (Uj Scudery. — Til. 



CHAP IJ THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 1^5 

used to fire pistols at each other in the streets ; and under Htnry viii, 
and his children, queens, a Protector, the highest nobles, knelt under the 
;ixe of the executioner. Armed and perilous existence long resisted in 
Europe the establishment of peaceful and quiet life. It was necessary 
to change society and the soil, in order to transform men of the sword 
hito citizens. The high roads of Louis xiv. and his regular admini- 
stration, and more recently the railroads and the sergents de ville, camts 
lo I Aleve the French from habits of violence and a taste for dangerous 
ttd venture. Kemember that at this period men's heads were full of 
tragical images. Sidney's Arcadia contains enough of them to supply 
half-a-dozen epics. ' It is a trifle,' says the author ; ' my young head 
must be delivered.' In the first twenty-five pages you meet with a 
sliipwreck, an account of pirates, a half-drowned prince rescued by 
shepherds, a voyage in Arcadia, various disguises, the retreat of a king 
withdrawn into solitude with his wife and children, the deliverance of a 
young imprisoned lord, a war against the Helots, the conclusion of 
peace, and many other things. Go on, and you will Snd princesses 
shut up by a wicked fairy, who beats them, and threatens them with 
death if they refuse to marry her son ; a beautiful queen condemned 
to perish by fire if certain knights do not come to her succour ; a 
treacherous prince tortured for his crimes, then cast from the top of a 
pyramid; fights, surprises, abductions, travels: in short, the whole pro- 
gramme of the most romantic tales. That is the serious element : the 
agreeable is of a like nature ; the fantastic predominates. Improbable 
pastoral serves, as in Shakspeare or Lope de Vega, for an intermezzo to 
improbable tragedy. You are always coming upon dancing shepherds. 
They are very courteous, good poets, and subtle metaphysicians. There 
are many disguised princes who pay their court to the princesses. 
They sing continually, and get up allegorical dances; two bands ap- 
proach, servants of Reason and Passion ; their hats, ribbons, and dress 
are described in full. They quarrel in verse, and their hurried retorts, 
which follow close on one another, over-refined, keep up a tournament 
of wit. Who cared for what was natural or possible in this age ? 
Thire were such festivals at Elizabeth's entries ; and you have only to 
Ijok at the engravings of Sadler, Martin de Vos, and Goltzius, to find 
thi mixture of sensuous beauties and philosophical enigmas. The 
C'Ountess of Pembroke and her ladies were delighted to picture this 
piofusion of costumes and verses, this play beneath the trees. They 
had eyes in the sixteenth century, senses which sought satisfaction in 
poetry — the same satisfaction as in masquerading and painting. "Man 
was not yet a pure reasoner ; abstract truth was not enough for him. 
Rich stuffs, twisted about and folded ; the sun to shine upon tht-m, 
a large meadow full of white daisies ; ladies in brocaded dresses, with 
bare arms, crowns on their heads, instruments of music behind th« 
trees, — this is. what the reader expects ; he cares nothing for contrasts ; 
Lc will readily provide a drawing-room in the midst of the fields. 



166 '^HE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

What are tliey going to say there? Here comes out that restless 
exaltation, amidst all its folly, -which is chanicteristic of the spirit of the 
age ; love rises to the thirty-sixth heaven. Musidorus is the brother of 
Celadon; Pamela is closely related to the severe heroines of Astree;^ all 
the Spanish exaggerations abound with all their faults. But in works of 
fasliion or of the Ccurt, primitive sentiment nevei* retains its sincerity: 
wit, the necessity to please, the desire of effect, of speaking better than 
others, alter it, force it, confuse the embellishments and refinements, so 
that rothing is left but twaddle. Musidorus wished to give Pamela a 
kiss. She repels him. He would have died on the spot ; but luckily 
remembers that his mistress commanded him to leave her, and findj 
himself still able to obey her command. He complains to the trees, 
weeps in verse: there are dialogues where Echo, repeating the last 
word, replies ; double rhymes, balanced stanzas, in which the theory 
of love is minutely detailed ; in short, all choice morsels of ornamental 
poetry. If they send a letter to their mistress, they speak to it, tell 
the ink : 

'Therefore moume boldly, my inke ; for while shee lookes upon you, your 
blacknesse will shine : cry out boldly my lamentation ; for while shee reades you, 
your cries will be musicke.'* 

Again, two young princesses are going to bed : 

'They impoverished their clothes to enrich their bed, which for that night 
might well scorne the shrine of Venus ; and there cherishing one another with 
deare, though chaste embracements ; with sweete, though cold kisses ; it might 
seerae that love was come to play him there without dart, or that wearie of his 
owne fires, he was there to refresh himself e between their sweete breathing lippes. '' 

In excuse of these follies, remember that they have their parallels 
in Shakspeare. Try rather to comprehend them, to imagine them in 
their place, with their surroundings, such as they are ; that is, as the 
excess of singularity and inventive fire. Even though they mar now 
and then the finest ideas, yet a natural freshness pierces through the 
disguise. Take another example: 

• In the time that the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly 
floorc against the coming of the sun, the nightingales (striving one with the other 
which could in most dainty varietie recount their wronge-caused sorrow) made 
Ilium put off their sleep.' 

In Sidney's second work. The Defence of Poesie^ we meet with genuine 
imagination, a sincere and serious tone, a grand, commanding style, all 
the passion and elevation which he carries in his heart and puts into hit 
verse. He is a muser, a Platonist, who is penetrated by the ancient 
teaching, who takes things from a high point of view, who places the 
sxcellence of poetry not in pleasing effect, imitation or rhyme, but in 

* Celadon, a rustic lover in Astr4e, a French novel in five volumes, named aP.et 
the heroine, and writtm by d'Urfe (d. 1625).— Tr. 

« Arcadia, ed. M. 1629, p. 117. ^ IHd. hook ii. p. 114. 



»J11AP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. iQi 

this creative and superior conception by whicli the artist dresses and 
embellisher nature. At the same time, he is an r.rdent man, trusting in 
the nobleness of his aspirations and in the width of his ideas, Avho scorns 
the brawling of the shoppy, narrow, vulgar Puritanism, and glows with 
the lofly irony, the proud freedom, of a poet and a lord. 

In his eyes, if there is any art or science capable of augmenting 
and cultivating our generosity, it is poetry. He draws comparison 
after comparison between it and philosophy «^r histoiy, whose pre- 
hensions he laughs at and dismisses.^ He tights for poetry as a knight 
f<»r his lady, and in what heroic and splendid style 1 He says : 

* I never heard the did Song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart 

moved more than with a trumpet : and yet it is sung but by some blinde Crowder, 
with no rougher voyce, than rude stile ; which beeing so evill apparelled in the 
dust and Cob\Ach of that uncivill age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous 
eloquence of Pindare ?'' 

The philosopher repels, the poet attracts : 

* Nay hee doth as if your journej'^ should lye through a faire vineyard, at the 
very first, give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that tast, you may long to 
passe further.'^ 

What description of poetry can displease you ? Pastoral so easy 
and genial ? 

* Is it the bitter but wholesome lambicke, who rnbbes the galled mmde, making 
shame the Trumpet of villanie, with bold and open crying out against naughti- 
nesse ? ' ^ 

At the close he reviews his arguments, and the vibrating martial 
accent of his poetical period is like a trump of victory : 

* So that since the excellencies of it (poetry) may bee so easily and so justly con- 
firmed, and the low-creeping objections so soone trodden downe, it not being an 
Art of lyes, but of true doctrine ; not of effeminatenesse, but of notable stirring of 
courage ; not of abusing man's wit, but of strengthning man's wut ; not banished, 
but honoured by Plato ; let us rather plant more Laurels for to ingarland the Poets 
heads than suffer the ill-savoured breath of such wrong speakers, once to blow upon 
the cleare spiings of Poesie.'* 

From such vehemence and gravity you may anticipate what his 
rerses will be. 

Often, alter reading the poets of this age, I have looked for some 

* TIi3 Defence of Poesie, ed. fol. 1629, p. 558: *I dare imdertake, that Orlando 
Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will never displease a soldier: but the quidditie 
of Ens send, prima materia, will hardly agree with a Corselet.' See also, in these 
pages, the very lively and spirited personification of History and Philosophy. It 
ccftitains geniiine talent. 

•^ Ibid. p. 553. ' Ibid. p. 550. * Illd. p. 552. 

• Ibid. p. 560. Here and there we find also verse as spirited as this : 

*0r Pindar's Apes, flaunt they in phrases tine,. 
Enamling with pide flowers their thoughts of gold.'— (3d Sonnet.) 



168 THP: KENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

time at tlie contemporary prints, telling myself that man, body and 
soul, was not then such us we see him to-day. We also have our 
passions, but we are no longer strong enough to bear them. They dis- 
tract us ; we are not poets without suffering for it. Alfred de Musset, 
Heine, Edgar Poe, Burns, Byion, Shelley, Cowper, how many shall I 
instance? Disgust, mental and bodily degradation, disease impotence, 
madness, suicide, at best a permanent hallucination or feverish raving,— 
these are now-a-days the ordinary issues of the poetic temperament. 
The passion of the brain gnaws our vitals, dries up the blood, eats into 
the marrow, shakes us like a tempest, and the skeleton man, to which 
civilisation has reduced us, is not substantial enough long to resist it. 
They, who have been more roughly trained, who are more inured to the 
inclemencies of climate, more hardened by bodily exercise, more firm 
against danger, endure and live. Is there a man living who could 
withstand the storm of passions and visions which swept over Shak- 
speare, and end, like him, as a sensible citizen and landed proprietor in 
his small county ? The muscles were firmer, the despair less prompt. 
The rage of concentrated attention, the half hallucinations, the anguish 
and heaving of the heart, the quivering of the limbs stretching involun- 
tarily and blindly for action, all the painful impulses which accompnny 
large desires, exhausted them less; this is wliy they desired longer, and 
dared more. D'Aubigne, wounded with many sword-thrusts, conceiv- 
ing death at hand, had himself bound on his horse that he niiglit see 
his mistress once more, and rode thus several leagues, losing blood, and 
arriving in a swoon. Such leelings we glean still in their portraits, 
in the straight looks which pierce like a sword; in this strength of 
back, bent or twisted ; in the sensuality, energy, enthusiasm, which 
breathe from their attitude or look. Such feelings we still discover in 
their poetry, in Greene, Lodge, Jonson, Spenser, Shakspeare, in Sidney, 
as in all the rest. We quickly forget the faults of taste which accom- 
pany it, the affectation, the uncouth jargon. Is it really so uncouth? 
Imagine a man who with closed eyes distinctly sees the adored counte- 
nance of his mistress, who keeps it before him all the day ; who is 
troubled and shaken as he imagines ever and anon her brow, hei lips, 
her eyes ; who cannot and would not be separated from his vision ; whc: 
sinks daily deeper in this passionate contemplation ; who is every in- 
stant crushed by mortal anxieties, or transported by the raptures cf 
bliss : he will lose the exact conception of objects. A fixed idea be- 
comes a false idea. By dint of regarding an object under all its forms, 
turning it over, piercing through it, we at last deform it. When we 
cannot think of a thing without dimness and tears, we magnify it, and 
give it a nature which it has not. Then strange comparisons, over- 
refined ideas, excessive images, become natural. However far Sidney 
goes, wh.atever object he touches, he sees throughout the universe only 
the name and features of Stella. All ideas bring him back to her. He is 
drawn ever and invincibly by the sarne thought ; and ccmparisons vhicb 



CHAF l.J THE PAQAN RENAISSANCE. j^gg 

aeem far-fetched, only express the unfailing presence and sovereign 
power of the besetting image. Stella is ill ; it seems to Sidney that 
' Joy, which is inseparate from those eyes, Stella, now learnes (strange 
case) to weepe in thee.'^ To us, the expression is absurd. Is it for 
Sidney, who for hours together had dwelt on the expression of those 
liyes, seeing in them at last all the beauties of heaven and earth, who, 
/jcmpared to them, finds all light dull and all joy stale? Consider that 
in every extreme passion ordinary laws are reversed, that our logic 
<;annot pass judgment on it, that we find in it affectation, childishness, 
fanciful ness, crudity, folly, and that to us violent conditions of the ner- 
vous machine are like an unknown and marvellous land, where common 
si:!nse and good language cannot penetrate. On the return of spring, 
when May spreads over the fields her dappled dress of new flowers, 
Astrophel and Srrlla sit in the shade of a retired grove, in the warm 
air, full of birds' voices and pleasant exhalations. Heaven smiles, the 
wind kisses the tr( mbling leaves, the inclining trees interlace their sappy 
branches, amorous earth sighs greedily for the rippling water : 

* In a giove most rich of shade, 
"Where birds wanton miisicke made, 
l^Iay, then yong, his py'd weeds showing, 
New perfum'd with flowers fresh growing, 

* Astrophel with Stella sweet, 
Did for mutuall comfort meet, 
Both within themselves oppressed, 
But each in the other blessed. . . . 

• Their eares hungry of each word, 
"Which the deere tongue would aiTord, 
But their tongues restrain'd from walking, 
Till their hearts had ended talkiug. 

• But when their tongues could not speake. 
Love it selfe did silence breake ; 

Love did set his lips asunder, 

Thus to speake in love and wonder. . . , 

• This small winde which so sweet is. 
See how it the leaves doth kisse, 
Each tree in his best attj-ring, 
Sense of love to love inspiring.'' 

On his knees, with beating heart, oppressed, it seems to him that bk 

Biistr^iss is transformed: 

* Stella, soveraigne of my joy, , , . 

Stella, starre of heavenly fire, 
Stella, load-starre of desire, 

» Astrophel and Stella, ed. foL 1629, 101st sonnet, p. 618. 
' Hid. Sth song) p. 603. 



170 THE RENAISSANCE. |BO<>K H 

Stella, in whose shining eyes 
Are the lights of Cupid's skies. . . . 
Stella, whose voice when it speakea 
Senses all asunder breakes ; 
Stella, whose voice when it singeth, 
Angels to acquaintance bringeth. ' ^ 

These cries of adoration are like a hymn. Every day he writes Ihotiqhts 
o.i Iuvi3 which agitate him, and in this long journal of a hundred pages 
we feel the inflamed breath swell each moment. A smile from his 
mistress, a curl lifted by the wind, a gesture, — all are events. He 
paints her in every attitude; he cannot see her too constantly. He 
talks to the birds, plants, winds, all nature. He brings the whole world 
^.o Stella's feet. At the notion of a kiss he swoons : 

* Thinke of that most gratefull time 
When thy leaping heart will climbe, 
In my lips to have his biding. 

There those roses for to kisse, 
"Which doe breath a sugred blisse, 
Opening rubies, pearles dividing.'* 

• O joy, too high for my low stile to show : 

blisse, fit for a nobler state then me : 

Envie, put out thine eyes, lest thou do see 
What Oceans of delight in me do flow. 
My friend, that oft saw through all maskes my wo, 

Come, come, and let me powre my selfe on thee ; 

Gone is the winter of my miserie. 
My spring appeares, see what here doth grow. 
For Stella hath with words where faith doth shine, 

Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchic : 
I, I, I may say that she is mine.'' 

There are Oriental splendours in the sparkling sonnet in which he aslci 
why Stella's cheeks have grown pale : 

* Where be those Roses gone, which sweetned so our eyes ? 
Where those red cheekes, which oft with faire encrease doth frame 
The height of honour in the kindly badge of shame ? 
Who hath the crimson weeds stolne from my morning skies?** 

As he says, his ' life melts with too much thinking.' Exhausted by 
ecstasy, he pauses ; then he flies from thought to thought, seeking a 
cure for his w^ound, like the Satyr whom he describes : 

* Prometheus, when first from heaven hie 
He brought downe lire, ere then on earth not scene, 
Fond of delight, a Sat)^ standing by, 
Gave it a kisse, as it like sweet had beene. 

' AstropJiel and Stella, 8th song, p. 603. * Ibid. 10th song, p. 610. 

' Ibid, sonnet 69, p. 555. * Ibid, sonnet 102, p. 614 



{^HAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. j|j 

• Feeling forthwith the other burning power, 

"Wood with the smart Avith showts and shryking shrill. 
He sought his ease in river, field, and bower, 
But for the time his griefe went with him still,'* 

At last calm returned; and whilst this calm lasts, the lively, glowing 
fipirit plays like a flame on the surface of the deep brooding fire. His 
love-songs and word-portraits, delightful pagan and cbivalric fancief?, 
seem to be inspired by Petrarch or Plato. One feels the charm and 
liveliness under the seeming affectation : 

* Faire eyes, sweete lips, deare heart, that foolish I 
Could hope by Cupids helpe on you to pray'; 
Since to himselfe he doth your gifts apply. 

As his maine force, choise sport, and easefull stray. 

For when he will see who dare him gainsay, 

Then with those eyes he lookes, lo by and by 
Each soule doth at Loves feet his weapons lay. 
Glad if for her he give them leave to die. 

* When he will play, then in her lips he is, 

"Where blushing red, that Loves selfe them doth lovei, 
"With either lip he doth the other kisse : 
But when he will for quiets sake remove 
From all the world, her heart is then his rome, 
Where well he knowes, no man to him can come. * * 

Both heart and sense are captive here. If he finds the eyes of Stella 
more beautiful than anything in the world, he finds her soul more 
lovely than her body. He is a Platonist Avhen he recounts how Virtue, 
wishing to be loved of men, took Stella's form to enchant their eyes, 
and make them see the heaven which the inner sense reveals to heroic 
souls. We recognise in him that entire submission of heart, love turned 
into a religion, perfect passion which asks only to grow, and which, like 
the piety of the mystics, finds itself too insignificant when it compares 
itself with the object loved : 

• My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toyes, 
My wit doth strive those passions to defend, 

Which for reward spoyle it with vaine annoy es, 
I see my course to lose my selfe doth bend : 
I see and yet no gi-eater sorrow taks, 
Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake.'' 

At last, like Socrates in the banquet, he turns his eyes to deathless 
beauty, heavenly brightness : 

' Astrophel and Stella, p. 535 : this sonnet is headed E. D. Wood, in hij 
Athen. Oxon. i., says it was written by Sir Edward Dyer, Chancellor of the 
Most noble Order of the Garter.—TR. 

» Ibid, sonnet 43, p. 545. ^ Ibid, sonnet 18, p. 578. 



]72 THE RENAISSANCE. l*BOOK li 

• Leave me, Love, which readiest but to dust, 
And thou my miiide aspire to higher things : 
Grow rich in that which never taketh ruat : 
"Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. . • • 
take fast hold, let that light be thy guide. 
In this small course which birth drawes out to death.*' 

Divine love continues the earthly love ; he was imprisoned in this, and 
frees himself. By this nobility, these lofty aspirations, recognise one 
«;f those serious souls of which there are so many in the same climate 
and race. Spiritual instincts pierce through the dominant paganism, 
and ere they make Christians, make Platonists. 



Sidney was only a soldier in an army; there is a multitude about him, 
a multitude of poets. In fifty- two years, beyond the drama, two hundred 
and thirty-three are enumerated,^ of whom forty have genius or talent : 
Breton, Donne, Drayton, Lodge, Greene, the two Fletchers, Beaumont, 
Spen;jer, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Wither, Warner, Davison, 
Carew, Suckling, Herrick ; — we should grow tired in counting them. 
There is a crop of them, and so there is at the same time in Catholic and 
heroic Spain ; and as in Spain, it was a sign of the times, the mark of a 
public want, the index to an extraordinary and transient condition of 
the mind. What is this condition Avhich gives rise to so universal a 
taste for poetry ? What is it breathes life into their books ? How 
happens it, that amongst the least, in spite of pedantries, awkwardnesses, 
in the rhyming chronicles or descriptive cyclopedias, we meet with 
brilliant pictures and genuine love-cries ? How happens it, that when 
this generation was exhausted, true poetry ended in England, as true 
painting in Italy and Flanders ? It was because an epoch of the mind 
came and passed away, — that, namely, of instinctive and creative con- 
ception. These men had new senses, and no theories in their heads. 
Their emotions were not the same as ours. What is the sunrise to an 
ordinary man ? A white smudge on the edge of the sky, between bosses 
of clouds, amid pieces of land, and bits of road, which he sees not be- 
cause he has seen them a hundred times. But for them, all things have a 
soul ; I mean that they feel naturally, within themselves, the uprising 
and severance of the outlines, the power and contrast of tints, the sad 
or delicious sentiment, which breathes from this combination and union 
like a harmony or a cry. How sorrowful is the sun, as he rises in a mist 
above the sad sea-furrows ; what an air of resignation in the old trees 
rustling in the night rain; what a feverish tumult in the mass of waves, 



* Last sonnet p. 539. 

^ Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and Ms Times, i. Part 2, ch, 2, 3 1 Among 
these 233 poets the authors of isolated pieces are not reckoned, but only 1hos« 
who published or gathered their works together. 



CHAP V THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 173 

whose dishevelled locks are twisted for ever on the surface of the abyss ! 
But the great torch of lieaven, the luminous god, emerges and shines; the 
tall, soft, pliant herbs, the evergreen meadows, the expanding roof of 
lofty oaks, — the whole English landscape, continually renewed and 
illumined by the flooding moisture, diffuses an inexhaustible freshnesa 
These meadows, red and white with flowers, ever moist and ever young, 
s!ip off their veil of golden mist, and appear suddenly, timidly, like 
beautiful virgins. Here is the cuckoo-flower, which springs up befora 
Ui.* coming of the swallow. Drayton, in his Polyolbion^ sings ; 
* Then from her burnisht gate the goodly glittring East 
Guilds every lofty top, which late the humorous niglit 
Bespangled had with pearle, to please the Mornings sight : 
On which the mirthful! Quires, with their clere open throats, 
Unto the joyfull Mome so strains their warbling notes. 
That Hills and Valleys ring, and even the ecchoing Ayre 
Seemes all compos'd of sounds, about them everywhere. . • . 
Thus sing away the Morne, untill the mounting Sunne, 
Through thick exhaled fogs, his golden head hath runne, 
And through the twisted tops of our close Covert creeps, 
To kiss the gentle Shade, this while that sweetly sleeps. '^ 

A step further, and you will find the old gods reappear. They re- 
appear, these living gods — these living gods mingled with things which 
you cannot help meeting as soon as you meet nature again. Shak- 
Bpeare, in the Tempest^ sings : 

Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas 
Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, cats, and pease ; 
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep. 
And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; 
Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, 
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims. 
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns . , , 
Hail, many-colour'd messenger (Iris.) . . , 
Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers 
Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers. 
And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown 
My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down. ' ^ 
in Cymheline he says : 

* As gentle as zephyrs blowing below the violet, 
Not wagging his sweet head.'' 

Greene, in Never too Late, says : 

* When Flora proud, in pomp of all her floweis, 

Sat bright and gay, 
And gloried in the dew of Iris' showers, 

And did display 
Her mantle chequer'd all with gaudy green."* 

» M. Drayton's Polyolhion, ed. 1G22, 13th song, p. 214. 

• Act iv. 1. 3 ^Yct iv. 2. 

* Gref5ue's Poems, ed. Bell, Earyniachus in Laudcm Mirimiduv, p. 73. 



£74 'fHE RENAISSANCE. [HOOK n 

In the same piece he speaks : 

* How oft have I descending Titan seen, 

His burning locks couch in the sea-queen's lap, 
And beauteous Thetis his red body wrap 
In watery robes, as he her lord had been ! '* 

So Spenser, in his Faerie Queene, sings : 

* The ioyous day gan early to appeare ; 
And fayre Aurora from the deawy bed 
Of aged Tithone gan herself to reare 

With rosy cheelces, for shame as blushing red : 
Her golden locks, for hast, were loosely shed 
About her eares, when Una her did marke 
Clymbe to her charet, all with flowers spred, 
From heven high to chace the chearelesse daike ; 
"With mery note her lewd salutes the mounting la:ke.'* 

All the splendour and sweetness of this well-watered land ; all the 
specialties, the opulence of its dissolving tints, of its variable sky, its 
luxuriant vegetation, assemble about the gods, who gave them their 
beautiful form. 

In the life of every man there are moments when, in presence of 
objects, he experiences a shock. This mass of ideas, of mangled recol- 
lections, of mutilated images, which lie hidden in all corners of his 
mind, are set in motion, organised, suddenly developed like a flower. 
He is enraptured ; he cannot help looking at and admiring the charm- 
ing creature which has just appeared ; he wishes to see it still, and 
others like it, and dreams of nothing else. There are such moments 
in the life of nations, and this is one of them. They are happy in con- 
templating beautiful things, and wish only that they should be the 
most beautiful possible. They are not preoccupied, as we are, with 
theories. They do not labour to express moral or philosophical ideas. 
Tliey wish to enjoy through the imagination, through the eyes, like 
these Italian nobles, who, at the same time, were so captivated by fine 
colours and forms, that they covered with paintings not only their 
rooms and their churches, but the lids of their chests and the saddles 
of their horses. The rich and green sunny countrj'' ; young, gaily- 
attired ladies, blooming with health and love; half- draped gods and 
goddesses, masterpieces and models of strength and grace, — these are 
the most lovely objects which man can contemplate, the most capable 
of satisfying his senses and his heart — of giving rise to smiles and to 
joy ; and these are the objects which occur in all the poets in a most 
wonderful abundance of songs, pastorals, sonnets, little fugitive pieces, 
BO lively, delicate, easily unfolded, that we have never since had their 
equals. What though Venus and Cupid have lost their altars ? Liko 

* Greene's Poems, Melicertus' Description of his Mistress, p. 38 

» Spr;nser's Works, ed. Todd, 1863, The Faerie Queene, i'c. II, st. 51. 



CHAP. I.;, THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE, 175 

tlie contemporary painter*! of Italy, they willingly imagine a beautiful 
naked child, drawn on a chariot of gold through the limpid air : or a 
woman, redolent with youth, standing on the waves, which kiss her 
snowy feet. Harsh Ben Jonson is ravished with the scene. TKe 
disciplined battalion of his sturdy verses changes into a band cf little 
graceful strophes, which trip as lightly as Kaphael's children. He sees 
his lady approach, sitting on the chariot of Love, draAvn bj swans and 
doves. Love leads the car; she passes calm and smilin^j, and al3 
hearts, charmed by her divine looks, wish no other joy than to see and 
KTFe her for ever. 

* See the chariot at hand here of Love, 

Wherein my lady ridetli ! 
Eacli that draws is a swan or a dove, 

And well the car Love guideth. 
As she goes, all hearts do duty 

Unto her beauty ; 
And, enaniour'd, do wish, so they might 

But enjoy such a sight, 
That they still were to run by her side, 
Through swords, th rough, seas, whither she would ridB. 
"Do but look on her eyes, they do light 

All that liove's world compriseth I 
Do but look on her hair, it is bright 

As Love's star when it riseth ! . . . 
Have you seen but a bright lily gi'ow. 

Before rude hands have touched it ? 
Have you marked but the fall o' the snow, 

Befcre the soil hath smutched it ? 
Have you felt the wool of beaver ? 

Or swan's down ever ? 
Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier f 

Or the nard in tlie fire ? 
Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? 
so white ! so soft ! so sweet is she ! ** 

What more lively, more unlike measured and artificial mythology? 
Like Theocritus and Moschus, they play with their laughing gods, and 
their belief becomes a festival. One day, in an alouve of a wo4d, 
Cupid meets a nymph asleep : 

* Her golden hair o'erspread her face. 
Her careless arms abroad were cast. 
Her quiver had her pillow's place, 
Her breast lay bare to every blast. ' • 

He approaches softly, steals her arrows, and puts his own in their 
place. She hears a noise at last, raises her reclining head, and sees a 

' Ben Jensen's Poems, ed. R. Bell. Gelehratioii of Charis ; her Triumph, p. 125 
• Cupid's ra.sli/jw, unknown author, ab. 1631. 



176 THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK II 

shepherd approaching, She flees ; he pursues. She strings her bow, 
and shoots her arrows at him. He only becomes more ardent, and is 
on the point of seizing her. In despair, she takes an arrow, and buries 
it in her lovely body. Lol she is changed, she stops, smiles, loves, 
draws near him. 

* Though mountains meet not, lovers may* 
What other lovers do, did they. 

The god of Love sat on a tree, 

And taught that pleasant sight to see.'* 

A drop of malice falls into the medley of artlessness and voluptuous- 
ness ; it was so in Longus, and in all that delicious nosegay called the 
Anthology! Not the dry mocking of Voltaire, of folks who possessed only 
wit, and always lived in a drawing-room ; but the raillery of artists, 
lovers whose brains are full of colour and form, who, when they recount 
a bit of roguishness, imagine a stooping neck, lowered eyes, the blushing 
of vermilion cheeks. One of these fair ones says the following versa?, 
Bimpering, and we can even see now the pouting of her lips : 

* Love in my bosom like a bee 
Doth suck his sweet. 

Now with his wings he plays with me, 

Now with his feet. 

Within my eyes he makes his rest. 
His bed amid my tender breast, 
My kisses are his daily feast. 
And yet he robs me of my rest. 
Ah ! wanton, will ye ! ' * 

What relieves these sportive pieces is their splendour of imagination. 
There are effects and flashes which one hardly dare quote, dazzling 
and maddening, as in the Song of Songs : 

* Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights 
That animate the sun, or cheer the day. 
In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play, 
Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights. 

Her cheeks like ripened lilies steeped in wine, 
Or fair pomegranate kernels washed in milk. 
Or snow-white threads in nets of crimson silk, 
Or gorgeous clouds upon the sun's decline. 

Her lips are roses over- washed with dew, 
Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower ... 

Her crystal chin like to the purest mould 
Enchased with dainty daisies soft and white, 
Where fancy's fair pavilion once is pight. 
Whereas embraced his beauties he doth hold. 

' Cupid's Pastime, unknown author, ab, 1G3L 

' IlosalimVs Madrigal. 



CHAP. 1] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. V77 

Her neck like to an ivoiy shining tower, 
Where through with azure veins sweet nectar ruu% 
Or like the down of swans where Senesse woons, 
Or like delight that doth itself devour. 

Her paps are like fair apples in the prime, 
As round as orient pearls, as soft as down ; 
They never vail their fair through winter's frown, 
But from their sweets love sucked his summer time. ' * 

•What need compare, where sweet exceeds compare ? 
Who draws his thoughts of love from senseless things, 
Their pomp and greatest glories doth impair, 
And mounts love's heaven with overladen wings.'' 

I can well believe that things had no more beauty then than now; 
bat I nm sure that men found them more beautiful. 

When the power of embellishment is so great, it is natural that they 
should paint the sentiment which unites all joys, whither all dreams 
converge, ideal love, and in particular, artless and happy love. Of all 
sentiments, there is none for which we have more sympathy. It is of 
all the most simple and sweet. It is the first motion of the heart, and 
the first word of nature. It is made up of innocence and self-abandon- 
ment. It is clear of reflections and effort. It extricates us from com- 
plicated passion, contempt, regret, hate, violent desires. It penetrates 
us, and we brv^athe it as the fresh breath of the morning wind, which 
has swept over flowery meads. They inhaled it, and were enraptured, 
the knights of this perilous court, and so rested in the contrast from 
their actions and their dangers. The most severe and tragic of their 
poets turned aside to meet it, Shakspeare among the evergreen oaks of 
the forest of Arden,^ Ben Jonson in the woods of Sherwood,'* amid 
the wide shady glades, the shining leaves and moist flowers, trembling 
on the margin of lonely springs. Marlowe himself, the terrible painter 
of the agony of Edward ii., the impressive and powerful poet, who 
wrote Faiistus^ Tamerlane, and the Jew of Malta, leaves his sanguinary 
dramas, his high-sounding verse, his images of fury, and nothing can 
be more musical and sweet than his song. A shepherd, to gain his 
jBdy-love, says to her : 

* Come live with me and be my Love, 
And we will all the pleasures prove 
That hills and valleys, dale and field, 
And all the cragg)'- mountains yield. 
There we will sit upon the rocks. 
And see the shepherds feed their flock% 

* Greene's Poems, ed. R. Bell, MeJiajyhon's Eclogue, p. 41. 

* Ibid. Melicertus' Eclogue, p. 43. 
' As you Like it. 

* The Sad S/iephe'd. See also Beaumont and Fletcher, TJie Faithful Shej> 
lerdefA 

M 



178 THE RENAISSANCE. [ROOK ll 

By shallow rivers, to whose falls 

Melodious birds sing madrigals. 
There I will make thee beds of roses, 
And a thous&nd flagrant posies ; 
A cap of flowers and a kirtle, 
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle. 
A gown made of the finest wool, 
Which from our pretty lambs we pull ; 
Fair lined slippers for the cold, 
"With buckles of the purest gold. 
A belt of straw and ivy buds, 
With coral clasps and amber studs : 
And if these pleasures may thee move. 
Come live with me and be my Love. . . . 
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing. 
For thy deliglit each May-morning : 
If these delights thy mind may move. 
Then live with me and be my Love. ' ^ 

The unpolished gentlemen of the period, returning from a falcon 
hunt, were more than once arrested by such a rustic picture ; such aa 
they were, that is to say, imaginative and not very citizen-like, they 
had dreamed of figuring in them on their own account. But while 
entering into, they reconstructed them; in their parks, prepared for 
the queen's entrance, with a profusion of costumes and devices, not 
troubling themselves to copy rough nature exactly. Liiprobability did 
not disturb them ; they were not minute imitators, students of manners : 
they created ; the country for them was but a setting, and the complete 
picture came from their fancies and their hearts. Komantic it may 
have been, even impossible, but it was on this account the more charm- 
ing. Is there a greater charm than putting on one side this actual 
M'orld which fetters or oppresses us, to float vaguely and easily in the 
azure and the light, on the summit of the land of fairies and clouds, 
to arrange things according to the pleasure of the moment, no longer 
feeling the oppressive laws, the harsh and resisting framework of lite, 
adorning and varying everything after the caprice and the refinements 
of fancy ? That is what is done in these little poems. Usually the 
events are such as happen nowhere, or happen in the land where kings 
turn shepherds and marry shepherdesses. The beautiful Argentile* is 
detained at her uncle's court, who wishes to deprive her of her kingdom, 

^ This poem was, and still is, frequently attributed to Shakspeare. It appears 
as his in Knight's edition, published a few years ago. Isaac Walton, however, 
writing about fifty years after Marlowe's death, attributes it to him. In Pal- 
grave's Golden I'reasury it is also ascribed to the same author. As a confirma- 
tion, let us state that Ithamore, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, says to the courtesan 
(Act iv. So. 4) : ' Thou in those groves, by Dis above, 

Shalt live with me, and be my love. ' — Tr. 

' GhcUmer's English Poets, William Warner, Fourth Book of Albion's Eng 
Imd, ch. XX. p. 551. 



I 



CHAP, I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 179 

and commancls her to marry Curan, a boor in his service ; slie flees, 
and Curan in despair goes and lives two years among the shepherds. 
One day he meets a beautiful ountry-woman, and loves her ; while 
speaking to her he thinks of Argentile, and weeps ; he describes her 
sweet face, her lithe figure, her blue-veined delicate wrists, and 
suddenly sees that the peasant girl is weeping. She falls into his 
arms, and says, ' I am Argentile.' Now Curan was a king's son, who 
had disguised himself thus for love of Argentile. He resumes his 
armour, and defeats the wicked king. There was never a braver 
knight; and they both reigned long in Northumberland. From a 
hundred such tales, tales of the spring-time, the reader will perhaps 
bear with me while I pick out one more, gay and simple as a May 
morning. The Princess Dowsabel came down one morning into her 
father's garden : she gathers honeysuckles, primroses, violets, and 
daisies ; then, behind a hedge, she heard a shepherd singing, and that 
so finely that she loved him at once. He promises to be faithful, and 
asks for a kiss. Her cheeks became as crimson as a rose : 

* With that she bent her snow-white knee, 
Down by the shepherd kneeled she, 

And him she sweetly kiss'd. 
With that the shepherd wlioop'd for joy ; 
Quoth he : " There 's never shepherd boy 

That ever was so blest. " ' ^ 

Nothing more ; is it not enough ? It is but a moment's fancy ; but 
they had such fancies every moment. Think what poetry was likely to 
spring from them, how superior to common events, how free from 
literal imitation, how smitten with ideal beauty, how capable of creating 
a world beyond our sad world. In fact, among all these poems there 
is one truly divine, so divine that the reasoners of succeeding ages 
have found it wearisome, that even now but few understand it — 
Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

One day Monsieur Jourdain, having turned Mamamouchi* and 
learned orthography, sent for the most illustrious writers of the age. 
He settled himself in his arm-chair, pointed with his finger at several 
folding-stools for them to sit down, and said ; 

*I have read your little productions, gentlemen. They h'ave 
afforded me much pleasure. I wish to give you some work to do I 
have given some lately to little Lulli,^ your fellow-labourer. It was 
at my command that he introduced the sea-shell at his concerts, — a 
melodious instrument, which no one knew of before, and which has 
such a pleasing effect. I insist that you will work out my ideas as h« 

* Chalmers' English Poets, M. Drayton's Fourth Edogue, iv. p. 436. 

* Mens. Jourdain is the hero of Moliere's comedy, Le Bourgeois GentiUiomme^ 
the type of a vulgar and successful upstart ; Mamamouchi is a mock dignity -Tb 

3 Lulii, a celebrated Italian composer of the time of Moliere Tr. 



180 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

has workecl tliem out, and T give you an order for a poem in prose. 
Wliat is not prose, you know, is verse ; and what is not verse, is prose. 
When I say, " Nicoile, bring me my slippers and give me my night- 
cap," I speak prose. Take this sentence as your model. This style is 
much more pleasing than the jargon of unfinished lines which you (Jail 
verse. As for the subject, let it be myself You will describe my 
flowered dressing-gown which I have put on to receive you in, und 
tlis little green velvet undress which I wear underneath, to do my 
morning exercise in. You will set down that this chintz costs a louis 
Kn elL Tlie description, if well worked out, will furnish some very 
pretty paragraphs, and will enlighten the public as to the cost of things. 
I desire also that you should speak of my mirrors, my carpets, my 
hangings. My tradesmen will let you have their bills ; don't fail to 
put them in. I shall be glad to read in your works, all fully and 
naturally set forth, about my father's shop, who, like a real gentleman, 
sold cloth to oblige his friends ; my maid Nicolle's kitchen, the genteel 
behaviour of Brusquet, the little dog of my neighbour M. Dimanche. 
You might also explain my domestic affairs : there is nothing more 
interesting to the public than to hear how a million may be scraped 
together. Tell them also that my daughter Lucile has not married 
that little rascal Cl^onte, but M. Samuel Bernard, who made his fortune 
as 9. fermier-ge'neral^ keeps his carriage, and is going to be a minister ot 
state. For this I will pay you liberally, half a louis for a yard of 
writing. Come back in a month, and let me see what my ideas hav«» 
suggested to you.' 

We are the descendants of M. Jourdain, and this is how we have 
been talking to the men of talent from the beginning of the century, 
and the men of talent have listened to us. Hence arise our shoppy 
and realistic novels. I pray the reader to forget them, to forget him- 
self, to become for a while a poet, a gentleman, a man of the sixteenth 
century. Unless we bury the M. Jourdain who survives in us, we 
shall never understand Spenser. 

VI. 

Spenser belonged to an ancient family, allied to great houses ; was a 
friend of Sidney and Kaleigh, the two most accomplished knights of 
the age — a knight himself, at least in heart ; who had found in his 
connections, his friendships, his studies, his life, eveiything calculated 
to lead him to ideal poetry. We find him at Cambridge, where he 
imbues himself with the noblest ancient philosophies ; in a northern 
country, where he passes through a deep and unfortunate passion ; at 
PensLurst, in the castle and in the society where the Arcadia was pro- 
duced ; with Sidney, in whom survived entire the romantic poetry 
and heroic generosity of the feudal spirit ; at court, where all the 
splendours of a disciplined and gorgeous chivalry were gathered about 
the throne ; finally, at Kilcolman, on the borders of a beautiful lake, 



»:flAP LJ THE PAGAN RENAJSSAXC^E. 181 

in a lonely castle, from which the vicw embraced an amphitleatre 
of mountains, and the half of Ireland. Poor on the other hand, not 
fit for court, and though favoured by the queen, unable to obtain 
from his patrons anything but inferior employment ; in the end, tired 
of solicitations, and banished to dangerous Ireland, whence a revolt 
expelled him, after his house and child had been burned ; he died 
three months later, of misery and a broken heart.i Expectations and 
rebuffs, many sorrows and many dreams, some few joys, and a sudden 
and frightful calamity, a small fortune and a premature end ; this 
indeed was a poet's life. But the heart within was the true poet — 
from it all proceeded ; circumstances furnished the subject only ; he 
transformed them more than they him ; he received less than he gave. 
Philosophy and landscapes, ceremonies and ornaments, splendours 
of the country and the court, on all which he painted or thought, he 
impressed his inward nobleness. Before all, his was a soul captivated 
by sublime and chaste beauty, eminently platonic ; one of these lofty 
and refined souls most charming of all, who, born in the lap of nature, 
draw thence their mother's milk, but soar above, enter the regions of 
mysicism, and mount instinctively in order to open at the confines of 
another world. Spenser leads us to Milton, and thence to Puritanism, 
as Plato to Virgil, and thence to Christianity. Sensuous beauty is 
Derfect in both, but their main worship is for moral beauty. He 
appeals to the Muses : 

* Eevele to me the sacred noursery 
Of vertue, which with you doth there remaine, 
AVhere it in silver bowre does hidden ly 
From view of men and wicked worlds disdaine t * 

He encourages his knight when he sees him droop. He is wroth 
when he sees him attacked. He rejoices in his justice, temperance, 
courtesy. He introduces in the beginning of a song, stanzas in 
honour of friendship and justice. He pauses, after relating a lovely 
instance of chastity, to exhort women to modesty. He pours out the 
wealth of his respect and tenderness at his heroine's feet. If any 
coarse man insults them, he calls to their aid nature and the gods. 
Never does he bring them on his stage without adorning their name 
with splendid eulogy. He has an adoration for beauty worthy of 
Dante and Piotinus. And this, because he never considers it a mere 
harmony of colour and form, but an emanation of unique, heavenly, 
imperishable beauty, which no mortal eye can see, and which is the 
prime work of the great Author of the worlds.^ Bodies only render 
it sensible ; it does not live in the bodies ; gracfe and attraction are 

* 'He died for want of bread in King Street.' Ben Jonson, quoted by 
©rummond. 

' Hymns of Love and Beauty ; of hea-Denly Love and Beauty. 



182 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

Bot in things, but in the deathless idea which shines through tfaw 
things: 

* For that same goodly hew of white and red, 
With Avhich the cheekes are sprinckled, shall decay 
And those sweete rosy leaves, so fairly spred 
Upon the lips, shall fade and fall a^Yay 

To that they were, even to corrupted clay : 
That golden wyre, those sparekling stars so hrighi. 
Shall turne to dnst, and lose their goodly light. 
But that faire lanipe, from whose celestiall ray 
Tliat light proceedes, which kindleth lovers fire^ 
Shall never be extinguisht nor decay ; 
But, when the vitall spirits doe expyre, 
Upon her native planet shall retj're ; 
For it is heavenly borne, and cannot die, 
Being a parcell of the purest skie. * * 

In presence of this ideal of beauty, love is transformed : 

* For Love is lord of Truth and Loialtie, 
Lifting himself out of the lowly dust. 
On golden plumes up to the purest skie, 
Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust, 
Whose base affect through cowardly distrust 
Of his weake wings dare not to heaven fly, 
But like a moldwarpe in the earth doth ly. ' * 

Love such as this contains all that is good, and fine, and noble. It 
is the prime source of life, and of the eternal soul of things, it is 
this love which, pacifying the primitive discord, has created the har- 
mony of the spheres, and maintains this glorious universe. It dwells 
in God, and is God Himself, descended in bodily form to regenerate 
the tottering world and save the human race ; around and v;ithin 
animated beings, Avhen our eyes can pierce it, we behold it as a 
living light, penetrating and embracing every creature. We touch 
here the sublime sharp summit where the world of mind and the 
world of senses unite ; where man, gatliering with both hands the 
loveliest flowers of either, feels himself at the same time a pagan and a 
Christian. 

So much, as a testimony to his heart. But he was also a poet, 
that is, pre-eminently a creator and a dreamer, and that most natu- 
rally, instinctively, unceasingly. We might go on for ever describing 
thiS inward condition of all great artists ; there would still remain 
much to be described. It is a sort of spiritual growth with them { 
At every instant a bud shoots forth, and on this another, and still 

A Hymne in Honour of Beautie, v. 92-105. 
' A Hymne in Honour of Love, v, 176-182. 



CHAP. 1.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 1S3 

another; each producing, increasing, blooming of itself, so that in- 
stantaneously we . find first a plant, then a thicket, then a forest. 
A character appears to them, then an action, then a landscape, then 
B succession of actions, characters, landscapes, producing, completing, 
arranging themselves by instinctive development, as when in a dreaia 
wo behold a train of figures which spread out and group themselves 
bofon? our eyes. This fount of living and changing forms is in- 
exhaustible in Spenser; he is always imaging; it is his specialty. 
He has but to close his eyes, and apparitions arise; they abound in 
him, crowd, overflow ; in vain he pours them forth ; they continually 
float up, more copious and more dense. Many times, following the 
inexhaustible stream, I have thought of the vapours which rise in- 
cessantly from the sea, ascend, sparkle, commingle their gold and 
snowy scrolls, while beneath them new mists arise, and others again 
beneath, and the splendid procession never grows dim or ceases. 

But what distinguishes him from all others is the mode of his 
imagination. Generally with a poet his spirit ferments vehemently 
and by fits and starts ; his ideas gather, jostle each other, suddenly 
appear in masses and heaps, and burst out in sharp, piercing, con- 
centrative words ; it seems that they need these sudden accumulations 
to imitate the unity and life-hke energy of the objects which they 
reproduce; at least almost all the surrounding poets, Shakspeare at 
their head, act thus. Spenser remains calm in the fervour of inven- 
tion. Tlie visions which would be fever to another, leave him at peace. 
They come and spread before him, easily, entire, uninterrupted, with- 
out starts. He is epic, that is, a narrator, and not a singer like an 
ode-writer, nor a mimic like a play-writer. No modern is more like 
Homer. Like Homer and the great epic-writers, he presents consecu- 
tive and noble, almost classical images, so nearly ideas, that the mind 
seizes them unaided and unawares. Like Homer, he is always simple 
and clear : he makes no leap, he omits no argument, he robs no word 
of its primitive and ordinary sense, he preserves the natural sequence 
of ideas. Like Homer again, he is redundant, ingenuous, even childish. 
He says everything, he puts down reflections which we have made 
beforehand ; he repeats without limit his ornamental epithets. We 
can see that he beholds objects in a beautiful uniform light, with 
infinite detail ; that he wishes to show all this detail, never fearing 
to see his happy dream change or disappear ; that he traces its outline 
with a regular movement, never hurrying or slackening. He is even 
a little prolix, too unmindful of the public, too ready to lose himself 
and fall into a dream. His thought expands in vast repeated com- 
parisons, like those of the old Ionic poet. I£ a wounded giant f.iils, he 
tinds him 

* As an aged tree, 
High growing on the top of rocky clift. 
Whose hart-stiings with keeiie Steele nigh liewen ba 



184 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK lA 

The mightie trunck lialfe rent witli ragged rift, 

Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearefull drifU 

Or as a castle, reared high and round. 
By subtile engins and malitious slight 
Is undermined from the lowest ground, 
And lier foundation forst, and feebled quight, 
At last downe falles ; and with her heaped hight 
Her hastie ruine does more heavie make. 
And yields it selfe unto the rictours might : 
Such was this Gyaunt's fall, that seemd to shake 
The stedfast globe of earth, as it for feare did quake. ^ 
He develops all the ideas which he handles. He stretches all hii 
phrases intc- periods. Instead of compressing, he expands. To bear 
this ample thought and its accompanying train, he requires a long 
stanza, ever renewed, long recurring lines, reiterated rhymes, whose 
uniformity and fulness recall niajestic sounds which undulate eternally 
through the woods and the fields. To expand these epic faculties, and 
to expand them in the sublime region where his soul is naturally borne, 
he requires an ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, 
with personages who could hardly exist, and in a world which could 
never be. 

He made many miscellaneous attempts in sonnets, elegies, pastorals, 
hymns of love, little sparkling word pictures;^ they were but essays, 
incapable for the most part of supporting his genius. Yet already his 
magnificent imagination appeared in them ; gods, men, landscapes, the 
world which he sets in motion is a thousand miles from that in which 
we live. His Shepherd's Calendar^ is a pensive and tender pastoral, 
full of delicate loves, noble sorrows, lofty ideas, where no voice is heard 
but of thinkers and poets. His Visions of Petrarch and Du Bellay are 
admirable dreams, in which palaces, temples of gold, splendid land- 
scapes, sparkling rivers, marvellous birds, appear alternately as in an 
Oriental fairy-tale. If he sings a * Prothalamion,' he sees two beautiful 
gwans, white as snow, who glide to the songs of nymphs amid vermeil 
roses, while the transparent water kisses their silken feathers, and mur- 
murs with joy : 

* There, in a meadow, by the river's side, 
A flocke of Nymplies T chaunced to espy, 
All lovely daughters of the Flood thereby. 
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untyd^ 
As each had bene a bryde ; 
And each one had a little wicker basket, 
Made of fine twigs, entrayled curiously. 
In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket, 

> The Faerie Queene, i. c. 8, st. 22, 23. 

• 77ie Shepherd's Calendar, Amoretti, Sonnets, Prothalamion, Epith/ilamion 
Uuiopotmos, Virgil' s Gnat, The Ruines of Time, The Teares of the M ises, etc. 
" Published iu 1589 ; dedicated to Philip Sidney. 



CHAl'. IJ THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. J §5 

And with fine fingers cropt full feateonsly 
The tender stalkes on hye. 
Of every sort, which in that meadow grew, 
They gathered some ; the violet, pallid blew, 
The little dazie, that at evening closes, 
The virgin liliie, and the primrose trew, 
With store of vermeil roses, 
To deck their hridegroomes posies 
Against the brydale-day, which was not long : 
Sweet Themmes ! runne softly, till I end my song 

With that I saw two Swannes of goodly hewe 
Come softly swimming downe along the lee ; 
Two fairer birds I yet did never see ; 
The snow, which doth the top of Pindus strev, 
Did never whiter shew . , . 
So purely white they were, 

That even the gentle stream, the which them bare, 
Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare 
To wet their silken feathers, least they might 
Soyle their fayre plumes -with water not so fa}Te, 
And marre their beauties bright, 
That shone as heavens light, 
Against their brydale day, which was not long : 
Sweet Themmes ! runne softly, till I end my song !'* 

If he bewails the death of Sidney, Sidney becomes a shepherd ; he ia 
slain like Adonis ; around him gather weeping nymphs : 

' The gods, which all things see, this same^heheld. 
And, pittying this paire of lovers trew. 
Transformed them there lying on the field, 
Into one floAvre that is both red and blew : 
It first growes red, and then to blew doth fade, 
Like Astrophel, wdiich thereinto was made. 

And in the midst thereof a star appearea^ 

As fairly formd as any star in skyes : 

Resembling Stella in her freshest yeares, 

Forth darting beames of beautie from her eyes ; 

And all the day it standeth full of deow. 

Which is the teares, that from her eyes did flow.'* 

His most genuine sentiments become thus fairy-hke. Magic is the 
mould of his mind, and impresses its shape on all that he imagines or 
thinks. Involuntarily he robs objects of their ordinary fv rm. If he 
looks at a landscape, after an instant he sees it quite difFeiently. He 
carries it, without knowing it, into an enchanted land i* the azure 
heaven sparkles like a vault of diamonds, meadows are clothed with 
(lowers, a biped population flutters in the sweet air, palaces of jasper 

' Prothalamion, v. 19-54 ' Astrophel, v. 181-193. 



18G THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK Ii 

ghine among the trees, radiant ladies appear on carved balconies 
above galleries of emerald. This insensible toil of mind is like the slow 
crystallisations of nature. A moist twig is cast into the bottom cf a 
mine, and is brought out again a hoop of diamonds. 

At last he finds a subject which suits him, the greatest joy per- 
mitted to an artist. He removes his epic from the common ground 
which, in the hands of Homer and Dante, gave expression to a living 
creed, and depicted national heroes. He leads us to the summit 
of fairy-land, on that extreme verge where objects vanish and pure 
idealism begins ; 

* I have undertaken a work,' he says, 'to represent all the moral vertues, assign- 
ing to every vertue a knight to be the patron and defender of the same : in whose 
actions and feats of armes and chivalry the operations of that vertue, whereof he 
is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that 
oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten downe and overcome.'* 

In fact, he gives us an allegory as the foundation of his poem, not that 
he dreams of becoming a wit, a preacher of moralities, a propounder of 
riddles. He does not subordinate image to idea ; he is a seer, not a 
philosopher. They are living men and actions which he sets in motion; 
only from time to time, enchanted palaces, a whole train of splendid 
visions trembles and divides like a mist, enabling us to catch a glimpse 
of the thought which raised and arranged it. When in his Garden of 
Venus we see the countless forms of all living things arranged in due 
order, in close compass, awaiting life, we conceive with him the birth 
of universal love, the ceaseless fertility of the great mother, the mys- 
terious swarm of creatures which rise in succession from her far-reach- 
ing womb. When we see his Knight of the Cross, combating with a 
monstrous woman- serpent in defence of las oeloved lady Una, we 
dimly remember that, if we search bej^ond these two figures, we shall 
find behind one, Truth, behind the other. Falsehood. We perceive that 
his characters are not flesh and blood, and that all these brilliant phan- 
toms are phantoms, and nothing more. We take pleasure in their 
brilliancy, without believing in their substantiality ; we are interested 
in their acts, without troubling ourselves about their misfortunes. We 
know that their tears and cries are not real. Our emotion is purified and 
raised. We do not fall into gross illusion ; we have that gentle feeling 
of knowing ourselves to be dreaming. We, like him, are a thousand 
leagues from actual life, beyond the pangs of painful pity, unmixed 
terror, urgent and bitter hatred. We entertain only refined senti- 
ments, half defined, arrested at the moment that they were about to 
affect us with too sharp a stroke. They slightly touch us, and we find 
ourselves happy in being extricated from a belief which was beginning 
to be oppressive. 

^ Words attributed to him by Lodowick Bryskett, Discourse of Civil Life 
ed. 1606, p. 26. 



CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 187 



vn. 

What world could furnish materials to so elevated a fancy ? On« 

aaly, that of chivalry ; for none is so far from the actual. Alone and 
independent in his castle, freed from all the ties which society, family, 
toil, usually impose on the actions of men, the feudal hero had attempted 
every kind of adventure, but yet he had done less than he imagined : 
the boldness of his deeds had been exceeded by the madness of his 
dreams. For want of useful employment and an accepted rule, his 
brain had laboured on an unreasoning and impossible track, and the 
urgency of his wearisomeness had increased beyond measure his craving 
for excitement. Under this stimulus his poetry had become a world 
of imagery. Insensibly strange conceptions had grown a:3id multiplied 
in his brains, one over the other, like ivy woven round a tree, and 
the original stock had disappeared beneath their rank growth and their 
obstruction. The delicate fancies of the old Welsh poetry, the grand 
ruins of the German epics, th§ marvellous splendours of the conquered 
East, all the relics which four centuries of adventure had dispersed 
among the minds of men, had become gathered into one great dream ; 
and giants, dwarfs, monsters, the whole medley of imaginary creatures, 
of superhuman exploits and splendid follies, were grouped about a 
unique conception, exalted and sublime love, like courtiers prostrated 
at the feet of their king. It was an ample and an elastic subject-matter, 
from which the great artists of the age, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, 
Rabelais, had hewn their poems. But they belonged too completely to 
their own time, to admit of their belonging to one which had passed. 
They created a chivalry afresh, but it w^as not genuine. The ingenious 
Ariosto, an ironical epicurean, delights his gaze with it, and grows merry 
over it, like a man of pleasure, a sceptic who rejoices doubly in his 
pleasure, because it is sweet, and because it is forbidden. By his side 
poor Tasso, inspired by a fanatical, revived, factitious Catholicism, amid 
the tinsel of an old school of poetry, works on the same subject, in 
sickly fashion, with great effort and scant success. Cervantes, himself 
a knight, albeit he loves chivalry for its nobleness, perceives its folly, 
and crushes it to the ground, with heavy blows, in the mishaps of the 
wayside inns.^ More coarsely, more openly, Rabelais, a rude commoner^ 
drowns it with a burst of laughter in his merriment and nastincss. 
Spenser alone takes it seriously and naturally. He is en the level of 
80 much nobleness, dignity, reverie. He is not yet settled and shut in 
by that species of exact common sense which was to found and cramp 
the whole modern civilisation. In his heart he inhabits the poetic and 
misty land from which men were daily drawing further and further 
away. He is enamoured of it, even to its very language ; he retains 

* 'Cervantes smiled Spain's chivali-y away.' — Byron's Don Juan, cant< 
liii. Bt. xi. — Tk. 



188 TPIE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

the old W9rcls, the expressions of the middle-age, the style of Chaucer, 
especially in the Shepherd's Calendar. He enters straightway upon the 
strangest dreams of the old story-tellers, without astonishment, like a 
man who has still stranger ones on his own account. Enchanted castles, 
monsters and giants, duels in the woods, wandering ladies, all spring 
up under his hands, the mediasval fancy with the mediaeval generosity ; 
and it is just because this world is unlifelike that this world suits hii 
humour. 

Is tnere in chivalry sufficient to furnish him with matter? That 
13 but one world, and he has another. Beyond the valiant men, the 
glorified images of moral virtues, he has the gods, finished models of 
sensible beauty ; beyond Christian chivalry he has the pagan Olympus; 
beyond the idea of heroic will, which can only be satisfied by adven- 
tures and danger, he has the idea of calm energy, which is found in 
itself to be in harmony with actual existence. For such a poet there is 
not enough in one ideal; beside the beauty of eifort he places the 
beauty of happiness; he coiiples them, not with the preconception of a 
philosopher, nor the design of a scholar like Goethe, but because they 
are both lovely ; and here and there, amid weapons and passages of 
arms, he distributes satyrs, nymphs, Diana, Venus, like Greek statues 
amid the turrets and lofty trees of an English park. There is nothing 
forced in the union ; the ideal epic, like a heaven above them, unites 
and harmonises the two worlds ; a beautiful pagan dream carries on a 
beautiful dream of chivalry ; the link consists in the fact that they are 
both beautiful. At this elevation the poet has ceased to observe the 
differences of races and civilisations. He can introduce into his picture 
whatever he will ; his only reason is, ' That suited ;' and there could 
be no better. Under the glossy-leaved oaks, by the old trunk so deeply 
rooted in the ground, he can see two knights cleaving each other, and 
the next instant a company of Fauns Avho came there to dance. The 
beams of light which have poured down upon the velvet moss, the Avet 
turf of an English forest, can reveal the dishevelled locks and white 
shoulders of nymphs. Have you not seen it in Kubens ? And what 
signify discrepancies in the happy and sublime illusion of a fancy? 
Are there more discrepancies ? Who perceives them, who feels them ? 
Who feels not, on the contrary, that to speak truth, there is but one 
world, that of Plato and the poets; that actual phenomena are but out- 
lines — mutilated, incomplete, and blurred outlines — wretched abortions 
scattered here and there on Time's track, like fragments of clay, hali 
moulded, then cast aside, lying in an artist's studio ; that, after all, in- 
visible forces and ideas, which for ever renew the actual existences, 
attain their fulfilment only in imaginary existences ; and that the poet, 
in order to express nature in its entirety, is obliged to embrace in hil 
sympathy all the ideal forms by which nature has been expressed ? Thii 
is the greatness of his work ; he has succeeded in seizing beauty in it» 
fulness, because he cared for nothing but beauty. 



CHAP. I.T THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 18« 

The reader will feel that such a poem cannot be recounted. In 
fact, there are six poems, each of a dozen cantos, in which the action is 
ever diverging and converging again, becoming confused and starting 
agaiu; and all the imaginations of antiquity and of the middle-age are, 
I believe, combined in it. The knight ' pricks along the plaine,' among 
the trees, and at a crossing of the paths meets other knights with whom 
he engages in combat ; suddenly from within a cave appears a monster, 
half woman and half serpent, surrounded by a hideous offspring ; further 
on a giant, with three bodies; then a dragon, great as a hill, with sharp 
talons and vast wings. For three days he fights him, and twice over- 
thrown, he comes to himself only by aid of * a gracious ointment.' 
After that there are savage tribes to be conquered, castles surrounded 
by flames to be captured. Meanwhile ladies are wandering in the 
midst of forests, on white palfreys, exposed to the assaults of miscreants, 
now guarded by a lion which follows them, now delivered by a band of 
satyrs who adore them. Magicians work manifold charms; palaces 
display their festivities; tilt-yards furnish tournaments; sea -gods, 
nymphs, fairies, kings, mingle feasts, surprises, dangers. 

You will say it is a phantasmagoria. What matter, if we see it ? 
And we do see it, for Spenser does. His sincerity wins us over. He 
is so much at home in this world, that we end by finding ourselves at 
home in it. He has no appearance of astonishment at astonishing 
events ; he comes upon them so naturally, that he makes them natural ; 
he defeats the miscreants, as if he had done nothing else all his life. 
Venus, Diana, and the old deities, dwell by his threshold, and enter, 
and he takes no notice of them. His serenity becomes ours. We grow 
credulous and happy by contagion, and to the same extent as he. How 
could it be otherwise ? Is it possible to refuse credence to a man who 
paints tilings for us with so just a detail and in so lively colours ? Here 
he describes a forest for you on a sudden; are you not instantly in it with 
him? Beech trees with their silvery stems, ' loftie trees iclad with 
sommers pride, did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide;' rays 
of light tremble on the bark and shine on the ground, on the redden- 
ing ferns and low bushes, which, suddenly smitten with the luminous 
track, glisten and glimmer. Footsteps are scarcely heard on the thick 
beds of heaped leaves ; and at distant intervals, on the tall herbage, 
drops of dew are sparkling. Yet the sound of a horn reaches iia 
through the foliage ; how sweetly it falls on the ear, with what unlooked 
for cheer in this vast silence ! It resounds more loudly ; the clatter of 
a hunt draws near; ' eft through the thicke they heard onr rudely rush ; 
a nymph approaches, the most chaste and beautiful in the world 
Spenser sees her ; more, he kneels before her : 

* Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not, 
But hevenly pourtraict of bright angels how, 
Cleare as the skye, vvithoutcn blame or blot, 
Through goodly mixture of complexions dew: 



1190 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

And in lier cheekes the venneill red did shew 
Like roses in a bed of lillies shed, 
The which ambrosiall odours from them threw. 
And gazers sence with double pleasure fed, 
Hable to heale the sicke and to revive the ded. 

In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame, 

Kindled above at th' Hevenly Makers light, 

And darted fyrie beanies out of the same, 

So passing persant, and so wondrous bright, 

That quite bereav'd the rash beholders sight : 

In them the blinded god his lustfull fyre 

To kindle oft assayd, but had no might ; 

For, with dredd maiestie and awfull yre, 

She broke his wanton darts, and quenched bac5e desjre. 

Her yvorie forhead, full of bountie brave, 

Like a broad table did itselfe dispred, 

For Love his loftie triuraphes to engrave, 

And write the battailes of his great godhed : 

All good and honour might therein be red ; 

For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake^ 

Sweete wordes, like dropping honny, she did shed ; 

And 'twixt the perles and rubins softly brake 

A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seemd to make 

Upon her eyelids many Graces sate. 

Under the shadow of her even browes, 

"Working belgardes and amorous retrate ; 

And everie one her with a grace endowes. 

And everie one with meekenesse to her bowes : 

So glorious mirrhour of celestiall gi-ace. 

And soveraine moniment of mortall vowes. 

How shall tVayle pen descrive her heavenly face. 

For feare, tluough want of skill, her beauty to disgrace I 

So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire, 
She seemd, when she presented was to sight ; 
And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire, 
All in a silken Camus lilly whight, 
Purfled upon with many a folded ] flight, 
"Which all above besprinckled was throughout 
*Vith golden aygulets, that glistred bright. 
Like twinckling starres ; and all the skirt about 
"Was hemd with golden fringe. 

Below her ham her weed did somewhat trayne^ 

And her streiglit legs most bravely were enxbayld 

In gilden buskins of costly cordwayne. 

All bard with golden bendes, which were entayld 

"With curious an ti ekes, and full fayre aumayld: 

Before, they fastned were under her knee 

In a rich iewell, and therein entrayld 

The ends of all the knots, that none might see 

How they within their fotUdings close enwrapped bee. 



THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 191 

Like two faire marble pillours they were scene, 
Which doe the temple of the gods support, 
Whom all the people decke with girlauds greene, 
And honour in their festivall resort ; 
Those same with stately grace and princely port 
She taught to tread, when she herselfe would gi'ace ; 
But with the woody nymphes when she did play, 
Or when the flying libbard she did chace, 
She could them nimbly move, and after fly apace. 
And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held. 
And at her backe a bow and quiver gay, 
Stuft with steel-headed dartes wherewith she queld 
The salvage beastes in her victorious play, 
Knit with a golden bauldricke which forelay 
Athwart her snowy brest, and did divide 
Her daintie paps ; which, like young fruit in May, 
Now little gan to swell, and being tide 
Through her thin weed their places only signifide. 
Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre. 
About her shoulders weren loosely shed. 
And, when the winde emongst them did inspyre, 
They waved like a penon wyde dispred. 
And low behinde her backe were scattered : 
And, whether art it were or heedlesse hap. 
As through the flouring forrest rash she fled, 
In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap, 
And flourishing fresh leaves and blossomes did enwrap. ** 
•The daintie rose, the daughter of her morne, 
Iklore deare than life she tendered, whose flowre 
The girlond of her honour did adorne : 
Ne sufi'red she the middayes scorching powre, 
Ne the sharp northerne wind thereon to showre ; 
But lapped up her silken leaves most chayre, 
Whenso the froward skye began to lowre ; 
But, soone as calmed was the cristall ayre, 
She did it fayre dispred, and let to florish fayre/^ 

He IS on his knees before her, I repeat, as a child on Corpus Christi 
daj , among flowers and perfumes, transported with admiration, so that 
he sees a heavenly light in her eyes, and angel's tints on her cheeks, 
even impressing into her service Christian angels and pagan graces to 
adori; and wait upon her ; it is love which brings such visions before 

him: 

* Sweet love, that doth his golden wings embay 
In blessed nectar and pure pleasures well.' 

Whence this perfect beauty, this modest and charming dawn, in 
which he assembles all the brightness, all the sweetness, all the virgin 



» The Faerie Queejie, ii. c. 3 Bt. 23-30. « Ibid. Hi. c 5. St. 51. 



192 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK !! 

graces of the full morning? What mother begat her, what marvellous 
birth brought to light such a wonder of grace and purity? One day, 
in a fresh, soHtary fountain, where the sunbeams shone, Chrysogoa* 
was bathing amid the roses and violets. 

* It was upon a sommers shinie day, 
When Titan faire his beames did display, 
In a fresh fountaine, far from all mens vew, 
She bath'd her brest the boyling heat t' allay ; 
She bath'd with roses red and violets blew, 
And all the sweetest flowers that in the forrest grew. 
Till faint through yi'kesome wearines adowne 
Upon the grassy ground herselfe she layd 
To sleepe, the whiles a gentle slombring swowne 
Upon her fell all naked bare displayd. ' ^ 

The beams played upon her body, and * fructified ' her. The monthi 
rolled on. Troubled and ashamed, she went into the * wildernesse,' 
and sat down, * every sence with sorrow sore opprest.' Meanwhile 
Venus, searching for her boy Cupid, who had mutinied and fled from 
her, 'wandered in the world.' She had sought him in courts, cities, 
cottages, promising 'kisses sweet, and sweeter things, unto the man 
that of him tydings to her brings.' 

Shortly unto the wastefull woods she came, 

Whereas she found the goddesse (Diana) with hei crew, 

After late chace of their embrewed game, 

Sitting beside a fountaine in a rew ; 

Some of them washing with the liquid dew 

From ofl" their dainty limbs the dusty sweat 

And soyle, which did deforme their lively hew ; 

Others lay shaded from the scorching heat ; 

The rest upon her person gave attendance great. 

She, having hong upon a bough on high 

Her bow and painted quiver, had unlaste 

Her silver buskins from her nimble thigh. 

And her lanck loynes ungirt, and brests unbraste, 

After her heat the breathing cold to taste ; 

Her golden lockes, that late in tresses bright 

Embreaded were for hindring of her haste. 

Now loose about her shoulders hong undight, 

And were with sweet Ambrosia all besprinckled light '* 

Diana, sui'prised thus, repulses Venus, 'and gan to smile, in scorne of r.uf 
vaine playnt,' swearing that if she should catch Cupid, she would clip his 
wanton wings. Then she took pity on the afflicted goddess, and set her- 
self with her to look for the fugitive. They came to the ' shady covert' 
where Chrysogone, in her sleep, had given birth ' unwares' to two lovely 
girls, ' as faire as springing day.' Diana took one, and made her 

• The Faerie Q,ueene, iii. c. G, st 6 and 7. ^ lUd. st. 17 and 18. 



-iTHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 198 

the purest of all virgins. Venus carried off the other to the garden of 
Adonis, ' the first seminary of all things, that are borne to .ive and dye;' 
where Psyche, the bride of Love, disports herself; where Pleasure, their 
daughter, wantons with the Graces ; where Adonis, ' lapped in flowres 
and pretious spycery,' '* liveth in eternal bliss,' and came back to life 
through the breath of immortal Love. She brought her up as her 
daughter, selected her to be the most faithful of loves, and after long 
trials, gave her hand to the good knight Sir Scudamore. 

That is the kind of thing we meet with in the wondrous forest. 
Are you sick of it, and do you wish to leave it because it is wondrous ? 
At every bend in the alley, at every change of the day, a stanza, a 
word, reveals a landscape or an apparition. It is morning, the white 
dawn gleams faintly through the trees; the bluish vapours roll like a veil 
at the horizon, and vanish in the smiling air ; the springs tremble and 
murmur faintly amongst the mosses, and on high the poplar leaves 
begin to stir and flutter like the wings of butterflies. A knight alights 
from his horse, a valiant knight, who has unhorsed many a Saracen, and 
experienced many an adventure. He unlaces his helmet, and on a 
sudden you perceive the very cheeks of a young girl : 

* Which doft, her golden lockes, that were uphoimd 
Still in a knot, unto her heeles downe traced, 
And like a silken veile in compasse round 
About her backe and all her bodie wound : 
Like as the shining skie in summers night, 
What time the dayes with scorching heat abound. 
Is creasted all with lines of firie light, 

That it prodigious seemes in common peoples sight.** 

• 

It is Britomart, a virgin and a heroine, like Clorinda or Marfisa,^ but 
how much more ideal I The genuine sentiment of nature, sincerity 
of fancy, ever-flowing fertility of inspiration, the German gravity, re- 
animate classical or chivalrous conceptions, which have the oldest and 
most trite appearance. The train of splendours and of scenery never 
ends. Desolate promontories, cleft with gaping chasms ; thunder- 
stiicken and blackened masses of rocks, against which the hoarse 
breakers dash ; palaces sparkling with gold, wherein ladies, like 
angels, reclining carelessly on purple cushions, listen with sweet smiles 
to the harmony of music played by unseen hands ; lofty silent walks, 
where avenues of oaks spread their motionless shadows over tufts of 
virgin violets, and turf which never mortal foot has trod ; — to all these 
beauties of art and nature he adds the marvels of mythology, and de- 
icribes them with as much of love and of full credence as a painter o( 



* The Faerie Qiieene, iv. c. 1, st. 13. 

* Clorinda, the heroine of the infidel army in Tasso's epic poeni Jerusalem De- 
Ufiered ; Marfisa, an Indian queen, who figures in Ariosto's Orlando Fur>/)9i 

and :i1so in Boyardo's Orlando Innamorafn. — Tk. 

N 



194 THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK II 

the Renaissance or an ancient poet. Here approach on chariots oi 
shell, Cjrmoent and her nymphs : 

* A teme of dolphins raunged in aray 
Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent ; 
They were all taught by Triton to obay 

To the long raynes at her commaundement : 

As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went, 

That their hrode flaggy finnes no fome did reare, 

Ne bubling rowndell they behinde them sent ; 

The rest, of other fishes drawen weaie ; 

Which with their finny oars the swelling sea did sheare.** 

Nothing, again, can be sweeter or calmer than the description of thtf 
palace of Morpheus : 

* He, making speedy way through spersed ayre, 
And through the world of waters wide and deepe, 
To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire. 

Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe, 

And low, where dawning day doth never peepe^ 

His dwelling is ; there Tethj'S his wet bed 

Doth ever wash, and Cjoithia still doth steepe 

In silver deaw his ever-drouping hed, 

Wliiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spied. 

And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft, 

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe. 

And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, 

Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 

Of swai'ming bees, did cast him in a swowne. 

No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes, 

As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, « 

Might there be heard : but careless Quiet lyes, 

"Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes.'* 

Observe also in a corner of this forest, a band of satyrs dancing 
under the green leaves. They come leaping like wanton kids, as 
gay as birds of joyous spring. The fair Hellenore, whom they have 
chosen for * May-lady,' 'daunst lively' also, laughing, and *with gir- 
londs all bespredd.' The wood re-echoes the sound of their ' merry 
pypes.' * Their horned feet the greene gras wore.* * All day they 
daunced with great lustyhedd,' with sudden motions and suggestive 
ooks, while about them their flock feed on * the bronzes' at their 
j^easure. In every book we see strange processions pass by, allegorical 
and picturesque shows, like those which were then displayed at the 
courts of princes ; now a masquerade of Cupid, now of the Rivers, now 
of the Months, now of the Vices. Imagination was never more prodigal 
or inventive. Proud Lucifera advances on a chariot * adorned all with 
gold and girlonds gay,' beaming like the dawn, surrounded by a crowd 

■■ ' ' ' — ^ 

* The Faerie Qucene^ iii. c. 4, st. 33. ? Ibid. i. c. 1 st. 39 and 41. 



f.'HAP. J.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. i9j 

of courtiers whom she dazzles with her glory and sj)lendour : six un- 
eqiiall beasts" draw her along, and each of thefce is ridden b\ a Vice. 
One *iipon a slouthfuU asse ... in habit blacke . . . like to an holy 
monck,' sick for very idleness, lets his heavy head droop, and holds in 
his hand a breviary which he does not read ; another, on ' a filthie 
gwyne,' crawls by in his deformity, 'his belly. . . upblowne with luxury, 
■nd eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne ; and like a crane his necke 
was long and fyne,' drest in vine-leaves, through which one can see his 
body eaten by ulcers, and vomiting along the road the wine and flesh 
with which he is glutted Another, seated between * two iron coffers,* 
*upon a cameil loaden all with gold,' is handling a heap of coin, with 
thread-bare coat, hollow cheeks, and feet stiff with gout; another 
* upon a ravenous wolfe still did chaw between his cankred teeth a 
venemous tode, that all the poison ran about his chaw,' and his dis- 
coloured garment * ypainted full of eies,' conceals a snake wound about 
his body. The last, covered with a torn and bloody robe, comes riding 
on a hon, brandishing about his head *a burning brond,' his eyes 
sparkling, his face pale as ashes, grasping in his feverish hand the 
haft of his dagger. The strange and terrible procession passes on, led 
by the solemn harmony of the stanzas ; and the grand music of reite- 
rated rhymes sustains the imagination in this fantastic world, which, 
with its mingled horrors and splendours, has just been opened to its 
flight. 

Yet all this is little. However much mythology and chivalry can 
supply, they do not suffice for the needs of this poetical fancy, Spenser's 
characteristic is the vastness and the overflow of picturesque invention. 
Like Rubens, he creates whole scenes, beyond the region of all tradi- 
tions, to express distinct ideas. As with Rubens, his allegory swells its 
proportions beyond all rule, and withdraws fancy from all law, except 
in so far as it is necessary to harmonise forms and coloui's. For, if 
ordinary spirits receive from allegory a certain oppression, lofty imagi- 
nations receive wings which carry them aloft. Rescued by it from the 
common conditions of life, they can dare all things, beyond imitation, 
apart from probability, with no other guide but their inborn energy 
ind their shadowy instincts. For three days Sir Guyon is led by the 
cursed spirit, the tempter Mammon, in the subterranean realm, across 
wonderful gardens, trees laden with golden fruits, glittering palaces, 
»nd a confusion of all worldly treasures. They have descended into the 
bc/wels of the earth, and pass through caverns, unknown abyf^es, silent 
depths. * An ugly Feend . . . with monstrous stalke behind nim stept,' 
without his knowledge, ready to devour him on the least show of 
covetousness. The brilliancy of the gold lights up the hideous figures, 
and the beaming metal shines with a beauty more seductive in th« 
gloom of the infernal prison. 

* That Houses forme within was rude and strong, 
• Lyke an huge cave hewne out of rocky clifte, 



196 THE RENAISSANCE. fBOOB a 

From whose rough vaut the ragged "breaches hong 

Embost with massy gold of glorious guifte, 

And with rich luetall loaded every rifte, 

That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt ; 

And over them Arachne high did lifte 

Her cunning web, and spred her subtile nett, 

Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more black than iet^ 

Both roofe, and floore, and walls, were all of gold, 

But overgrowne with dust and old decay. 

And hid in darknes, that none could behold 

The hew thereof ; for vew of cherefuU day 

Did never in that House itselfe displa)', 

But a faint shadow of uncertein light ; 

Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away ; 

Or as the moone, cloathed with clowdy night, 

Does shew to him that walkes in feare and sad affiight* 

In all that rowrae was nothing to be seene 

But huge great yron chests and coffei-s strong, 

All bard with double bends, that none could weene 

Them to enforce by violence or wrong ; 

On every side they placed were along. 

But all the grownd with sculs was scattered 

And dead mens bones, which round about were flong , 

Whose lives, it seemed, whilome there were shed. 

And their vile carcases now left unburied. . . . 

Thence, forward he him ledd and shortly brought 
Unto another rowme, whose dore forthright 
To him did open as it had beene taught : 
Therein an hundred raunges weren pight. 
And hundred fournaces all burning bright ; 
By every fournace many Feends did byde, 
Deformed creatures, horrible in sight ; 
And every Feetid his busie paines applj'^de 
To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde. 

One with great bellowes gathered filling ay re, 
And with forst wind the fewell did inflame ; 
Another did the dying bronds repayre 
AVith yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same 
With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame. 
Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat : 
Some scmnd the drosse that from the metall came ; 
Some stird the molten owre with ladles great : 
And every one did swincke, and every one did swea* . 

He brought him, through a darksom narrow strayt, 

To a broad gate all built of beaten gold : 

The gate was open ; but therein did wayt 

A stuidife Villein, stryding stiflfe and bold, ^ 



i;UA7», I J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 197 

As if the Highest God defy he would : 

In his right hand an yron club he held, 

But he liimselfe was all of golden mould, 

Yet had both life and sence, and well could weM 

That cursed weapon, when his crueU foes he queld . . . 

He brought him in. The rowme was large and wyda, 

As it some gyeld or solemne temple weare ; 

Many great golden pillours did upbeare 

The massy roofe, and riches huge sustayne ; 

And every pillour decked was full deare 

With crownes, and diademes, and titles vaine, 

"Which mortall princes wore whiles they on earth did raya*. 

A route of people there assembled were, 

Of every sort and nation under skye, 

Which with great uprore preaced to draw new 

To th' upper part, where was advaunced hye 

A stately siege of soveraine maiestye ; 

And thereon satt a Woman gorgeous gay, 

And richly cladd in robes of royal tye, 

That never earthly prince in such aray 

His glory did enhaunce, and pompous pryde display . , ,"' 

There, as in glistring glory she did sitt, 
She held a great gold chaine ylincked well, 
Whose upper end to highest heven was knitt, 
And lower part did reach to lowest heU. ' * 

No artist's dream matches these visions : the glowing of the furnace 
under the vaults of the cavern, the lights flickering over the crowded 
figures, the throne, and the strange glitter of the gold shining in every 
direction through the darkness. The allegory assumes gigantic propor- 
tions. When the object is to show Temperance at issue with tempta- 
tions, Spenser deems it necessary to mass all the temptations together. 
He is treating of a general virtue ; and as such a virtue is capable of 
every sort of resistance, he requires from it every sort of resistance at 
on i time ; — after the test of gold, that of pleasure. Thus the grandest 
and the most exquisite spectacles follow and are contrasted with each 
other supernaturally ; the graceful and the terrible side by side, — the 
happy gardens side by side with the cursed subterranean cavern. 

• No gate, but like one, being goodly dight 
With bowes and braunches, which did broad dilate 
Their clasping armes in wanton wreathiugs intricate* 

So fashioned a porch with rare device, 
Archt over head with an embracing vine 
Whose bouuches hanging downe seemd to entice 
All passers-by to taste their lashious wine, 



The Faerie Queene, ii. c. 7, st. 28-4d 



19S THE KENAISSANCE. [BOOK U. 

And did themselves into their hands incline, 

As freely offering to be gathered ; 

Some deepe empurpled as the hyacine, 

Some as the rubine laiigliing sweetely red, 

Some like faire emeraudes, not yet well ripened. . , , 

And in the midst of all a fountame stood, 

Of richest substance that on earth might bee, 

So pure and shiny that the silver flood 

Through every channell running one might see j 

Most goodly it with curious ymageree 

Was over- wrought, and shapes of naked boyei^ 

01 which some seemd with lively iollitee 

To fly about, playing their wanton toyes, 

Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes. 

And over all of purest gold was spred 

A trayle of yvie in his native hew ; 

For the rich metall was so coloured, 

That wight, who did not well avis'd it vew, 

Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew : 

Low his lascivious armes adown did creepe. 

That themselves dipping in the silver dew 

Their fleecy flowres they fearfully did steepe, 

Which drops of christall seemd for wantoues to weep 

Infinit streames continually did well 

Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see, 

The which into an ample laver fell, 

And shortly grew to so great quantitie, 

That like a little lake it seemd to bee ; 

Whose depth exceeded not three cubits hight. 

That through the waves one might the bottom see. 

All pav'd beneath with jaspar shining bright, 

That seemd the fountaine in that sea did sayle upright. , , e 

The ioyous birdes, shrovded in chearefull shade, 

Their notes unto the vAce attempred sweet ; 

Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made 

To th' instruments divine respondence meet ; 

The silver-sounding instruments did meet 

With the base murmure of the waters fall ; 

The waters fall with difference discreet, 

Now soft, now loud, unto tlie wind did call ; 

The gentle warbling wind low answered to all. . . « 

Upon a bed of roses she was layd. 

As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant ain ; 

And was arayd, or rather disarayd, 

All in a vele of silke and silver thin, 

That hid no whit her alabaster skin. 

But rather shewd more white, if more might bee : 

More subtile web Arachne cannot spin ; 

Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see 

Of scorched deaw, do not in th' ayre more lightly flee. 



CUA.P. l.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. I99 

Her snowy brest was "bare to ready spoyle 

Of hungry eies, which n' ote therewith be fild ; 

And yet, through languour of her late sweet toyl«, 

Few drops, more cleare then nectar, forth distild. 

That like pure orient perles adowne it trild ; 

And her faire eyes, sweet smyling in delight, 

Moystened their iierie beanies, with which she thrild 

Fraile harts, yet quenched not ; like starry light, 

"Which, sparckling on the silent waves, does seeme more bright.'' 

Is not this a fairy land? We find here finished pictures, genuine 
and complete, composed with a painter's feeling, with choice of tints 
and lines ; our eyes are delighted by it. This reclining Acrasia has 
the pose of a goddess, or of one of Titian's courtesans. An Italian 
artist might copy these gardens, flowing waters, sculptured loves, 
wreaths of creeping ivy thick with glossy leaves and fleecy flowers. 
Just before, in the infernal depths, the lights, with their long streaming 
rays, were fine, half-smothered by the darkness; the lofty throne in the 
vast hall, between the pillars, in the midst of a swarming multitude, 
connected all the forms around it by centring all regards. The poet, 
here and throughout, is a colourist and an architect. However fan- 
tastic his world may be, it is not factitious ; if it is not, it might have 
been ; indeed, it should have been ; it is the fault of circumstances if 
they do not dispose themselves so as to bring this to pass; taken by itself, 
it possesses that internal harmony by which a real thing, even a still 
higher harmony, comes into existence, inasmuch as, amid the differences 
of real things, it is altogether, and in its least detail, constructed with 
a view to beauty. Art is matured: this is the great characteristic of 
the age, which distinguishes this poem from all similar tales heaped up 
by the middle-age. Incoherent, mutilated, they lay like rubbish, or 
rough-hewn stones, which the weak hands of the trouveres could not 
build into a monument. At last the poets and artists are here, and 
with them the conception of beauty, to wit, the idea of the general 
effect. They understand proportions, relations, contrasts ; they com- 
pose. In their hands the misty vague sketch becomes defined, com- 
plete, separate ; it assumes colour — is made a picture. Every object 
tlius conceived and imaged acquires a definite existence as soon as it 
ao|uires a true form; centuries after, it will be acknowledged and 
admh'ed, and men will be touched by it; and more, they will be 
touched by its author; for, besides the object which he paints, the 
poet paints himself. His ruling idea is stamped upon the work which 
it produces and controls. Spenser is superior to his subject, compre- 
hends it fully, frames it with a view to the end, in order to impresa 
upon it the proper mark of his soul and his genius. Each story is 
modified with respect to another, and all with respect to a certain effect 

» T\e Faerie OueeneAi c 12. st. 53-78. 



200 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

which is being worlced out. Thus a beauty issues from this harmony, 
■ — the beauty in the poet's heart, — which his whole work strives to 
express ; a noble and yet a laughing beauty, made up of moral elevac 
tion and sensuous seductions, English in sentiment, Italian in externals; 
chivalric in subject, modern in its perfection, representing a unique and 
admirable epoch, the appearance of paganism in a Christian lace, and 
tiie worship of form by an imagination of the North. 



S. Prose. 

I. 

Such an epoch can scarcely last, and the poetic vitality expends 
Itself in a blossom of prose, so that its expansion leads to its decline. 
From the beginni/ig of the seventeenth century, the enfeeblement of 
manners and genius grows apparent. Enthusiasm and respect decline. 
The minions and sycophants of the court intrigue and pilfer, amid 
pedantry, puerility, and show. The court plunders, and the nation 
murmurs. The Commons begin to show a stern front, and the king, 
scolding them like a schoolmaster, bends before them like a little boy. 
This pitiable monarch (James i.) suffers himself to be bullied by his 
favourites, writes to them like a gossip, calls himself a Solomon, airs 
his literary vanity, and in granting an audience to a courtier, holds up 
to him his own reputation as a savant, and expects to be answered in 
the same strain. The dignity of the government is weakened, and the 
people's loyalty is cooled. Royalty declines, and revolution is fostered. 
At the same time, the noble chivalric paganism degenerates into a base 
and coarse sensuality. The king, we are told, on one occasion, had got 
60 drunk with his royal brother Christian of Denmark, that they both 
had tc be carried to bed. Sir John Harrington says : 

* The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxica- 
tion. . . . Tlie Lady who did play the Queen's part (in the Masque of the Queen 
of Sheba) did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties ; but, forgetting 
the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish M;ije,stie3 
lap, and fell at his feet, tho I rather think it was in his face. Much was tlis 
hurry and confusion ; cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. IIi« 
Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba ; but he fell 
down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and 
laid on a bed of state ; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the 
Queen which had been bestowed on his garments ; such as wine, cream, jelly, 
beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The entertainment and show 
went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down ; wine did 
BO occupy their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, 
and Charity: Hope did assay to gpeak, but wine rendered her endeavours so feeble 
that she withdrew, and hoped the king would excuse her brevity : Faith . . . left 
the c« urt in a staggering condition. . . . They were both sick and spewing in the 
lower hall. Next came Victory, who ... by a strange medley of versification 



CHAP I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 201 

. . . and after macli lamentable utterance, was led away like a silly captive, and 
!aid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber. As for Peace, she most 
rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did 
oppose her coming. I ne'er did see such lack of good order, discretion, and 
fe< bviety in our Queen's days. ' * 

Observe that these tipsy women v^^ere great ladies. The reason is, 
tliat the grand ideas which introduce an epoch, end, in their exhaus- 
tion, by preserving nothing but their vices ; the proud sentiment oi 
natural life becomes a vulgar appeal to the senses. An entrance, an 
arch of triumph under James i., often represented obscenities ; and 
later, when the sensual instincts, exaggerated by Puritan tyranny, 
Degin to raise their heads once more, we shall find under the liestora- 
tion, excess revelling in its debauchery, and triumphing in its shame. 

Meanwhile the literature undergoes a change ; the powerful breeze 
which had guided it, and which, amidst singularity, refinements, exag- 
gerations, had made it great, slackened and diminished. With Carew, 
Suckling, and Herrick, prettiness takes the place of the beautiful. 
That which strikes them is no longer the general features of things ; 
that which they try to express is no longer the inner character of 
things. They no longer possess that liberal conception, that instinctive 
penetration, by which man sympathised with objects, and grew capable 
of creating them anew. They no longer boast of that overflow of 
emotions, that excess of ideas and images, which compelled a man to 
relieve himself by words, to act externally, to represent freely and 
fjoldly the interior drama which made his whole body and heart 
iremble. They are rather wits of the court, cavaliers of fashion, 
who w'ish to try their hand at imagination and style. In their hands 
love becomes gallantry ; they write songs, fugitive pieces, compli- 
ments tc the ladies. Do their hearts still prick them ? They turn 
eloquent phrases in order to be applauded, and flattering exaggera- 
tions in order to please. The divine faces, the serious or profound 
looks, the virgin or impassioned expressions which burst forth at every 
step in the early poets, have disappeared ; here we see nothing but 
agreeable countenances, painted in agreeable verses. Blackguardism 
is not far off; we meet with it as early as in Suckling, and crudity to 
boot, and prosaic epicurism ; their sentiment is expressed before long, 
^n such a phrase as : ' Let us amuse ourselves, and a fig for the resi.' 
The only objects they can paint, at last, are little graceful things, a 
kiss, a May-day festivity, a dewy primrose, a marriage morning, a 
bee.^ Herrick and Suckling especially produce little exquisite poems, 
delicate, ever laughing or smiling like those attributed to Anacreon, 

^ Nugce Antiquce, i. 349 et passim. 

* ' Some asked me where the Rubies grew, 

And nothing I did say ; 
But with my finger pointed to 

The lips of Julia. 



202 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK XI 

or those which abotind in the Anthology. In fact, here, as at the time 

alluded to, we are at the decline of paganism ; energy departs, the 
reign of the agreeable begins. People do not relinquish the worship 
of beauty and pleasure, but dally with them. They deck and fit 
them to their taste; they cease to subdue and bend men, who sport 
and amuse themselves with tliem. It is the last beam of a setting 
sun ; the genuine poetic sentiment dies out with Sedley^ Waller, and 
the rhymesters of the Restoration ; they write prose in verse ; their 
heart is on a level with their style, and with an exact language we 
find the commencement of a new age and a new art. 

Side by side with prettiness comes affectation ; it is the second 
mark of the decadence. Instead of writing to say things, they write 
to say them well ; they outbid their neighbours, and strain every mode 
of speech : they push art over on the side to which it had a leaning ; 
fend as in this age it had a leaning towards vehemence and imagination, 

Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where ; 

Then spake I to my girle, 
To part her lips, and shew me there 

The qiiarelets of Pearl. 
One ask'd me where the roses grew ; 

I bade him not go seek ; 
But forthwith bade my Julia show 

A bud in either cheek.' 

IIerrick's Hesperides, ed. Walford 1859 ; 
The Rock of RuUes, p. 32. 

* About the sweet bag of a bee, 

Two Cupids fell at odds ; 
And whose the pretty prize shu'd be, 

They vow'd to ask the Gods. 
Which Venus hearing, thither came, 

And for their boldness stript them ; 
And taking thence from each his flame, 

With rods of mirtle whipt them. 
Which done, to still their wanton cries. 

When quite grown sh'ad seen them. 
She kist and wip'd their dove-like eyes. 

And gave the bag between them.' 

Heurick, Ibid. ; The Bag of the Bee p Al 

Why so pale and wan, fond lover ? 

Prithee, why so pale ? 
Will, when looking well can't move her. 

Looking ill prevail ? 

Prithee, why so pale \ 
Why so dull and mute, young sinner ? 

Prithee, why so mute ? 
Will, when speaking well can't win her. 

Saying nothing do't ? 

Prithee, why so mute ? 



CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 

they pile up their emphasis and colouring. A jargon always springs 
out of a style. In all arts, the first masters, the inventors, disctver the 
idea, steep themselves in it, and leave it to effect its outward form. 
Then come the second class, the imitators, who sedulously repeat this 
form, and alter it by exaggeration. Some nevertheless have talent, as 
Quailes, Herbert, Babington, Donne in particular, a pungent satirist, 
of terrible crudeness,^ a powerful poet, of a precise and intense imagi- 
n.Uion, who still preserves something of the energy and thrill of th« 
original inspiration.^ But he deliberately abuses all these gifts, and 

Quit, quit for shame : tliis will not move, 

This cannot take lier ; 
If of herself she will not love, 
Nothing can make her. 
The devil take her ! ' 
Sir John Suckling's Works, ed. A. Suckling, 1836, p. 70. 
As when a lady, walking Flora's bower. 
Picks here a pink, and there a gilly-flower, 
Now plucks a violet from her purple bed. 
And then a primrose, the year's maidenhead. 
There nips the brier, here's the lover's pansy. 
Shifting her dainty pleasures with her fancy ; 
This on her arms, and that she lists to wear 
Upon the borders of her curious hair ; • 

At length a rose-bud (passing all the rest) 
She plucks and bosoms in her lily breast.' 

QuARLES, Chalmers' Cyclopaedia of Engl. Lit. i. 140. 
' See in particular, his satire against the courtiers. The following is 
■galjBi imitators : 

* But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw 
Other's wits fruits, and in his ravenous maw 
Rankly digested, doth those things outspue. 
As his owne things ; and they are his owne, 'tis true, 
For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne 
The meat was mine, th' excrement is his owne.' 

Donne's Satires, 1639. Satire ii p 128. 

• ♦ When I behold a stream, which from the spring 
Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring, 
Or in a speechless slumber calmly ride 
Her wedded channel's bosom, and there chide 
And bend her brows, and swell, if any bough 
Does but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow • 
Yet if her often gnawing kisses wm 
The traitorous banks to gape and "let her in. 
She rusheth violent] 7 and doth divorce 
Her from her native and her long-kept course. 
And roares, and braves it, and in gallant scorn 
In flatt'ring eddies promising return, 
She flouts her channel, which thenceforth is dry 
Then say I : That is she, and this am I.' 



204 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK h 

succeeds with great difRculty in concocting a piece of nonsense. Foi 
instance, the impassioned poets had said to their mistress, that if they 
lost her, they should hate all other women. Donne, in order to eclipse 
them, says : 

* do not die, for I shall hate 

All women so, when tliou art gone. 

That thee I shall not celebrate 

When I remember thou wast one. ' * 

Twenty times while reading him we rub our brow, and ask with aston- 
ishment, how a man could so have tormented and contorted himself, 
strained his style, refined on his refinement, hit upon such absurd com- 
parisons ? But this was the spirit of the age ; they made an effort to be 
ingeniously absurd. A flea had bitten Donne and his mistress. He 
says: 

* This flea is you and T, and this 

Our mariage bed and mariage temple is. 

Though Parents grudge, and you, ware met^ 

And cloyster'd in these living walls of Jet. 

Though use make you apt to kill me, 

Let not to that selfe-murder added be, 

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. ' " 

The Marquis de Mascarille^ never found anything to equal this. Would 
you have believed a writer could invent such absurdities ? She and he 
made but one, for both are but one with the flea, and so one could not 
be killed without the other. Observe that the wise Malherbe wrote 
very similar enormities, in the Tears of St. Feter, and that the sonneteers 
of Italy and Spain reach simultaneously the same height of folly, and 
you will agree that throughout Europe at that time they were at the 
close of a poetical epoch. 

On this boundary line of a closing and a dawning literature a poet 
appeared, one of the most fanciful and illustrious of his time, Abraham 
Cowley,* a precocious child, a reader and a versifier like Pope, having 
known passions less than books, busied himself less about things than 
about words. Literary exhaustion has seldom been more manifest. 
He possesses all the capacity to say whatever pleases him, but he has 
just nothing to say, The substance has vanished, leaving in its place a 
hollow shadow. In vain he tries the epic, the Pindaric strophe, all 
kinds of stanzas, odes, little lines, long lines; in vain he calls to his 
assistance botanical and philosophical similes, all the erudition of the 
university, all the relics of antiquity, all the ideas of new science : we 
yawn as we read him. Except in a few descriptive verses, two or three 

1 Poems, 1639 : A Feaver, p. 15. « Ibid. : The Flea, p. 1. 

* A valet in Molieres Les Precieuses Ridicules, who aj^es and exaggerates 
his master's manners and style, and pretends to be a marquess. He also ap. 
peara in L'Etourdi and Le depit Amoureux, \ v the same author. — Tr. 

* 1G08-1667. I refer to the eleventh edition of 1710. 



I 



JHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 205 

graceful tendernesses/ he feels notlung, he speaks only ; he is a poet of 
the brain. His collection of amorous pieces is but a vehicle for a scien- 
tific test, and serves to show that he has read the authors, that he knows 
bis geography, that he is well versed in anatomy, that he has a dash of 
medicine and astronomy, that he has at his service references and 
allusions enough to break the head of his readers. He will speak in 
Ihis AV ise ; 

* Beauty, thou active— passive 111 ! 
Wliicli dy'st thyself as fast as thou dost kill ! ' 

or will remark that his mistress is to blame for spending three laouri 
every morning at her toilet, because 

* They make that Beauty Tyranny, 

That's else a Civil-governmeut. ' 

After reading two hundred pages, you feel disposed to box his ears. 
You have to think, by way of consolation, that every age must draw to 
a close, that this one could not do so otherwise, that the old glow of en- 
thusiasm, the sudden flood of rapture, images, capricious and audacious 
fancies, which once rolled through the mind of men, arrested now and 
cooled down, could only exhibit dross, a curdling scum, a multitude of 
brilliant and hurtful points. You say to yourself that, after all, Cowley 
had perhaps talent ; you find that he had in fact one, a new talent, 
unknown to the old masters, the sign of a new culture, which needs 
other manners, and announces a new society. Cowley had these 
manners, and belongs to this society. He was a well-governed, 
reasonable, instructed, polished, well-trained man, who, after twelve 
years of service and writing in France, under Queen Henrietta, retires 
at last wisely into the country, where he studies natural history, and 
prepares a treatise on religion, philosophising on men and life, fertile 
in general reflections and ideas, a moralist, bidding his executor ' to let 
nothing stand in his writings which might seem the least in the world 
to be an offence against religion or good manners.' Such dispositions 
and such a life produce and indicate less a poet, that is, a seer, a 
creator, than a literary man, I mean a man who can think and speak, 
»nd who therefore ought to have read much, learnt much, written much, 
ought to possess a calm and clear mind, to be accustomed to polished 
society, sustained conversation, a sort of raillery. In fact, Cowley is 
an author by profession, the oldest of those who in England deserve the 
name. His prose is as easy and sensible as his poetry is contorted and 
unreasonable. A polished man, writing for polished men, pretty much 
as he would speak to them in a drawing-room, — this I take to be the 
idea which they had of a good author in the seventeenth century. It 
is tho idea which Cowley's Essays leave of his character ; it is the kind 
of talent which the writers of the coming age take for their model ; and 

» The Spring {The Mispress, i. 72). 



206 'i'HE RENAISSANCE;. fBOOK II 

he is the first of that grave and amiable group which, continued ia 
Temple, reaches so far as to include Addison. 

11. 

Having reached this point, the Renaissance seemed to have attained 
its limit, and, like a drooping and faded flower, to be ready to leave 
its place for a new bud which began to rise from the ruins. At all 
events, a living and unexpected shoot sprang from the old declini ig 
stock. At the moment when art languished, science shot forth ; 
the whole labour of the age ended in this. The fruits are not 
unlike ; on the contrary, they come from the same sap, and by the 
diversity of the shape only manifest two distinct periods of the inner 
growth which has produced them. Every art ends in a science, and 
every poetry in a philosophy. For science and philosophy do but 
translate in precise formulas the original conception which art and 
poetry render sensible by imaginary figures : when once the idea of an 
epoch is manifested in verse by ideal creations, it naturally comes to be 
expressed in prose by positive arguments. That which had struck 
men on escaping from ecclesiastical oppression and monkish asceticism 
was the pagan idea of a life true to nature, and freely developed. They 
had found nature buried behind scholasticism, and they had expressed 
it in poems and paintings ; in Italy by superb healthy corporeality, in 
England by vehement and unconventional spirituality, with such divina- 
tion of its laws, instincts, and forms, that one might extract from their 
theatre and their pictures a complete theory both of soul and body. 
When enthusiasm is past, curiosity begins. The sentiment of beauty 
gives way to the sentiment of truth. The theory embraced in works 
of imagination is unfolded. The gaze continues fixed on nature, not 
to admire now, but to understand. From painting we pass to anatomy^ 
from the drama to moral philosophy, from grand poetical divinations 
to great scientific views ; the second continue the first, and the same 
spirit shows in both ; for what art had represented, and science pro- 
ceeds to observe, are living things, with tlieir complex and complete 
structure, set in motion by their internal forces, with no supernatural 
intervention. Artists and savants, all set out, with no misgiving, froiii 
the master conception, to wit, that nature subsists of herself, that every 
existence has in its own womb the source of its action, that the causes 
of events are the innate laws of things ; an all-powerful idea, from 
which was to issue the modern civilisation, and which, at the time 1 
write of, produced in England and Italy, as before in Greece, genuine 
sciences, s'de by side with a complete art : after da Vinci and Michael 
Angelo, the school of anatomists, mathematicians, naturalists, ending 
with Galileo ; after Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Shakspeare, the school 
of thinkers who surround Bacon and lead up to Harvey. 

We have not far to look for this school. In the interregnum of 
Christianity the dominating bent of mind belongs to it. It was paganism 



CHAP. 1. 1 THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 201 

whicli 1 eigne J in Elizabeth's court, not only in letters, but in dcctrine,— . 
a paganism of the north, always serious, generally sombre, but which 
rested, like that of the south, on natural forces. From some, all Chris* 
tiaiiity was effaced ; many proceed to atheism from the excess of revulsion 
and debauchery, like Marlowe and Greene. With others, like Shak- 
speare, the idea Df God scarcely makes its appearance ; they see in our 
poor short human life only a dream, and beyond it the long sad sleep : 
for them, death is the goal of life ; at most a dark gulf, into which man 
plunges, uncertain of the issue. If they carry their gaze beyond, they 
j)crceive,^ not the soul welcomed into a purer world, but the corpse 
abandoned to the damp earth, or the ghost hovering about the church- 
yard. They speak like sceptics or superstitious men, never as genuine 
believers. Their heroes have human, not religious virtues; against 
crime they rely on honour and the love for the beautiful, not on piety and 
the fear of God. If others, few and far, like Sidney and Spenser, catch 
a glimpse of this god, it is as a vague ideal light, a sublime Platonic 
phantom, which has no resemblance to a personal God, a strict inquisitor 
of the slightest motions of the heart. He appears at the summit of 
things, like the splendid crown of the world, but He does not weigh 
upon human life ; He leaves it intact and free, only turning it towards 
the beautifal. They do not know as yet the sort of narrow prison in 
which official cant and respectable creeds were, later on, to confine 
action and intelligence. Even the believers, sincere Christians like 
Bacon and Browne, discard all oppressive sternness, reduce Christianity 
to a sort of moral poetry, and allow naturalism to subsist beneath re- 
ligion. In such a broad and open channel, speculation could spread its 
wings. With Lord Herbert appeared a systematic deism ; with Milton 
and Algernon Sidney, a philosophical religion ; Clarendon went so far 
as to compare Lord Falkhmd's gardens to the groves of Academe. 
Against the rigorism of the Puritans, Chillingworth, Hales, Hooker, the 
greatest doctors of the Enghsh Church, give a large place to natural 
reason, — so large, that never, even to this day, has it made such an 
advance. 

An astonishing irruption of facts — the discovery of America, the 
revival of antiquity, the restoration of philology, the invention of the 
arts, the development of industries, the march of human curiosity over 
the whole of the past and the whole of the globe — came to furnish sub- 
ject-matter, and prose began its reign. Sidney, Wilson, Ascham, and 
Puttenliam explored the rules of style ; Hackluyt and Purchas com- 
piled the cyclopjedia of travel and the description of every land ; 
Holinslied, Speed, Raleigh, Stowe, Knolles, Daniel, Thomas More, 
Lord Herbert, founded history ; Camden, Spelman, Cotton, Usher, and 
Sfcldcn inaugurate scholarship ; a legion of patient workers, of obscure 

^ See in Shakspeare, TJie Tempest, Measure for Measure, Hamlet ; in Beau 
inont and Fletclier, Thierry and Theodore'^, Act iv. ; Web^i^T, 'passim 



WS THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK 11 

collectors, of literary pioneers, amassed, arranged, and sifted th« 
documents which Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley stored up 
in their libraries; whilst utopists, moralists, painters of manners — 
Thomas More, Joseph Hall, John Earle, Owen Feltham, Burton- 
described and passed judgment on the modes of life, continued with 
Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, and Isaac Walton up to the middle of the 
next century, and increase the number of controversialists and politicians 
who, with Hooker, Taylor, Chillingworth, Algernon Sidney, Harring- 
ton, study religion, society, church and state. A copious and con- 
fused fermentation, from which abundance of thoughts proceeded, but 
few notabk' books. Noble prose, such as was heard at the court of 
liOuis XIV., in PoUio, in the schools at Athens, such as rhetorical and 
sociable nations know how to produce, was altogether lacking. These 
men had not the spirit of analysis, the art of following step by step the 
natural order of ideas, nor the spirit of conversation, the talent never to 
■weary or shock others. Their imagination is too little regulated, and 
their manners too little polished. They who had mixed most '•n the 
■world, even Sidney, speak roughly what they think, and as they think 
it. Instead of glossing, they exaggerate. They blurt out all, and with- 
hold nothing. When they do not employ excessive compliments, they 
take to coarse pleasantries. They overlook measured charm,' relined 
raillery, delicate flattery. They rejoice in gross puns, dirty allusions 
They mistake paradoxical enigmas and grotesque images for wit. Great 
lords and ladies, they talk like ill-bred persons, lovei's of buffoonery, of 
shows and bear-fights. With some, as Overbury or Sir Thomas Browne, 
poetry trenches so much upon prose, that it covers its narrative with 
images, and hides ideas under its pictures. They load their style with 
flowery comparisons, which produce one another as they go along, and 
mount one above another, so that sense disappears, and ornament only 
is visible. In fine, they are generally pedants, still stiflf with the rust 
of the school ; they divide and subdivide, propound theses, definitions , 
they argue solidly and heavily, and quote their authors in Latin, and 
even in Greek ; they square out their massive periods, and learnedly 
knock their adversaries down, and their readers too, by the very re- 
bound. They are never on the prose-level, but always above or 
below — above by their poetic genius, below by the weight of their edu- 
cation and the barbarism of their manners. But they think seriously 
and for themselves ; they are deliberate ; they are convinced and 
touched by what they say. Even in the compiler we find a force and 
loyalty of spirit, which give confidence and cause pleasure. Theif 
writings are like the powerful and heavy engravings of their contem- 
poraries, the maps of Hofnagel for instance, so harsh and so instruc- 
tive; their conception is sharp and clear; they have the gift of per* 
celving every object, not under a general aspect, like the classical 
writers, but specially and individually. It is not man in the abstract, 
the citizen as he is everywhere, the countryman as such, that thej 



OHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 2q^ 

representj but James or Thomas, Smith or Brown, of such a parish, 
from such an office, Avith such and such attitude or dress, distinct from 
all others ; in short, they see, not the idea, but the individual. Imagine 
the disturbance that such a disposition produces in a man's head, how 
the regular order of things becomes deranged by it; how every object, 
with the infinite medley of its forms, properties, appendages, will thence- 
forth fasten itself by a hundred points of contact unforeseen to another 
object, and bring before the mind a series or a fiiraily ; what boldness 
language will derive from it ; what familar, picturesque, absurd words 
will break forth in succession ; how the dash, the impromptu, the origin- 
ality and inequality of invention, will stand out. Figure, at the same 
time, what a hold this form of mind has on objects, how many facts it 
condenses in one conception; what a mass of personal judgments, 
foreign authorities, suppositions, guesses, imaginations, it spreads over 
every subject ; with what haphazard and creative fecundity it engenders 
both truth and conjecture. It is an extraordinary chaos of thoughts 
and forms, often abortive, still more often barbarous, sometimes grand. 
But from this superfluity something lasting and great is produced, 
namely science, and we have only to examine more closely into one or 
two of these works to see the new creation emerge from the blocks and 
the debris. 

III. 

Two writers above all display this state of mind. The first, Robert 
Burton, an ecclesiastic and university recluse, who passed his life in 
libraries, and dabbled in all the sciences, as learned as Rabelais, of an 
inexhaustible and overflowing memory ; unequal, moreover, gifted with 
enthusiasm, and spasmodically gay, but as a rule sad and morose, to the 
extent of confessing in his epitaph that meliincholy made up his life and 
his death ; in the first place original, enamoured of his own intelligence, 
and one of the earliest models of that singular English mood which, 
withdrawing man within himself, develops in him, at one time imagina- 
tion, at another scrupulousness, at another oddity, and makes of him, 
according to circumstances, a poet, an eccentric, a humorist, a madman, 
or a puritan. He read on fot thirty years, put an encyclop^aia niic 
his head, and now, to amuse and relieve himself, takes a folio of blank 
paper. Twenty lines of a poet, a dozen lines of a treatise on agricul- 
ture, a folio column of heraldry, the patience, the record of the fever 
fits of hypochondria, the history of the particle que, a scrap of meta- 
physics, — this is what passes through his brain in a quarter of an hour: 
It is a carnival of ideas and phrases, Greek, Latin, German, French, 
Italian, philosophical, geometrical, medical, poetical, astrological, musical, 
pedagogic, lieaped one on the other; an enormous medley, a prodigious 
mass of jumbled quotations, jostling thoughts with the vivacity and 
the transport of a feast of unreason.^ 

* See for this feast Walter Scott's Abboty chs. xiv. and xv. — Te. 




210 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK I. 

* This roving hnmonr (thougli not with like success) I have ever hed, and, lik« 

a raging spaniel that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his game, I have followed 
all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui tibique 
est, nusquam est, which Gesner did in modesty : that I have read many books, but 
to little purpose, for want of good method ; I have confusedly tumbled over divei a 
authors in our libraries with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. 
I never travelled but in map or card, in which my unconfined thoughts have freely 
expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the study of cosmography. 
Saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, etc., and Mars principal significator 
01 manner's, in partile conjunction with mine ascendant ; both fortunate in their 
houses, etc. I am not poor, I am not rich ; nihil est, nihil deest ; I have little, ] 
want nothing : all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater preferment as I 
could never get, so am I not in debt for it. I have a competency {laus Deo) from 
my noble and miinificent patrons. Though I live still a collegiat student, as 
Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastique life, ipse mihi theatrum, sequestred 
from those tumults and troubles of the world, et ianquam in specidd positus (as he 
said), in some high place above you all, \\\ie Stoicus sapiens, omnia scBcala prcnterita 
[jrcesentiaque videns, una velut intuitu, I hear and see what is done abroad, how 
others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and countrey. Far 
from these wrangling lawsuits, aulce vanitatem, fori mnhitionem, videre mecum 
soleo : I laugh at all, only secure, lest my suit go amiss, my ships perish, corn and 
cattle miscarry, trade decay ; I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide 
for ; a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act 
their parts, which methinks are diversely presented unto me, as from a commor 
theatre or scene. T hear new news every day : and those ordinary rumours of war 
plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets ; spectrums, 
prodigies, apparitions ; of towns taken, cities besieged in France, Germany, 
Turkey, Persia, Poland, etc., daily musters and preparations, and such like, which 
these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachics, 
shipwracks, piracies, and sea-fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms — 
a vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, 
proclamations, complaints, grievances, — are daily brought to our ears : new books 
every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts^ 
new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, 
etc. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, 
jubiles, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, 
playes : then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, 
enormous villanies, in all kinds, funerals, burials, death of princes, new discoveries, 
expeditions ; now comical, then tragical matters. To-day we hear of new lords 
and officers created, to-morrow cf some gi'eat men deposed, and then again of 
fresh honours conferred : one is let loose, another imprisoned : one purchaseth, 
another breaketh : he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt ; now plent}^ then 
again dearth and famine ; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, etc. 
Thus I diily hear, and such like, both private and publick news.'^ 

' For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to 
the sweet content and capacity of the reader ? In arithmetick, geometry, perspec« 
tive, optick, astronomy, architecture, sculptura, pidura, of which so many and 
such elaborate treatises are of late written : in mechanicks and their mysteries, 
military matters, navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming, gardenings 

' Anatomy of Melancholy, 12th ed. 1831, 2 vols. ; Democritus to the Readc^r i. 4 



;,-HAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 211 

planting, great toines of husbandry, cookery, faiilconr}'-, hunting, fishing, fowling, 
etc., with exquisite pictures of all sports, games, and what not. In musick, meta* 
phy.sicks, natural and moral philosophy, philologie, in policy, heraldry, genealogy, 
clD'onology, etc., they afford great tomes, or those studies of antiquity, etc., et quid 
suht'dius arithmetlcis inventionibus? quid jucundius musicis rationibus? quid divinius 
astronomicis ? quid rcctius geometricis demonstrationibus ? Wliat so sure, what so 
pleasant ? He that shall but see the geometrical tower of Garezenda at Rologne 
in Italy, the steeple and clock at Strasborough, will admire the effects of art, or 
that engine of Archimedes to removP' the earth itself, if he had but a phice to 
fasten his instrument. Archimedis cochlea^ and rave devises to corrivato waters, 
musick instruments, and trisyllable echoes again, again, and again repeated, with 
miriades of such. What vast tomes are extant in law, physick, and divinity, for 
profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, etc. ! Their names alone ar« 
the subject of whole vohimes : we have thousands of authors of all sorts, many 
great libraries, full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, .served out for 
several palates, and he is a very block that is affected wdth none of them. Some 
take an infinite delight to study the very languages wherein these books are 
written — Hebrew, Greek, Syriack, Chalde, Arabick, etc. Methinks it would 
please any man to look upon a geographical map {suavi anhniim delectatione alii- 
cere, ob incredibilem rertivi varietatem etjucunditatem, et ad pleniorem sui cogni' 
tioncm excitare), chorographical, topographical delineations ; to behold, as it were^ 
all the remote provinces, towns, cities of the world, and never to go forth of the 
limits of his study ; to measure, by the scale and compasse, their extent, distance, 
examine their site. Charles the Great (as Platina writes) had three faire silvei 
tables, in one of which superficies was a large map of Constantinople, in the second 
Rome neatly engraved, in the third an exquisite description of the whole world ; 
and much delight he took in them. What greater pleasure can there now be, 
than to view those elaborate maps of Ortelius, Mercator, Hondius, etc. ? to peruse 
those books of cities put out by Braunus and Hogenbergius ? to read those ex- 
quisite descriptions of Maginus, Munster, Herrera, Laet, Merula, Boterus, Leander 
Albertus, Camden, Leo Afer, Adricomius, Nic. Gerbelius, etc.? those famous ex 
peditions of Christopher Columbus, Americus Vespucius, Marcus Polus the Vene- 
tian, Lod. ViTtomanuus, Aloysius Cadamustus, etc. ? those accurate diaries oi 
Portugals, Holunders, of Bartison, Oliver a Nort, etc., Hacluit's Voyages, Pet. 
^Martyr's Decades, Benzo, Lerius, Linschoten's relations, those Hodceporicons of 
Jod. a Meggea, Brocarde the Monke, Bredenbachius, Jo. Dublinius, Sands, etc., 
to Jerusalem, Egypt, and other remote places of the world ? those pleasant itinS' 
rarics of Paulus Hentzerus, Jodocus Sincerus, Dux Polonus, etc. ? to read Bellonius 
observations, P. Gillius his survayes ; those parts of America, set out, and curiously 
cut in pictures, by Fratres a Bry ? To see a well cut herbal, hearbs, trees, flowers, 
plants, all vegetals, expressed in their proper colours to the life, as that of Mat* 
thiolus upon Dioscorides, Delacampius, Lobel, Bauhiuus, and that last voluniinoua 
and mighty herbal of Besler of Noremberge ; wherein almost every plant is to hia 
own bignesse. To see birds, beasts, and fishes of tlie sea, spiders, gnats, seip&nts, 
flies, etc., all creatures set out by the same art, and truly expressed in lively 
colours, with an exact description of iheir natures, vertues, qualities, etc., as hath 
been accurately perform p.iI by ^lian, Gesner, Ulysses Aldrovandus, Bellonius, 
Rondoletius, Hippolytus Salvianus, etc.'^ 

He is never-ending ; vrords, phrases, overflow, are heaped up, re- 
* Anatomy of Mdaniholy, i. part 2, sec. 3, Mem. 4, p. 430 H pamm. 



212 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK H 

peated, and flow on, carrying the reader along, deafened, wearied, half- 
drowned, unable to touch ground in the deluge. Burton is inexhaust- 
ible. There are no ideas which he does not iterate under fifty forms : 
when he has expended his own, he pours out upon us other men's — the 
classics, the rarest authors, known only by savants — authors rarer still, 
known only to the learned ; he borrows from all. Underneath these 
detp caverns of erudition and science, there is one blacker and mora 
unknown than all the others, filled with forgotten authors, with crack- 
jaw names, Besler of Nuremberg, Adricomius, Linschoten, Br-ocarde, 
Bredenbachius. Amidst all these antediluvian monsters, bristling with 
Latin terminations, he is at his ease ; he sports with them, laughs, skips 
from one to the other, drives them all at once. He is like old Prcteus, 
the bold runner, who in one hour, with his team of hippopotami, makes 
the circuit of the ocean. 

What subject does he take ? Melancholy, his individual mood , 
and he takes it like a schoolman. None of St. Thomas' treatises Is 
more regularly constructed than his. This torrent of erudition is dis- 
tributed in geometrically planned channels, turning off at right angles 
without deviating by a line. At the head of every part you will find 
a synoptical and analytical table, with hyphens, brackets, each division 
begetting its subdivisions, each subdivision its sections, each section, its 
subsections : of the malady in general, of melancholy in particular, of 
its nature, its seat, its varieties, causes, symptoms, its prognosis ; of its 
cure by permissible means, by forbidden means, by dietetic means, by 
pharmaceutical means. After the scholastic process, he descends from 
the general to the particular, and disposes each emotion and idea in its 
labelled case. In this framework, supplied by the middle-age, he 
heaps up the whole, like a man of the Kenaissance, — the literary de- 
scription of passions and the medical description of mental alienation, 
details of the hospital with a satire on human follies, physiological 
treatises side by side with personal confidences, the recipes of the 
apothecary with moral counsels, remarks on love with the history of 
evacuations. The discrimination of ideas has not yet been effected ; 
doctor and poet, man of letters and savant, he is all at once ; for want 
of dams, ideas pour like different liquids into the same vat, with strange 
spluttering and bubbling, with an unsavoury fimell and odd effect. 
But the vat is full, and from this admixture are produced potent com- 
pounds which no preceding age had known. 

IV. 

For in this mixture there is an effectual leaven, the poetic senti- 
ment, which stirs up and animates the vast erudition, which will not 
be confined to dry catalogues ; which, interpreting every fact, every 
object, disentangles or divines a mysterious soul within it, and agitates 
the whole spirit of man, by representing to him the restless world 
within and without him as a grand enigma. Let us conceive a kindred 



e-IIAP I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 213 

spirit to Sliakspeare*s, a scholar and an observer instead of an actor 

and a poet, who in place of creadng is occupied in comprehending, but 
who, like Shakspeare, applies himself to living things, penetrates their 
internal structure, puts himself in communication with their actual 
b'A'S imprints in himself fervently and scrupulously th'e smallest details 
cf tbsir figure ; who at the same time extends his penetrating surmisas 
beyond the region of observation, discerns behind visible phenomena 
'a world obscure yet sublime, and trembles with a kind of vereraticn 
before the vast, indistinct, but populous abyss on whose surface our 
little universe hangs quivering. Such a one is Sir Thomas Browne, 
a naturalist, a philosopher, a scholar, a physician, and a moralist 
almost the last of the generation which produced Jeremy Taylor and 
Shakspeare. No thinker bears stronger witness to the wandering and 
inventive curiosity of the age. No writer has better displayed the 
brilliant and sombre imagination of the North. No one has spoken 
with a more eloquent emotion of death, the vast night of forgetfulness, 
of the all-devouring pit, of human vanity, which tries to create an 
immortality out of ephemeral glory or sculptured stones. No one has 
revealed, in more glowing and original expressions, the poetic sap 
which flows through all the minds of the agQ. 

* But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the 
memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the 
founder of the p3a-amids ? Herostratus hves that burnt the temple of Diana, he is 
almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, con- 
founded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of 
our good names, since bad have equal duration ; and Thersitcs is like to live suf 
long as Agamemnon. "Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether 
there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in 
the known account of time ? Without the favom* of the everlasting register, the 
first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his 
only chronicle. 

* Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as thongh 
they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. 
I'wenty-seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded 
names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long 
exceedeth all that shall live. The niglit of time far surpasseth the day, and who 
knows Avhen was the equinox ? Every hour adds uuto the current arithmetick W/iich 
scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even 
Pagans could doubt, whether thus to live were to die ; since our longest sua sets at 
right declensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long 
before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes ; since the brother of 
death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time, that grows old in itself, bida 
us hope no long duration ;— diuturnity is a dream, and folly of expectation. 

* Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory 
a great part even of our living beings ; we slightly remember our felicities, and the 
S)nartesfc strokes of afiiiction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no 
extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into . stones are 
fables. Atflictioas induce callosities | miiTeries are slippery, or fall like snow upon 



214 THP] RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

us, which notwithstanding '6 no unhappy stiij idity. To be ignorant of evils to 
come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision of nature, whereby w« 
digest the mixture of our few and evil days ; and our delivered senses not relapsing 
into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. 
. . . AH was vanity, .feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which 
Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is becomo mer- 
chandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. . . , Mau '5 a 
noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities 
and deaths with equiil lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of 
his natuiR . . . Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the iiTegularities of vain glory, 
and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. ' * 

These are almost the words of a poet, and it is jtist this poet's imagi- 
nation which urges him onward into science.^ Amidst the productions 
of nature he abounds with conjectures, generalisations; he gropes about, 
proposing explanations, making trials, extending his guesses like ro 
many flexible and vibrating tentacula into the four corners of the globe, 
into the most distant regions of fancy and truth. As he looks upon tlie 
tree-like and foliated crusts which are formed upon the surface of freez- 
ing liquids, he asks himself if this be not a regeneration of vegetable 
essences, dissolved in the liquid. At the sight of curdling blood or 
milk, he inquires whether there be not something analogous to the 
formation of the bird in the egg, or in that coagulation of chaos which 
gave birth to our world. In presence of that impalpable force wliicli 
makes liquids freeze, he asks if apoplexies and cataracts are not tbp 
effects of a like power, and do not indicate the presence of a congealing 
agency. He is in presence of nature as an artist, a literary man, in pre- 
sence of a living countenance, marking every feature, every movement 
of physiognomy, so as to be able to divine the passions of the inner 
disposition, ceaselessly correcting '\nd reversing his interpretations, kept 
in agitation by the invisible forces which operate beneath the visible 
envelope. The whole of the middle-age and of antiquity, with their 
theories and imaginations, Platonism, Cabalism, Christian theology, 
Aristrotle's substantial forms, the specific forms of the alchemists, — all 
human speculations, strangled or transformed one within the other, 
meet simultaneously in his brain, so as to open up to him vistas of this 
unknown world. The mass, the pile, the confusion, the inner fermen 
tation and swarming, mingled with vapours and flashes, the tumultuous 
overloading of his imagination and his mind, oppress and agitate him. 
In this expectation and emotion his curiosity is enlisted in everything ; 
in reference to the least fact, the most special, the oldest, the most 
chimerical, he conceives a chain of complicated investigation, calculat- 
ing how the ark could contain all creatures, with their provision of food ; 
how Perpenna, in his feast, arranged the invited so as to strike Sertorius, 

' T?ie Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Wilkin, 18£2, 3 vols. Hydriotapl-Aa^ 
iii, ch. V. 4ti et passim. 

* Sefe Mileand, Etude »ur Sir Thomas Browne, JRevue des d<ux Mondes, 1858. 



CHAP. I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 215 

his gnest; wliat trees must have groAvn on the banks of Acheron, sup- 
posing- that there were any ; whether quincunx phmtations liad not their 
origin m Eien, and whether the numbers and geometrical figures con- 
tained in the lozenge-form are not met Avith in all the productions of 
nature and art. You may rcjcognise here the exuberance and the 
strange caprices of an inner development too ample and too strong. 
Archseology, chemistry, history, nature, there is nothing in which he 
is not interested to the extent of a passion, which does not cause }aig 
memory and his ingenuity to overflow, which does not summon up 
within him the idea of some force, certainly admirable, possibly infinite. 
But what finishes in depicting him, what signalises the advance of 
science, is the fact that his imagination provides a counterbalance 
against itself. He is as fertile in doubts as he is in explanations. If 
he sees the thousand reasons which tend to one view, he sees also the 
thousand which tend to the contrary. At the two extremities of the 
same fact, he raises up to the clouds, but in equal piles, the scaffolding 
of contradictory arguments. Having made a guess, he knows that it 
is but a guess ; he pauses, ends with a perhaps, recommends verifica- 
tion. His writings consist only of opinions, given as such; even his 
principal work is a refutation of popular errors. After all, he proposes 
questions, suggests explanations, suspends his judgments ; nothing more, 
but this is enough : when the search is so eager, when the paths in 
which it proceeds are so numerous, when it is so scrupulous in making 
certain of its basis, the issue of the pursuit is sure ; we are bub a few 
steps from the truth. 



In this band of scholars, dreamers, and enquirers, appears the most 
comprehensive, sensible, originative of the minds of the age, Francis 
Bacon, a great and luminous intellect, one of the finest of this poetic 
progeny, who, like his predecessors, was naturally disposed to clothe his 
ideas in the most splendid dress : in this age, a thought did not seem 
complete until it had assumed a form and colour. But what distin- 
guishes him from the others is, that with him an image only serves to 
concentrate meditation. He reflected long, stamped on his mind all the 
parts and joints of his subject; and then, instead of dissipating his 
complete idea in a graduated chain of reasoning, he embodies it in a 
comparison so expressive, exact, transparent, that behind the figure we 
perc(i ve all the details of the idea, like a liquor in a fair crystal vase. 
Judge of his style by a single example : 

' For as water, whether it be the dew of Heaven or the springs of the earth, 
easily scatters and loses itself in the ground, except it be collected into soma 
receptacle, where it may by union and consort comfort and sustain itself (and for 
thai cause, the industry of man has devised aqueducts, cisterns, and pools, and 
likewise beautified them with various ornaments of magnificence and state, as well 
as fur use and necessity) ; so this excellent Iiq,uor of knowledge, whether it descenfJ 



216 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish 
into oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and 
especially in places appointed for such matters as universities, colleges, and schools, 
where it may have both a fixed habitation, and means and opportunity of increasing 
and collecting itself. ' * 

*The greatest error of all the rest, is the mistaking or misplacing of the last « 
faithest end of knowledge : for men have entered into a desire of learning and 
knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes 
to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and 
reputation ; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit { nd contradiction j 
and most times for lucre and profession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account 
of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men : as if there were sought in 
knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace, 
for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect ; or a 
tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding 
ground, for strife and contention ; or a shop, for profit or sale ; and not a rich 
storehouse, for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate.' ' 

This is his mode of thought, by symbols, not by analysis ; instead 
of explaining his idea, he transposes and translates it, — translates it 
entire, to the smallest details, enclosing all in the majesty of a grand 
period, or in the brevity of a striking sentence. Thence springs a 
style of admirable richness, gravity, and vigour, now solemn and 
symmetrical, now concise and piercing, always elaborate and full of 
colour.^ Tliere is nothing in English prose superior to his diction. 

Thence is derived also his manner of conceiving of things. lie is 
not a dialectician, like Hobbes or Descartes, apt in arranging ideas, 
in educing one from another, in leading his reader from the simple ro 
the complex by an unbroken chain. He is a producer of conceptions 
and of sentences. The matter being explored, he says to us : ' Such 
it is ; touch it not on that side ; it must be approached from the other.* 
Nothing more ; no proof, no effort to convince : he affirms, and does 
nothing more ; he has thought in the manner of artists and poets, and 
he speaks after the manner of prophets and seers. Cogita et visa, this 
title of one of his books might be the title of aU. The most admirable, 
the Novum Organnm, is a string of aphorisms, — a collection, as it were, 
of scientific decrees, as of an oracle who foresees the future and reveals 
the truth. And to make the resemblance complete, he expresses thera 
by poetical figures, by enigmatic abbreviations, almost in Sibylline 
verses : Idola specuSy Idola ti-ibus, Idola fori^ Idola theatric every one 
will recall these strange name?, by which he signifies the four kinds of 
illusions to which man is subject.* Shakspeare and the seers do not 

* Bacon's Works. Translation of the De Auijmentis Scientiarutrif Book IL j Ta 
the King. 

' Ibid. Book i. The true end of learning mistaken. 

8 Especially in tiie Essays. 

^ See also Novum Organum, Books i. and ii. ; the twenty-seven kinds of 
examples, with their metaphorical names: Insta'itice crucis, divorfii jamnf 
In^ffimHa' wiwSvfefi, pdli/chfestm, magical , etc. 



OH^P. I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 217 

contain more Tigoroiis or expressive condensations of thought, mor« 
resembling inspiration, and in Bacon they are to be found everywhere 
In short, his process is that of the creators ; it is intuition, not reason- 
ing. When he has laid up his store of facts, the greatest possible, on 
some vast subject, on some entire province of the mind, on the whole 
anterior philosophy, on the general condition of the sciences, on the 
p-'wer and limits of human reason, he casts over all this a comprehen- 
sive view, as it were a great net, brings up a universal idea, condenses 
his idea into a maxim, and hands it to us with the words, ' Verify and 
profit by it.' 

There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, than this mode 
of thought, when it is not checked by natural and strong good sense. 
This common sense, wliich is a kind of natural divination, the stable 
equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating to the true, like the 
needle to the north pole. Bacon possesses in the highest degree. He 
has a pre-eminently practical, even an utilitarian mind, such as we 
meet with later in Bentham, and such as their business habits were to 
impress more and more upon the English. At the age of sixteen, 
while at the university, he was dissatisfied with Aristotle's philosophy,^ 
not that he thought meanly of the author, whom, on the contrary, he 
calls a great genius ; but because it seemed to him of no practical 
utility, * incapable of producing works which might promote the well- 
being of men.* We see that from the outset he struck upon his 
dominant idea : all else comes to him from this ; a contempt for 
antecedent philosophy, the conception of a different system, the entire 
reformation of the sciences by the indication of a new goal, the defini- 
tion of a distinct method, the opening up of unsuspected anticipations.^ 
It is never speculation which he relishes, but the practical application 
of it. His eyes are turned not to heaven, but to earth, not to things 
* abstract and vain,' but to things palpable and solid, not to curious 
but to profitable truths. He seeks to better the condition of men, to 
labour for the welfare of mankind, to enrich human life with new 
discoveries and new resources, to equip mankind with new powers and 
new instruments of action. His philosophy itself is but an instru- 
ment, organum, a sort of machine or lever constructed to enable th.e 
intellect to raise a weight, to break through obstacles, to open up 
■\istas, to accomplish tasks which had hitherto surpassed its power. 
In his eyes, every special science, like science in general, should be an 
implement. He invites mathematicians to quit their pure geometry, 
to study numbers only with a view to their physical application, to 
seek formulas only to calculate real quantities and natural motions. 

' Trv6 Works of Francis Bacon, London, 1824, vol. vii. p. 2. Latin Biog- 
ra/phy bj Rawley. 

^ This point is brought out by the review of Lord Macaiilay Critical and 
Historical Essays, vol. iii. 



'21S THE RENAISSANCE. [BOGK fl 

He recommencls moralists to study the mind, the passions, habits, 
endeavours, not merely in a speculative way, but with a view to Hie 
cure or diminution of vice, and assigns to the science of morals ns its 
end the amelioration of morals. For him, the object of science is 
always the establishment of an art, that is, the production of some- 
thing of practical utility ; when he wished to describe the efficaciouj 
nature of his philosopliy apparent by a tale, he delineated in the New 
Atlantis^ with a poet's boldness and the precision of a seer, with 
£ilmost literal exactness, modern applications, and the present organisa- 
tion of the sciences, academies, observatories, air-balloons, submarine 
vessels, the improvement of land, the transmutation of species, rege- 
nerations, the discovery of remedies, the preservation of food. ' The 
end of our foundation,' says his principal personage, * is the knowledge 
of causes and secret motions of thinc;s, and the enlarG-ino; of the bounds 

O ' Do 

of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.' And this 
* possible ' is infinite. 

How did this grand and just conception originate? Doubtless 
common sense and genius too were necessary to its production ; but 
neither common sense nor genius was lacking to men : there had been 
more than one who, remarking, like Bacon, the progress of particular 
industries, could, like him, have conceived of universal industry, 
and from certain limited ameliorations have advanced to unlimited 
amelioration. Here we see the power of combined efforts ; men 
think they do everything by their individual thought, and they can 
do nothing without the assistance of the thoughts of their neighbours; 
they fancy that they are following the sninll voice within them, but 
they only hear it because it is swelled by the thousand buzzing and 
imperious voices, which, issuing from all surrounding things, far and 
near, are confounded with it in an harmonious vibration. Generally 
they hear it, as Bacon did, from the first moment of reflection ; but 
it had become inaudible among the opposing sounds from without. 
Could this confidence in the infinite enlargement of human power, 
this glorious idea of the universal conquest of nature, this firm hope 
in the continual increase of well-being and happiness, have germinatrd, 
grown, occupied an intelligence entirely, and thence have struck !t9 
loots, been propagated and spread over neighbouring intelligences, in 
a time of, discouragement and decay, when men believed the end cf 
the world at hand, when things were falling into ruin about them, 
when Christian mysticism, as in the first centuries, ecclesiastical 
tyranny, as in the fourteenth century, were convincing them of their 
impotence, by perverting their intellectual efforts and curtailing tbeil 
liberty? More than that: such hopes must then have seemed to be 
outbursts of pride, or suggestions of the flesh. They did seem, so •, 
and the last r^^presentatives of ancient science, and the first of the new, 
v/ere exiled or imprisoned, assassinated or burned. In order to be 
developed, an idea must be in harmony with surrounding civilisation : 



CHAF. I.I THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 2r.J 

before man can expect to attain the dominion over nature, or attcinpta 
to improve his condition, amelioration must have begun on all sides, 
industries have increased, knowledge have been accumulated, the arts 
expanded, a hundred thousand irrefutable witnesses must have come 
to give proof ot his power and assurance of his progress. The ' mascu- 
line birth of the time ' {temporis partus masculus) is the title whicli 
Bacon applies to his work, and it is a true one. In fact, the whole age 
co-operated in it; by this creation it was finished. The consciousness 
of human power and prosperity furnished to the Renaissance its firsi 
energy, its ideal, its poetic materials, its distinguishing features ; and 
now it furnished it with its final expression, its scientific doctrine, and 
its ultimate object. 

We may add also, its method. For, the end of a journey once 
fixed, the route is laid down, since the end always determines the 
route ; when the point of arrival is changed, the path of approach is 
changed, and science, varying its object, varies also its method. So 
long as it limited its effort to the satisfying an idle curiosity, open- 
ing out speculative vistas, establishing a sort of opera in speculative- 
minds, it could launch out any moment into metaphysical abstractions 
and distinctions : it was enough for it to skim over experience ; it 
soon quitted it, and came all at once upon great words, quiddities, tlie 
principle of individuation, final causes. Half proofs sufficed science ; 
at bottom it did not care to establish a truth, but to get an opinion ; 
and its instrument, the syllogism, was serviceable only for refutations, 
not for discoveries: it took general laws for a starting-point instead 
of a point of arrival ; instead of going to find them, it fancied 
them found. The syllogism was good in the schools, nox in nature ; 
it made disputants, not discoverers. From the moment that science 
had art for an end, and men studied in order to act, all was trans- 
formed ; for we cannot act without certain and precise knowledge. 
Forces, before they can be employed, must be measured and verified ; 
before we can build a house, we must know exactly the resistance of 
the beams, or the house will collapse ; before we can cure a sick man, 
we must know with certainty the effect of a remedy, or the patient 
will die. Practice makes certainty and exactitude a necessity to 
scionce, because practice is impossible when it has nothing to lean 
upon bub guesses and approximations. How can we eliminate guesses 
and approximations? We must imitate the cases in which science, 
issuing in practice, is shown to be precise and certain, and these cases 
are the industries. We must, as in the industries, observe, essay, 
attempt, verify, keep our mind fixed * on sensible and particular 
things,' advance to general rules only step by stt-p ; ' n'jt anticipate' 
experience, but follow it ; not imagine nature, but * interpret it.' Foj 
every general effect, such as heat, wliiteness, hardness, liquidity, we 
must seek a general condition, so that in producing the condition we 
may produce the effect. And for this i^ is necessary, ' by fit rejections 



220 THE RENAISSANCli;. [BOOK 11 

and exclusions,' to extract the condition sought from the heap of facta 
in which it lies buried, construct the table of cases from which the 
effect is absent, the table where it is present, the table where the effect 
is shown in various degrees, so as to isolate and bring to light the 
condition which produced it.^ Then we shall have, not useless uni«> 
versal axioms, but * efficacious mediate axioms,' true laws from which 
we can derive w^orks, and which are the sources of power in the same 
degree as the sources of light.^ Bacon desciibed and predicted in this 
modern science and industry, their correspondence, method, resources, 
principle ; and after more than two centuries, it is still to him that we 
go to discover the theory of what we are attempting and doing. 

Beyond this great view, he has discovered nothing. Cowley, one 
of his admirers, justly said that, like Moses on Mount Pisgah, he w^aa 
the first to announce the promised land ; but he might have added quite 
as justly, that, like Closes, he did not enter there. He pointed out 
the route, but did not travel it; he taught men how to discover natural 
laws, but discovered none. His definition of heat is extremely imper- 
fect. His Natural llutory is full of chimerical explanations.^ Like 
the poets, he peoples nature with instincts and desires ; attributes to 
bodies an actual voracity, to the atmosphere a thirst for the light, 
sounds, odours, vapours, which it drinks in ; to metals a sort of haste 
to be incorporated with acids. He explains the duration of the bubbles 
of air wliich float on the surface of liquids, by supposing that air has a 
very small or no attraction to high latitudes. He sees in every quality, 
weight, ductility, hardness, a distinct essence which has its special 
cause ; so that when one knows the cause of every quality of gold, one 
will be able to put all these causes together, and make gold. In brief, 
with the nlchemists, Paracelsus and Gilbert, Kepler himself, with all the 
men of his time, men of imagination, nourished on Aristotle, he repre- 
sents nature as a compound of aecret and lively energies, inexplicable 
and primordial forces, distinct and indecomposable essences, adapted 
each by the will of the Creator to produce a distinct effect. He almost 
saw souls endowed with dull repugnances and occult inclinaticns, which 
aspire to or resist certain directions, certain mixtures, and certain 
localities. On this account also he confounds everything in his re- 
searches in an imdistinguishahle mass, vegetative and medicinal pro* 
perties, physical and moral, without considering the most complex as 
depending on the simplest, but each on the contrary in itself, and takett 
apart, as an irreducible and independent existence. Obstinate in thia 
error, the thinkers of the age mark time without advancing. They see 
clearly with Bacon the wide field of discovery, but they cannot advance 
into it. They want an idea, and for want of this idea they do not ad- 
vance. The disposition of mind which but now was a lever, is becom« 



^ Nomim Organum, ii. 15 and 16. "^ Novum Ovganinn, i. i. 3 

« Natural History, 800, 24, etc. De Aiujmentis,\n. i. 



<"nA7' I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 221 

an obstacle : it must be changecl, that the obstacle may be got rid of 
For ideas, I mean great and efRcacions ones, do not come at Avill nor by 
chance, by the eiFort of an individual, or by a happy accident. Like 
literatures and religions, methods and philosophies arise from the spirit 
of the ago ; and- this spirit of the age makes them potent or powerless. 
One state of public intelligence excludes a certain kind of literature; 
another, a certain scientitic conception. When it happens thus, writers 
and thinkers labour in vain, the literature is abortive, the conception 
does not make its appearance. In vain they turn one Avay and another, 
trying to remove the weight which hinders them ; something stronger 
than themselves paralyses their hands and frustrates their endeavouro*. 
The central pivot of the vast wheel on which human affairs move must 
be displaced one -notch, that all may move with its motion. At this 
moment the pivot was moved, and thus a revolution of the great wheel 
begins, bringing round a new conception of nature, and in consequence 
that part of the method which was lacking. To the diviners, the 
creators, the comprehensive and impassioned minds who seized objects 
in a lump and in masses, succeeded the discursive thinkers, the sys- 
tematic thinkers, the graduated and clear logicians, who, disposing ideas 
in continuous series, led the hearer insensibly from the simple to the 
most complex by easy and unbroken paths. Descartes superseded 
Bacon ; the classical age obliterated the Eenaissance ; poetry and lofty 
imagination gave way before rhetoric, eloquence, and analysis. In this 
transformation of mind, ideas were transformed. Everything was 
sobered down and simplified. The universe, like all else, was reduced 
to two or three notions; and the conception of nature, which was 
poetical, became mechanical. Instead of souls, living forces, repug- 
nances, and attractions, we have pulleys, levers, impelling forces. The 
world, which seemed a mass of instinctive powers, is now like a mere 
machinery of serrated wheels. Beneath this adventurous supposition 
lies a large and certain truth : that there is, namely, a scale of facts, 
some at the summit very complex, others at the base very simple ; those 
above having their origin in those below, so that the lower ones ex- 
plain the higher; and that we must seek the primary laws of things 
in tho laws of motion. The search was made, and Galileo found them, 
Thenceforth the work of the Renaissance, passing the extreme point to 
which Bacon had pushed it, and at which he had left it;, was able to 
proceed onward by itself, and did so proceed, without limit. 



223 THE RENAISSANCE. rBOOK 11 



CHAPTER IL 

The Theatre, 

I. The pnWic— The stage. 

JI. Maiiuers of the sixteenth century — Violent and complete expansion of natnm 

III. English manners — Expansion of the energetic and gloomy character. 

IV. The poets — General harmony between the character of a poet and that of hia 

ase — Nash, Decker, Kyd, Peele, Lodge, Greene — Their condition and Ufa 
— Marlowe— His life— His works — Tamburlaine — The Jew of Malta — 
Edward II. — Fanstus — His conception of man. 
V. Formation of this drama — The process and character of this art — Imitative 
sympathy, which depicts hy expressive sj>ecimens— Contrast of classical 
and Germanic art — Psychological construction and proper sphere of these 
two aits. 
VI. Male characters — Furious passions — Tragical events — Exaggerated character^ 
— The Duke of Milan by Massinger — Ford's ^??»a&e/fa— Webster's Duchess 
of Malfi and Vittoria — Female characters — Germanic idea of love and mar- 
riage — Euphrasia, Bianca, Arethusa, Ordella, Aspasia, Amoret, in Beau- 
mont and Fletcher — Penthea in Ford — Agreement of the moral and 
physical type. 

WE must look at this world more closely, and beneath the ideas 
which are developed seek for the men who live ; it is the 
theatre especially which is the original product of the English Renais- 
sance, and it is the theatre especially which will exhibit the men of the 
English Renaissance. Forty poets, amongst them ten of superior rank, and 
the greatest of all artists who have represented the soul in words; many 
hundreds of pieces, and nearly fifty masterpieces; the drama extended 
over all the provinces of history, imagination, and fancy, — expanded so 
a? to embrace comedy, tragedy, pastoral and fanciful literaturb — to 
represent all degrees of human condition, and all the caprices of humaa 
invention — to express all the sensitive details of actual truth, and all (lie 
philosophic grandeur of general reflection ; the stage disencumbered of 
all precept and freed from all imitation, given up and appropriated in 
the minutest particulars to the reign'mg taste and the public intelli- 
gence : all this was a vast and manifold work, capable by its flexibility, 
its greatness, and its form, .of receiving and preserving the exact im- 
print of the age and of the r^ation.^ 

* Shakspeare, * The very a^e and body of the time, his form and uressure,' 



THE THEATRE. 223 



Let us try, then, to set before our eyes tliis pulri'ic, this audierice, 
and this stage — all connected with one another, as in every natural 
and living work ; and if ever there was a living and natural work, it is 
here. There were already seven theatres in Shakspeare's time, so brisk 
and universal was the taste for representations. Great and rude con- 
nivances, awkward in their construction, barbarous in their appoint- 
ments ; but a fervid imagination readily supplied all that they lacked, 
and hardy bodies endured all inconveniences without difficulty. On 
a dirty site, on the banks of the Thames, rose the principal theatre, the 
Globe, a sort of hexagonal tower, surrounded by a muddy ditch, sur- 
mounted by a red flag. The common people could enter as well as the 
rich: there were sixpenny, twopenny, even penny seats; but they could 
not see it without money. If it rained, and it often rains in London, 
the people in the pit, butchers, mercers, bakers, sailors, apprentices, 
receive the streaming rain upon their heads. I suppose they did not 
trouble themselves about it ; it was not so long since they began to 
pave the streets of London ; and when men, like them, have had ex- 
perience of sewers and puddles, they are not afraid of catching cold. 
While waiting for the piece, they amuse themselves after their fashion, 
drink beer, crack nuts, eat fruits, howl, and now and then resort to 
their fists ; they have been known to fall upon the actors, and turn the 
theatre upside down. At other times they have gone in disgust to the 
tavern to give the poet a hiding, or toss him in a blanket ; they were 
rude jokers, and there was no month when the cry of * Clubs' did not 
call them out of their shops to exercise their brawny arms. When the 
beer took effect, there was a great upturned barrel in the pit, a peculiar 
receptacle for general use. The smell rises, and then comes the cry, 
*Burn the juniper!' They burn some in a plate on the stage, and the 
heavy smoke fills the air. Certainly the folk there assembled could 
scarcely get disgusted at anything, and cannot have had sensitive noses. 
Tn the time of Kabelais there was not much cleanness to speak of. 
Eemember that they were hardly out of the middle age, and that in 
ihe middle-age man lived on the dunghill. 

Above them, on the stage, were the spectators able to pay a 
shilling, the elegant people, the gentlefolk. These were sheltered 
frcm the rain, and if they chose to pay an extra shilling, could have 
a stooL To this were reduced the prerogatives of rank and the devices 
of comfort: it often happened that stools were lacking; then they 
stretched themselves on the ground : they were not dainty at such 
times. They play cards, smoke, insult the pit, Avho give it them back 
without stinting, and throw apples at them into the bargain. As for thy 
gentlefolk, they gesticulate, swear in Italian, French, English ;^ crack 

* Ben Jonson, Every Man in hu Ilumour ; CynthirCi^ EevrU. 



224 THE RENAIfJSANCE. [BOOK IJ 

aloud jolces in dainty, composite, high-coloured words : in short, they 
have the energetic, original, gay manners of artists, the same humour, 
the same absence of constraint, and, to complete the resemblance, the 
same desire to make themselves singular, the same imaginative cravings, 
the same absurd and picturesque devices, beards cut to a point, into 
the shape of a fan, a spade, the letter T, gaudy and expensive drejses, 
copied from five or six neighbouring nations, embroidered, laced with 
gold, motley, continually hcightenecL in effect, or changed for others : 
there was, as it were, a carnival in their brains as on their backs. 

With such spectators illusions could be produced without much 
trouble: there were no preparations or perspectives; few or no move- 
able scenes : their imaginations took all this upon them. A scroll in 
big letters announced to the public that they were in London or Con- 
stantinople ; and that was enough to carry the public to the desired 
place. There was no trouble about probability. Sir Philip Sidney 
writes : 

• You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africke of the other, and so many othef 
under-kingdomes, that the Plaier when hee comes in, must ever bcghi with telling 
where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now shall you have three 
Ladies walke to gather flowers, and then wee must beleeve the stage to he a garden. 
By and by wee heare newes of shipwracke in the same place, then wee are to blame 
if we accept it not for a rocke ; . . . while in the meane time two armies flie in, 
represented with foure swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not 
receive it for a pitched field ? Now of time they are much more liberall. For 
ordinary it is, that two young Princes fall in love, after many traverses, shee is got 
with childe, delivered of a faire boy, hee is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love^ 
and is readie to get another childe ; and all this in two houres space.** 

Doubtless these enormities were somewhat reduced under Shakspeare ; 
with a few hangings, rude representations of animals, towers, forests, 
they assisted somewhat the public imagination. But in fact, in Shaks- 
peare's plays as in all others, the public imagination is the great con- 
triver ; it must lend itself to all, substitute all, accept for a queen a 
young boy whose beard is beginning to grow, endure in one act twelve 
changes of place, leap suddenly over twenty years or five bundled 
miles,^ take half a dozen supernumeraries for forty thousand men, and 
to have represented by the rolling of the drums all the battles of 
Ca!sar, Henry v., Coriolanus, Richard iir. All this, imagiration, being 
so overflowing and so young, does accept I Eecall your own youth ; 
for my part, the deepest emotions I have had at a theatre were given 
to me by an ambling bevy of four young girls, playing comedy and 
drama on a stage in a coffeehouse ; true, I was eleven years old. So in 
this theatre, at this moment, their souls were fresh, as ready to feel 
everything as the poet was to dare everything. 

» Tlie Defence of Poesie, ed. 1629, p. 562. 
• Wintefs Tale ; CynibeUne ; Juliu t G(esar. 



CHAP II.] THE THEATRE. 



IL 

These are but externals ; let us try to advance further, to observfi 
the passions, the bent of mind, the inner man : it is this inriCr state 
which raioed and modelled the drama, as everything else ; invisible 
inclinations are everywhere the cause of visible works, and the interior 
shapes the exterior. What are these townspeople, courtiers, this 
public, whose taste fashions the theatre ? what is there particular in 
tae structure and condition of their mind ? The condition must needs 
be particular; for the drama flourishes all of a sudden, and for sixty 
years together, with marvellous luxuriance, and at the end of this time 
is arrested so that no effort could revive it. The structure must be 
particular; for of all theatres, old and new, this is distinct in form, and 
displays a style, action, characters, an idea of life, which are not found 
in any age or any country beside. This particular feature is the free 
and complete expansion of nature. 

What we call nature in men is, man such as he was before culture 
and civilisation had deformed and re-formed him. Almost always, when 
a ncNV generation arrives at manhood and consciousness, it finds a code 
of precepts which it imposes on itself, with all the weight and autho- 
rity of antiquity. A hundred kinds of chains, a hundred thousand 
kinds of ties, religion, morality, manners, every legislation which 
regulates sentiments, morals, manners, fetter and tame the creature of 
impulse and passion which breathes and frets within each of us. There 
is nothing like that here. It is a regeneration, and the curb of the 
past is wanting to the present. Catholicism, reduced to external cere- 
mony and clerical chicanery, had just ended ; Protestantism, arrested in 
its endeavours, or straying into sects, had not yet gained the mastery ; 
the religion of discipline was grown feeble, and the religion of morals 
was not yet established ; men ceased to listen to the directions of the 
clergy, and had not yet spelt out the law of conscience. The church 
was turned into an assembly room, as in Italy ; the young fellows came 
to St. Paul's to walk, laugh, chatter, display their new cloaks ; the 
thing had even passed into a custom. They paid for the noise they 
made with their spurs, and this tax was a source of income to the 
canons;^ pickpockets, the girls of the town, came there by crowds; 
these latter struck their bargains while service was going on. Imagine, 
in short, that the scruples of conscience and the severity of the Puri- 
tans were odious things, and that they ridiculed them on the stage, 

* Strype, in his AnnaU of the Reformation (1571), says : * Many now were wholly 
departed from the communion of the church, and came no more to hear divine 
service in their parish churches, nor received the holy sacrament, according to the 
laws of the realm.' Eicliard Baxter, in liis Life, published in 1696, says: * "We 
hved in a country that had but little preaching at all. ... In the village where 
I lived the Eeader read the Common Prayer briefly ; and the rest of the day, even 
till dark night almost, except Eating time, was spent in Dancing under a Maypolf! 

1' 



iJl>6 THE HENATSSAXCn [BOOK II 

and judge of tlie difference between this sensual, unbridled England, 
and tilt; correct, disciplined, stern England of our own time. Ecclesi- 
astical or secular, we find no signs of rule. In the failure of faith, 
reason had not gained sway, and opinion is as void of authority aa 
tradition. The imbecile age, which has just ended, continues buried in 
icorn, with its ravings, its verse-makers, and its pedantic text-books ; 
and out of the liberal opinions derived from antiquity, from Italy, 
France, and Spain, every one could pick as it pleased him, without 
stooping to restraint or acknowledging a superiority. There was no 
model imposed on them, as nowadays; instead of affecting imitation, 
they affected originality.^ Each strove to be himself, with his OAvn 
oaths, fashions, costumes, his specialties of conduct and humour, and 
to be unlike every one else. They said not, * So and so is done,' but 
* I do so and so.' Instead of restraining themselves, they expanded. 
There was no etiquette of society ; save for an exaggerated jargon of 
cliivalresque courtesy, they are masters of speech and action on the 
impulse of the moment. You will find them free from decorum, as 
of all else. In this outbreak and absence of fetters, they resemble 
thorough-bred horses let loose in the meadow. Their inborn instincts 
have not been tamed, nor muzzled, nor diminished. 

On the contrary, they have been preserved intact by bodily and 
military training; and escaping as they were from barbarism, not from 
civilisation, they had not been acted upon by the inner softening and 
hereditary tempering which are now transmitted with the blood, and 
civilise a man from the moment of his birth. This is why man, who 
for three centuries has been a domestic animal, was still almost a savage 
beast, and the force of his muscles and the strength of his nerves in- 
creased the boldness and energy of his passions. Look at these uncul- 
tivated men, men of the people, how suddenly the blood warms and 
rises to their face ; their fists double, their lips press together, and those 
vigorous bodies are hurried at once into action. The courtiers of that 
age were like our men of the people. They had the same taste for the 
exercise of their limbs, the same indifference toward the inclemencies cf 
the weather, the same coarseness of language, the same undisguised 
sensuality. They were carmen in body and gentlemen in sentiment, 
with the dress of actors and the tastes of artists. 'At fourtene,' says 
John Hardy ng, * a lordes sonnes shalle to felde hunte the dere, and 
catch an hardvnesse. For dere to hunte and slea, and see them tlede, 
ane hardyment g} ffith to his courage. ... At sextene yere, to werray 
and to wage, lo juste and ryde, and castels to assayle . . . and every 

and a great tree, not far from my father's door, where all the Town did meet 
together. And though one of my father's own Tenants was the piper, he could 
not restrain him nor break the sport. So that we could not read the Scripture in 
our family without the great disturbance of the Taber and Pipe and noise in 
the stceet.' 

1 Ben Jonson, Every Man in Ids humour. 



CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 227 

day his aimiire to assay in fete of armes with some of his meyne,** 
A\'hen ripened to manhood, he is employed with the b.w, in wrestlini^, 
leaping, vaulting. Henry viii.'s court, in its noisy merriment, was 
like a village fair. The king, says llolinshed, exercised himself 
' dailie in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the barre, 
plaieing at the recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songs, and 
making of ballads. ' He leaps the moats with a pole, and was one? 
within an ace of being killed. He is so fond of combat, that publicly, 
on the field of the Cloth of Gold, he seized Francis i. in his arms 
tj throw him. This is how a soldier or a bricklayer nowadays tries 
a now comrade. In fact, they regarded as amusements, like soldiers 
and bricklayers, gross jests and brutal buffooneries. In every great 
house there was a fool, ' whose business was to bring out pointed jests, 
to make eccentric gestures, horrible faces, to sing licentious songs,' 
as one might hear now in a beer-house. They thought malice and 
obscenity a joke. They were foul-mouthed, they swallowed Rabelais' 
words undiluted, and delighted in conversation which would revolt 
us. They had no respect for humanity ; the empire of proprieties and 
the habits of good breeding began only under Louis xiv., and by imita- 
tion of the French ; at this time they all blurted out the word that fitted 
in, and that was most frequently a coarse word. You will see on the 
stage, in Shakspeare's Pericles^ the tilth of a haunt of vice.* The 
great lords, the well-dressed ladies, spoke Billingsgate slang. When 
Henry v. paid his court to Catherine of France, it was with the coarse 
bearing of a sailor who might have taken a fancy to a sutler; and like 
the tars who tattoo a heart on their arms to prove their love for the girls 
they left behind them, you find men who ' devoured sulphur and drank 
urine' ^ to win their mistress by a proof of affection. Humanity is as 
much lacking as decency.* Blood, suffering, does not move them. The 

1 The Chronicle of John Hcardyng (1436), ed. H. Ellis, 1812. Preface. 

' Act iv. 2 and 4. See also the character of Calypso in Massinger ; Putana in 
Ford ; Protalyce in Beaumont and Fletcher. 

^ iliddleton, Dutch Courtezan. 

* Commission given by Henry viii. to the Earl of Hertford, 1544: * You are 
there to put all to fire and sword ; to burn Edinburgh town, and to raze and deface 
it, when you have sacked it, and gotten Avhat you can out of it. . . . Do what yon 
can out of hand, and without long tarrying, to heat down and overthrow the castle, 
Back Holyrood-House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye 
conveniently can ; sack Leith, and burn and subvert it, and all the rest, putting 
man, woman, and child to fire and sword, without exception, when any resistance 
shall be made against you ; and this done, pass over to the Fife land, and extend 
like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages whereunto ye may reach 
conveniently, not forgetting amongst all the rest, so to spoil and turn upsi.le down 
the cardinal's town of St Andrew's, as the upper stone may be the nether, and aot one 
stick stand by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, specially such aa 
either in friendship or blood be allied to the cardinal. This journey shall succf3eu 
most to his majesty's honour.' — Pictorial History of England, ii. 440, note. 



228 'jTHE EEXAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

court frequents bear and bull baitings, where dogs aie ripped up and 
chained beasts are sometimes beaten to death, and it was, says an officer 
of the palace, * a charming entertainment.' ^ No wonder they used theil 
arms like clodhoppers and gossips. Elizabeth used to beat her maids 
of honour, ' so that these beautiful girls could often be heard crying 
and lamenting in a piteous manner.' One day she spat upon Sir 
Mathew's fringed coat; at another time, when Essex, whom she was 
scolding, turned his back, she gave him a box on the ears. It was the© 
the practice of great ladies to beat their children and their servants. 
Poor Jane Grey was sometimes so wretchedly ' boxed, struck, pinched, 
and ill-treated in other manners Avhich she dare not relate,' that she 
used to wish herself dead. Their first idea is to come to words, to 
blows, to have satisfaction. As in feudal times, they appeal at once to 
arms, and retain the habit of gaining justice for themselves, and without 
delay. *0n Thursday laste,' writes Gilbert Talbot to the Earl and 
Countess of Shrewsbury, *as my Lorde Rytche was rydynge in the 
streates, there was one Wyndam that stode in a dore, and shotte a dagge 
at him, thynkynge to have slayne him. . . . The same daye, also, as Sr 
John Conway was goynge in the streetes, M"" Lodovyke Grevell came 
sodenly upon him, and stroke him on the hedd w*^ a sworde. ... I am 
forced to trouble yo"* Honors w*^ thes tryflynge matters, for I know no 
greater.' * No one, not even the queen, is safe among these violent 
dispositions.® Again, when one man struck another in the precincts of 
thO court, his hand was cut off, and the arteries stopped with a red-hot 
irun. Only such atrocious imitations of their own crimes, and the pain- 
ful image of bleeding and suffering flesh, could tame their vehemenco 
and restrain the uprising of their instincts. Judge now what materials 
they furnish to the theatre, and what characters they look for at the 
theatre : to please the public, the stage cannot deal too much in open 
lust and the strongest passions ; it must depict man attaining the limit 
of his desires, unchecked, almost mad, now trembling and rooted before 
the white palpitating flesh which his eyes devour, now haggard and 
grinding his teeth before the enemy whom he wishes to tear to pieces, 
now carried beyond himself and overwhelmed at the sight of the honours 
Rnd wealth which he courts, always raging and enveloped in a tempest 
of eddying ideas, sometimes shaken by impetuous joy, more often on 
the verge of fury and madness, stronger, more ardent, more daringly 
let loose beyond the pale of reason and law than he himself ever war 
We hear from the stage as from the history of the time, these fierce 
murmurs : the sixteenth century is like a den of lions. 

Amid passions so strong as these there is not one lacking. Nature 



^ Lan(;ham, A Goodly Belief, 

8 13th February, 1587. Nathan Drake, SliaJcspeare and Ms Times, ii. p. 165 
Bee also the same work for al. these details. 

3 Essex, when struck by the queen, put his hand on the hilt of his sword. 



CHAP. II.l THE THEATRE. 229 

appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fulness. If nothing 
had been softened, nothing had been mutilated. It is the entire man 
who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest and finest 
aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites, w^ithout the 
preponderance of any dominant circumstance to cast him altogether in 
one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid, as 
he will be under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned, as in the Restora- 
tion. After the hoUowness and weariness of the fifteenth century, he 
rose up by a second birth, as before in Greece man had risen by a first 
birth ; and now, as then, the temptations of the outer world came com- 
bined to raise his faculties from their sloth and torpor. A sort of 
generous warmth spread over them to ripen and make them flourish. 
Peace, prosperity, comfort began ; new industries and increasing 
activity suddenly multiplied objects of utility and luxury tenfold. 
America and India, by their discovery, caused the treasures and pro- 
digies heaped up afar over distant seas to shine before their eyes ; 
antiquity re-discovered, sciences mapped out, the Reformation begun, 
books multiplied by printing, ideas by books, doubled the means of 
enjoyment, imagination, and thought. They wanted to enjoy, to ima- 
gine, and to think ; for the desire grows with the attraction, and here 
all attractions were combined. There were attractions of the senses, 
in the chambers which they began to warm, in the beds newly fur- 
nished with pillows, in the carriages which they began to use for the 
first time. There were attractions for the imagination in the new 
palaces, arranged after the Italian manner ; in the variegated hangings 
from Flanders ; in the rich garments, gold-embroidered, which, being 
continually changed, combined the fancies and the splendours of all 
Europe. There were attractions for the mind, in the noble and beau- 
tiful writings which, spread abroad, translated, explained, brought in 
philosophy, eloquence, and poetry, from the restored antiquity, and 
from the surrounding Renaissance. Under this appeal all aptitudes 
and instincts at once started up ; the low and the lofty, ideal and 
sensual love, gross cupidity and pure generosity. Recall what you 
yourself experienced, when from being a child you became a man : what 
wishes for happiness, what breadth of anticipation, what intoxication of 
heart you indulged in in face of all these joys ; with vv-hat impulse your 
hands reached involuntarily and all at once every branch of the tree, 
and would not let a single fruit escape. At sixteen years, like Clierubin,^ 
we wish for a servant girl while we adore a Madonna; we are capable 
of every species of covetousness, and also of every species of self- 
denial ; we find virtue more lovely, our meals more enjoyable ; pleasure 
has more zest, heroism more worth ; there is no allurement which i 
not keen ; the sweetness and novelty of things are too strong ; and h 
the hive of passions which buzzes within us, and stings us like the stin 

' A page in the Mariage de Figaro, a ccmedy by Beaumarchais.— Tr. 



5i30 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

of a bee, we can do nothing but plunge, one after a/iotber, into all sen- 
sations. Such were the men of this time, Ealeigh, Essex, Elizabeth, 
Henry viii. himself, excessive and inconstant, ready for devotion and 
for crime, violent in good and evil, heroic with strange weaknesses, 
humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile with premeditaticn 
like the roysterers of the Restoration, never rigid on principle like the 
Puritans of the Revolution, capable of weeping like children,^ iind of 
dying like men, often base courtiers, more than once true knights, 
displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions of bearing, only 
the overflowing of nature. Thus prepared, they could take in every- 
thing, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutality of 
shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, accept 
all the characters, prostitutes and virgins, princes and mountebanks, 
pass quickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listen alter- 
nately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The drama 
even, in order to imitate and satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must 
take all tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side 
by side with this, vulgar prose : more, it must distort its natural style 
and limits; put songs, poetical devices, in the discourse of courtiera 
and the speeches of statesmen ; bring on the stage the fairy world of 
the opera, as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with 
their groves and their meadows ; compel the gods to descend upon the 
stage, and hell itself to furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre 
is so complicated ; for nowhere else do we find men so complete. 

IIL 

In this free and universal expansion, the passions had their special 
bent withal, which was an English one, inasmuch as they were English. 
After all, in every age, under every civilisation, a people is always 
itself Whatever be its dress, goat-skin blouse, gold-laced doublet, 
black dress- coat, the five or six great instincts which it possessed in its 
forests, follow it in its palaces and ofiices. To this day, warlike passions, 
a gloomy humour, subsist under the regularity and comf< rt of modern 
manners.^ Their native energy and harshness pierce through the per- 
fection of culture and the habits of comfort, Rich young men, on 
leaving Oxford, go to hunt bears in Canada, the elephant at the Cape 
of Good Hope, hve under canvas, box, jump hedges on horseback, 
sail their clippers on dangerous coasts, delight in solitude and peiil 
The ancient Saxon, the old rover of the Scandinavian seas, have not 
perished. Even at school the children ill-treat one another, withstand 

' The great Chancellor Burleigh often wept, so harshly was he used b^ 
Elizabeth. 

^ Compare, to understand this character, the parts assigned to James Har 
lowe by Ricliardson, old Osborne by Thackeray, Sir Giles Overreach by Mas 
singer, and Manly by Wycherlcy. 



CHA.P. 11.1 THE THEATRE. 231 

one another, fight like men; and their character is so indomitable, 
that they need the birch and blows to reduce them to the discipline 
of law. Judge what they were in the sixteenth century: the English 
race passed then for *the most wsirlike race' of Europe, *the most 
ledoubtable in battle, the most impatient of anything like sla^/ery.' ' 
^ English savages ' is what Cellini calls them ; and the * great 
shins of beef with which they fill themselves, nourish the force and 
ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutions - 
work in the same groove with nature. The nation is armed, every 
man is brought up like a soldier bound to have arms according to his 
condition, to exercise himself on Sundays or holidays ; from the yeo- 
man to the lord, the old military constitution keeps them enrolled and 
ready for action.* In a state which resembles an army, it is necessary 
that punishments, as in an army, shall inspire terror ; and to aggravate 
them, the hideous Wars of the Roses, which on every flaw of the suc- 
cession are ready to break out again, are ever present in their recollection. 
Such instincts, such a constitution, such a history, raises before them, 
with tragic severity, the idea of life : death is at hand, and wounds, the 
block, tortures. The fine cloaks of purple which the Renaissance of the 
South displayed joyfully in the sun, to wear like a holiday garment, are 
here stained with blood, and bordered with black. Throughout,^ a 
stern discipline, and the axe ready for every suspicion of treason : 
great men, bishops, a chancellor, princes, the king's relatives, queens, 
a protector kneeling in the straw, sprinkled the Tower with their blood; 
one after the other they marched past, stretched out their necks ; the 
Duke of Buckingham, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, 
the Earl of Surrey,' Admiral Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane 
Grey and her husband, the Duke of Northumberland, Mary Stuart, the 
Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps of the throne, in the 
highest rank of honours, beauty, youth, and genius : of the bright 
procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by the tender 
mercies of the executioner. Shall I count the funeral pyres, the hang 
ings, living men cut down from the gibbet, disemi owelled, quartered,* 
their limbs cast into the fire, their heads exposed on the walls? There 
is a page in Holinshed which reads like a death register : 

* The five and twentith dale of Male (1535), was in saint Paulas church at Londoii 
63 amined nineteene men and six women born in Holland, whose opinions were 
(heretical). Fourteene of them were condemned, a man and a woman of them were 

* Hentzner's Travels; Benvenuto Cellini. See passim, the costumes printed 
in Venice and Germany: BelUcosissimi. Froude, i. pp. 19, 52. 

^ This is not so true of the English now, if it was in the sixteenth centurv'', aa 
it; is of continental nations. The French lyc^es are far more military in characlei 
than English schools. — Tb, 

3 Froude's Hist, of England, vols. i. ii. iii 

^ ' Wlien his heart was torn out he uttered a deep gr ;>Kn.'^ -Execution of 
Pari'y ; Strype, iii. 251. 



232 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK tl 

burned in Smitlifield, the other twelve were sent to other townes, there to be burn*. 
On the nineteenth of June were '.hree moonkes of the Charterhouse hanged, drawne, 
and quartered at Tiburne, and their heads and quarters set up about London, for 
denieng the king to be sui^reme head of the church. Also the one and twentith 
of the same moneth, and for the same cause, doctor John Fisher, bishop oi 
Rochester, was beheaded for denieng of the supremacie, and his head set upon 
London bridge, but his bodie buried within Barking churchyard. The pope had 
elected him a cardinal!, and sent his hat as far as Calis, but his head was off before 
tis hat was on : so that they met not. On the sixt of Julie was Sir Thomas Moore 
beheaded for the like crime, that is to wit, for denieng the king to be supreme 
hEad/i 

None of these murders seem extraordinary ; the chroniclers mention 
them without growing indignant ; the condemned go quietly to the 
block, as if the thing were perfectly natural. Anne Boleyn said 
seriously, before giving up her head to the executioner : * I praie God 
«ave the king, and send him long to reigne over you, for a gentler, nor 
ft more merciful! prince was there never.' ^ Society is, as it were, in a 
state of siege, so strained that beneath the idea of order every one enter- 
tained the idea of the scaffold. They saw it, the terrible machine, 
planted on all the highways of human life ; and the byways as well as 
the highways led to it. A sort of martial law, introduced by conquests 
into civil affairs, entered thence into ecclesiastical matters,^ and social 
economy ended by being enslaved by it. As in a camp,* expenditure, 
dress, the food of each class, are fixed and restricted ; no one might stray 
out of his district, be idle, live after his own devices. Every strange^ 
was seized, interrogated ; if he could not give a good account of him 
self, the parish-stocks bruised his limbs, as in a regiment he passed for 
a spy and an enemy. Any person, says the lavv',* found living idly or 
loiteringly for the space of three days, shall be marked with a hot iron 
on his breast, and adjudged as a slave to the man who shall inform 
against him. This one ' shall take the same slave, and give him bread, 
water, or small drink, and refuse meat, and cause him to work, by 
beating, chaining, or otherwise, in such work and labour as he shall 
put him to, be it never so vile.' He may sell him, bequeath him, let 
him out for hire, or trade upon him ' after the like sort as they may do 
of any other their moveable goods or chattels,' put a ring of iron about 
his neck or leg ; if he runs away and absents himself for fourt-ien days, 
he is branded on the forehead with a hot iron, and remainiS a slave 
for the whole of his life; if he runs away a second time, he is put to 
death. Sometimes, says More, you might see a score of thieves hung 
on the same gibbet. In one year ^ forty persons were put to death in 
the county of Somerset alone, and in each county there were three ol 

» Holinshed, Chronicles of England, iii. p. 793. ' Md. iii. p. 797. 

» Under Henry iv. and Henry V. * Fronde, i, 15. 

» In 1547. Pict. History, ii. 467. 
« In 1596. Pict. Histm-v, ii. 907. 



€HAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 233 

four hundred vagabonds who Avould gather together and rob in armed 
bands of sixty at a time. Follow the whole of this history closely, the 
fires of Mary, the pillories of Elizabeth, and it is plain that the moral 
tone of the land, like its physical condition, is harsh by comparison 
•with all its neighbours. They have no relish in their enjoyments, aa 
in Italy ; what is called Merry England is England given up to animal 
ecstasy, a coarse animation produced by abundant feeding, continued 
prosperity,, courage, and self-reliance; voluptuousness does not exist 
in this climate and this race. Mingled with the beautiful popular 
beliefs, the lugubrious dreams and the cruel nightmare of witchcraft 
make their appearance. Bishop Jewell, preaching before the queen, 
tells her that witches and sorcerers within these few last years are 
marvellously increased. Some ministers assert 

* That they have had in their parish at one instant, xvij or xviij witches j 
meaning such as could worke miracles supernaturallie ; thst they work spells by 
which men pine away even imto death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, 
their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft ; that instructed bj' tne devil, 
they make ointments of the bowels and members of children, wnereby they 
ride in the aire, and accomplish all their desires. When a child is not baptized, 
or defended by the sign of the cross, then the witches catch them from their 
mothers sides in the night . . . kill them ... or after buriall steals them out of 
their graves, and seeth them in a caldron, until their flesh be made potable. . . . 
It is an infallible rule, that everie fortnight, or at the least everie moneth, each 
witch must kill one child at the least for hir part.* 

Here was something to make the teeth chatter with fright. Add 
to this revolting and absurd description, wretched tomfooleries, details 
about the infernal cauldron, all the nastinesses which could haunt the 
trivial imagination of a hideous and drivelling old woman, and you have 
the spectacles, provided by Middleton and Shakspeare, and which suit 
the sentiments of the age and the national humour. The fundamental 
gloom pierces through the glow and rapture of poetry. Mournful 
legends have multiplied ; every churchyard has its ghost ; wherever a 
man has been murdered his spirit appears. ]\Iany dare not leave their 
village after sunset. In the evening, before bed -time, people talk of the 
coach which is seen drawn by headless horses, with headless postilions 
and coachmen, or of unhappy spirits who, compelled to inhabit the 
plain, under the sharp north-east wind, pray for the shelter of a hedge 
or a A-alley They dream terribly of death : 

' To die, and go we know not where ; 
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
This sensible warm motion to become 
A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round alxruSl 
The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 



234 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK D 

Of those that lawless and incertain thought 
Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible ! ' * 

The greatest speak with a sad resignation of the infinite obsctirity 
which embraces our poor, short, glimmering life, our life, which is but 
a troubled dream ;^ the sad state of humanity, which is but passion, 
madness, and sorrow ; the human being who is himself, perhaps, but a 
vain phantom, a grievous sick man's dream. In their eyes we roll 
down a fatal slope, where chance dashes us one against the other, and 
the destiny Avhich drives us, only shatters after it has blinded us. And 
at the end of all is * the silent grave, no conversation, no joyful tread 
of friends, no voice of lovers, no careful father's counsel ; nothing^s 
heard, nor nothing is, but all oblivion, dust, and endless darkness.'* 
If yet there were nothing, * to die, to sleep ; to sleep, perchance to 
dream.* To dream sadly, to fall into a nightmare like the nightmare 
of life, like that in which we are struggling and crying to-day, panting 
with hoarse throat! — this is their idea of man and of existence, the 
national idea, which fills the stage with calamities and despair, which 
makes a display of tortures and massacres, which abounds in folly and 
crime, which holds up death as the issue throughout. A threatening 
and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy, like the sun, 
only pierces through it, and upon them, strongly and at intervals. 
They are diflFerent from the Latin race, and in the common Renaissance 
they are regenerated otherwise than the Latin races. The free and full 
development of the pure nature which, in Greece and Italy, ends in the 
painting of beauty and happy energy, ends here in the painting of 
ferocious energy, agony, and death. 

IV. 

Thus was this theatre produced ; a theatre unique in history, like 

the admirable and fleeting epoch from which it sprang, the work and 
the picture of this young world, as natural, as unshackled, and as tragic 
as itself. When an original and national drama springs up, the poets 
who establish it, carry in themselves the sentiments which it represents. 
They display better than other men the public spirit, because the public 
spirit is stronger in them than in other men. The passions which sur^ 
round them, break forth in their heart with a harsher or a juster cry, 
and hence their voices become the voices of all. Chivalric and Catholic 
Spain had her interpreters in her enthusiasts and her Don Quixotes : 
in Calderon, first a soldier, afterwards a priest ; in Lope de Vega, a 
volunteer at fifteen, a passionate lover, a wandering duellist, a soldiei 

* Shakspeare, Measure for Measure, Act iii. 1. See also The Tempest, Ho/m 
My Macbeth. 

' * We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.' — Tempest, iv. 1. 
« Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, Act iv. 1. 



t^HAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 234 

of the Armada, finaily, a priest and familiar of the Holy Office ; so 
ardent that he fasts till he is exhausted, faints with emotion while 
ringing mass, and in his flagellations stains the walls of his cell with 
blood. Calm and noble Greece had in her principal tragic poet one of 
the most accomplished and fortunate of her sons : ^ Sophocles, first in 
song and palasstra; who at fifteen sang, unclad, the paean before the 
trophy of Salamis, and who afterwards, as ambassador, general, ever 
loving the gods and impassioned for his state, offered, in his life as in 
his works, the spectacle of the incomparable harmony which made the 
beauty of the ancient world, and which the modern world will never 
more attain to. Eloquent and worldly France, in the age which carried 
the art of decency and conversation to its highest pitch, finds, to unite 
her oratorical tragedies and to paint her drawing-room passions, the 
most able craftsman of words : Racine, a courtier, a man of the world ; 
the most capable, by the delicacy of his tact and the adaptation of his 
style, of making men of the world and courtiers speak. Equally in 
England the poets are in harmony with their works. Almost all are 
Bohemians, born of the people,^ yet educated, and for the most part 
having studied at Oxford or Cambridge, but poor, so that their educa- 
tion contrasts with their condition. Ben Jonson is the step-son of a 
bricklayer, and himself a bricklayer ; Marlowe is the son of a shoe- 
maker ; Shakspeare of a woollen merchant ; Massinger of a servant* 
They live as they can, get into debt, write for their bread, go on the 
stage. Peele, Lodge, Marlowe, Jonson, Shakspeare, Heywood, are 
actors; most of the details which we have of their lives are taken from 
the journal of Henslowe, an old pawnbroker, later a money-lender and 
manager of a theatre, who gives them work, advances money to them, 
receives their manuscripts or their wardrobes as security. For a play 
he gives seven or eight pounds ; after the year 1600 prices rise, and 
reach as high as twenty or twenty-five pounds. It is clear that, even 
after this increase, the trade of author scarcely brings in bread. In 
order to earn money, it was necessary, like Shakspeare, to become a 
manager, to try to have a share in the property of a theatre ; but the 
case is rare, and the life which they lead, a life of comedians and 
actors, improvident, full of excess, lost amid debauchery and acts of 
violence, amidst women of evil fame, in contact with young profligates, 
Id provocations and misery, imagination and licence, generally leads 

* AiETTOv^r/ 6e kv izacal nal nrepl 'KaAaicrpav koL fiovcM^, e^ av a/^^OTipuv tart' 
^av(o67] . . . ^iTutdT/vuiorarog koc 6eo(f>iA7/g. — SCHOLIAST. 

' Except Beaumont and Fletcher. 

' Hartley Coleridge, in his Introduction to the Dramatic Works of Massin' 
yer and Ford, says of Massinger's father : * We are not certified in che situa* 
tJon which he held in the noble household (Earl of Pembroke) but we may 
be sure that it was neither menial nor mean. Service in those days was no! 
derogatory to gentle birth ' — Tr. 



236 THE RENAISSANCE. jBOOK 11 

them to exhaustion, poverty, and death. Men received enjoyment from 
them, and neglected and despised them. One actor, for a political allu 
gion, was sent to prison, and only just escaped losing liis ears ; great men, 
men in office, abused them like servants. Heywood, who played almost 
every day, bound himself, in addition, to write a sheet daily, composes 
wretchedly in the taverns, labours and sweats like a true literary hack, 
and dies leaving two hundred and twenty pieces, of which most are 
lost. Kyd, one of the first, died in misery. Shirley, one of the last, 
at the end of his career, was obliged to becomf, agdn a schoolmaster. 
Massinger dies unknown ; and in the parish register we find only this 
sad mention of him : ' Philip Massinger, a stranger.* A few months 
after the death of Middleton, his widow was obliged to ask alms of the 
City, because he had left nothing. Imagination, as Drummond said 
of Ben Jonson, oppressed their reason ; it is the common failing of 
poets. They wish to enjoy, and give themselves wholly up to enjoy- 
ments ; their mood, their heart governs them ; in their life, as in their 
works, impulses are irresistible ; desire comes suddenly, like a wave^ 
drowning reason, resistance — often even giving neither reason nor re- 
sistance time to show themselves.^ Many are roysterers, sad roysterera 
3f the same sort, as Musset and Murger, who give themselves up to 
8very passion, and shake off restraint; capable of the purest and most' 
poetic dreams, of the most delicate and touching tenderness, and who 
yet can only undermine their health and mar their glory. Such are 
Nash, Decker, and Greene ; Nash, a fanciful satirist, who abused his 
talent, and conspired like a prodigal against good fortune ; Decker, who 
passed three years in the King's Bench prison; Greene, above all, a 
pleasing wit, rich, graceful, who gave himself up to all pleasures, 
publicly with tears confessing his vices,^ and the next moment plung- 
ing into them again. These are mere androgynes, simple courtesans, 
in manners, body, and heart. Quitting Cambridge, ' with good fellows 
as free-living as himself,' Greene had travelled over Spain, Italy, * in 
which places he sawe and practizde such villainie as is abhominable to 
declare.' You see the poor man is candid, not sparing himself ; he Isi 
natural; passionate in everything, repentance or otherwise ; eminently 
inconstant ; made for self-contradiction, not self-correction. On his re- 
turn he became, in London, a supporter of taverns, a haunter of evil 
places. In his Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of liepiniaTiOi 
he says: 

1 See, amongst others, The Woman Killed loith Kindness, by Heywood. Mrs. 
Frankfort, so upright of heart, accepts WendoU at his first offer. Sir Francis 
Acton, at the sight of her whom he wislies to dishonour, and whom he hates, falls 
* into an ecstasy, * and dreams of nothing save marriage. Compare the sudden trans- 
port of Juliet, Eomeo, Macbeth, Miranda, etc. ; the counsel of Prospero to Fernando, 
when he leaves him alone for a moment with Miranda. 

* Compare La Vie de Boheme and Les Nuits d'Hiver, by Murger: Canfc* 
njn d'uii Enfant du Siede, by A. de Musset 



CHAP. H.] THE THEATRE. 237 

* 1 was dround \n pride, whoredom was my daily exercise, and gluttony with 
drunkenness was my ontily delight. . . . After I had who^^y betaken me to the 
penning of plaies (which was my continuall exercise), I was so far from calling 
opon God tliat I sildome thought on God, but tooke such delight in swearing and 
Uas^^heming the name of God that none could thinke otherwise of me than that 
I w..fi the child of perdition. These vanities and other trifling pamphlets I penned 
of love and vaine fantasies was my chiefest stay of living ; and for those my vaine 
discourr.es I was beloved of the more vainer sort of people, who being my continuall 
companions, came still to my lodging, and there would continue quaffing, carows- 
ing, und surfeting with me all the day long. ... If I may have my disire while 
I live I am satisfied ; let me shift after death as I may. ..." Hell ! " quoth I ; 
"what talke you of hell to me? I know if I once come there I shall have the 
company of better men than myselfe ; I shal also meete with some madde knaves 
in that place, and so long as I shall not sit there alone, my care is the lesse. . . . 
If 1 feared the judges of the bench no more than I dread the judgments of God, I 
would before I slept dive into one carles bagges or other, and make merrie with the 
ghelles 1 found in them so long as they would last.'" 

A little later he is seized with remorse, marries, depicts in delicious 
lines the regularity and calm of an upright life ; then returns to London, 
devours his property and his wife's fortune with ' a sorry ragged 
queane,' in the company of ruffians, pimps, sharpers, courtesans ; drink- 
ing, blaspheming, wearing himself out by sleepless nights and orgies ; 
writing for bread sometimes amid the brawling and effluvia of his 
wretched lodging, lighting upon thoughts of adoration and love, worthy 
of Rolla ; ^ very often disgusted with himself, seize'^ with a fit of weep- 
ing between two alehouses, and writing little pieces to accuse him- 
self, to regret his wife, to convert his comrades, or to warn young 
people against the tricks of prostitutes and swindlers. By this process 
he was soon worn out ; six years were enough to exhaust him. An 
indigestion arising from Rhenish wine and pickled herrings finished him. 
If it had not been for his hostess, who succoured him, he * would have 
perished in the streets.' He lasted a little longer, and then his light 
went out ; now and then he begged her * pit^^if ully for a penny pott 
of m.'ilmesie;' he was covered with lice, he had but one shirt, and 
when his own was ' a washing,' he was obliged to borrow her husband's. 
* His doublet and hose and sword were sold for three shillinges,' and tho 
poor folks paid the cost of his burial, four shillings for the winding- 
sheet, and six and fourpence for the burial. In such low places, on 
Buch dunghills, amid such excesses and violence, dramatic genius forced 
its way, and amongst others, that of the first, of the most powerful, of 
the true founder of the dramatic school, Christopher Marlowe. 

Marlowe was an ill- regulated, dissolute, outrageously vehement 
and audacious spirit, but grand and sombre, with the genuine poetic 
frenzy; pagan moreover, and rebellious in manners and creed. In 
this universal leturn to the senses, and in this impulse of natural forces 
which brought on the Renaissance, the corporeal instincts and the ideas 

* The hero of one of Alfred de Musset's poems.— Tr. 



238 THE RENAISSANCE. BOOK 11 

which give them their warrant, break forth impetuously. Marlowe, 
like Greene, like Kett,^ is a sceptic, denies God and Christ, blasphemes 
the Trinity, declares Moses *a juggler,' Christ more worthy of death 
than Barabbas, says that ' yf he wer to write a new religion, he wolde 
undertake both a more excellent and more admirable methode,' and 
* almost in every company he commeth, perswadeth men to Athiesme.'* 
Such were the rages, the rashnesses, the excesses which liberty of 
thought gave rise to in these new minds, who for the first time, after 
so many centuries, dared to walk unfettered. From his father's shop, 
ciowded with children, from the stirrups and awls, he found himself at 
Cambridge, probably through the patronage of a great man, and on his 
return to London, in want, amid the licence of the green-room, the 
low houses and taverns, his head was in a ferment, and his passions 
were heated. He turned actor ; but having broken his leg in a scene 
of debauchery, he remained lame, and could no longer appear on the 
boards. He openly avowed his infidelity, and a prosecution was begun, 
which, if time had not failed, would probably have brought him to 
the stake. He made love to a drab, and trying to stab his rival, his 
hand was turned, so that his own blade entered his eye and his brain, 
and he died, still cursing and blaspheming. He was only thirty years 
old. Think what poetry could emanate from a life so passionate, and 
occupied in such a manner 1 First, exaggerated declamation, heaps of 
murder, atrocities, a pompous and furious display of tragedy soaked in 
blood, and passions raised to a pitch of madness. All the foundations 
of the English stage, Ferrex and Porrex, Camhyses^ Hieronyino^ even 
the Pericles of Sbakspeare, reach the same height of extravagance, 
force, and horror.* It is the first outbreak of youth. Recall Schiller's 
PobberSj and how modern democracy has recognised for the first time 
its picture in the metapliors and cries of Charles Moor.* So here the 
characters struggle and jostle, stamp on the earth, gnash their teeth, 
shake their fists against heaven. The trumpets sound, the drums beat, 
coats of mail file past, armies clash together, men stab each other, or 
themselves; speeches are full of gigantic threats or lyrical figures;* 



» Burnt in 1589. 

• The translator always refers to Marlowe's Works, ed. Dyce, 3 vols., 1850. 
Append, i. vol. 3. 

^ See especially Titm Andronicus, attributed to Shakspeare : there are parri' 
cides, mothers whom they cause to eat their childieii, a young girl who appears on 
the stage violated, with her tongue and hands cut ofi". 

^ The chief character in Schiller's Bobber's, a virtuous bri^nd and redressei 
Bt wrongs. — Tr. 

5 For in a field, whose superficies 
Is cover'd with a liquid purple veil, 
And sprinkled with the brains of slaughter d mea 
My royal chair of state shall be advauc'd ; 
And he that means to place himself therein. 



i:hap ii.j the theatre. 239 

kings die, straining a bass voice ; * now doth ghastly death with gieedy 
talons gripe my bleeding heart, and like a harpy tires on my life.' The 
hero in Tamhurlaine the Great^ is seated on a chariot drawn by chained 
kings, burns towns, drowns women and children, puts men to the 
sword, and finally, seized with an invisible sickness, raves in monstrous 
outcries against the gods, whose hands afflict his soul, and whom he 
would fain dethrone. There already is the picture of senseless pride, 
of blind and murderous rage, which passing through many devasta- 
tions, at last arms against heaven itself. The overflowing of savage 
and immoderate instinct produces this mighty sounding verse, this 
prodigality of carnage, this display of overloaded splendours and 
colours, this railing of demoniac passions, this audacity of grand im- 
piety. If in the dramas which succeed it, The Massacre at Paris^ The 
Jew of Malta, the bombast decreases, the violence remains. Barabaa 
the Jew, maddened with hate, is thenceforth no longer human ; he has 
been treated by the Christians like a beast, and he hates them like a 
beast. He advises his servant Ithamore in the following words : 

* Hast thou no trade ? then listen to my words, 
And I will teach thee that shall stick by thee : 
First, be thou void of these affections, 
Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear ; 
Be mov'd at nothing, see thou pity none, 
But to thyself smile when the Christians moan. 
... I walk abroad a-nighti^ 
And kill sick people groaning under walls ; 
Sometimes I go about and poison wells. . , • 
Being young, I studied physic, and began 
To practise first upon the Italian ; 
There I enrich'd the priests with burials, 
And always kept the sexton's arms in ure 
"With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells. . . • 
I fill'd the jails with bankrouts in a year, 
And with young orphans planted hospitals ; 
And every moon made some or other mad, 
And now and then one hang himself for grie^ 
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll 
How I with interest tormented him.'* 

Must armed wade up to the chin in blood. . . . 
And I would strive to swim through pools of blood. 
Or make a bridge of murder'd carcasses. 
Whose arches should be fram'd with bones of Turks, 
Ere 1 would lose the title of a king. — Tamhurlaine, part ii i. 8. 
' The editor of Marlowe's Works, Pickering, 1826, says in his Introduction : 
'Both the matter and style of Tamhurlaine, however, differ materially from 
Marlowe's other compositions, and doubts have more than once been suggested aa 
ro whether the play was properly assigned to him. We think that Marlow« 
did not write it.' Dyce is of a contrary opinion. — Tk. 
' Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, ii. p. 275 et passim. 



240 THE B.ENAISSANCE. rB>)OK 11 

All these cruelties he boasts of and chuckles over, like a r^emon who re- 
joices in being a good executioner, and plunges his victims in the very 
extremity of anguish. His daughter has two Christian suitors ; and by 
forged letters he causes them to slay each other. In despair she takea 
the veil, and to avenge himself he poisons his daughter and the whole 
convent. Two friars wish to denounce him, then to convert him ; ho 
strangles the first, and jokes with his slave Ithamore, a cut -throat oy 
piofession, who loveo his trade, rubs his hands with joy, and says* 

* Pull amain, 
'Tis neatly done, sir ; here's no print at all. 
So, let him lean upon his staff ; excellent ! he stands as if 
he were begging of bacon.' * 
• mistress, I have the bravest, gravest, secret, subtle, bottle- 
nosed knave to my master, that ever gentleman had.'^ 

The second friar comes up, and they accuse him of the murder: 

* Barahas. Heaven bless me t what, a friar a murderer ! 
When shall you see a Jew commit the like ? 

Ithamore. "Why, a Turk could ha' done no more. 

Bar. To-morrow is the sessions ; you shall to it- 
Come Ithamore, let's help to take him hence. 

Friar. Villains, I am a sacred person ; touch me not 

Bar. The law shall touch you ; we'll but lead you, we : 
'Las, I could weep at your calamity ! ' ^ 

Add to that two other poisonings, an infernal machine to biotr ttp 
the Turkish garrison, a plot to cast the Turkish commander in a well, 
Barahas falls into it himself, and dies in the hot cauldron,' howling, 
hardened, remorseless, having but one regret, that he had not done evil 
enough. These are the ferocities of the middle-age; we might find 
them to this day among the companions of Ali Pacha, among the pirates 
of the Archipelago ; we retain pictures of them in the paintings of the 
fifteenth century, which represent a king with his court, seated calmly 
round a living man who is being flayed ; in the midst the flayer on 
bis knees is working conscientiously, very careful not to spoil the skin.' 
All this is rough work, you will say ; these people kill too readily, 
and too quickly. It is on this very account that the painting is a true 
one. For the specialty of the men of the time, as of Marlowe's zh^- 
racters, is the abrupt commission of a deed ; they are children, robus) 
(children. As a horse kicks out instead v)f speaking, so they pull out 
their knives instead of an explanation. Nowadays we hardly know 
what nature is; we still keep in its place the benevolent prejudices of 
the eighteenth century ; we only see it humanised by two centuries of 
culture, and we take its acquired calm for an innate moderation. The 
foundation of the natural man are irresistible impulses, passions, desires, 

» The Jew of Malta, iv. p. 311. ^ 7^,^^/, in. p. 291. ^ m^^ j^. p. 313. 

* Up to this time, in England, poisoners were cast into a boiling cauldion. 

• In the Museum of Ghent. 



CHAP. TI.] THE THEATRE. 241 

greeds ; ail blind. He sees a woman,^ thinks her beautiful ; suddenly 
he rushes towards her; people try to lestrain him, he kills these people, 
gluts his passion, then thinks no more of it, save when at times a vague 
picture of a moving lake of blood crosses his brain and makes him 
gloomy. Sudden and extreme resolves are confused in his mind with 
desire ; barely conceived of, the thing is done ; the wide interval which 
a Fr<:;iichman places between the idea of an action and the action itself 
is not to be iDund here.* Barabas conceived murders, and straiglitway 
murders were accomplished ; there is no deliberation, no pricks of con- 
science ; that is how he commits a score of them ; his daughter leaves 
him, he becomes unnatural, and poisons her ; his confidential servant 
betrays him, he disguises himself, and poisons him. Rage seizes these 
men like a fit, and then they are forced to kill. Benvenuto Cellini 
relates how, being offended, he tried to restrain himself, but was nearly 
suffocated ; and that he might not die of the torments, he rushed with 
his dagger upon his opponent. So, in Edward II., the nobles immediately 
appeal to arms ; all is excessive and unforeseen ; between two replies the 
heart is turned upside down, transported to the extremes of hate or 
tenderness. Edward, seeing his favourite Gaveston again, pours out 
before him his treasure, casts his dignities at his feet, gives him his seal, 
himself, and, on a threat from the Bishop of Coventry, suddenly cries : 

* Throw off his golden mitre, rend his stole, 
And in the channel christen him anew. ' ' 

Then, when the queen supplicates : 

* Fawn not on me, French strumpet ! get thee gone . . •' 
Speak not unto her : let her droop and pine. ' * 

Furies and hatreds clash together like horsemen in a battle. The Duke 
of Lancaster draws his sword on Gaveston to slay him, before the king; 
Mortimer wounds Gaveston. These powerful loud voices growl ; the 
noblemen will not even let a dog approach the prince, and rob them of 
their rank. Lancaster says of Gaveston : 

* ... He comes not back, 
Unless the sea cast up his sliipwrack'd body. 

Warioick. And to behold so sweet a sight as that, 
There's none here but would run his horse to death.' ^ 

Iliey have seized Gaveston, and intend to hang him 'at a bough ;* they 
refuse to let him speak a single minute with the king. In vain they 

* See in the Jew of Malta the seduction of Ithamore, by Bellamira, a rough, 
but truly admirable picture. 

' Nothing €cald be falser than Schiller's William Tell, his hesitation and argu- 
ments; for a contrast, see Goethe's Goetz von Berllchingen. In 1377, Wiclif pleaded 
ill St. Paul's before the Bishop of London, and that raised a quarreL The Duke of 
Lancaster, Wiclif s protector, 'threatened to drag the bishop out of the church by th« 
Lair ; ' ana next day the furious crowd sacked the duke's palace. Pict. Hist. i. 780. 

* Marlowe, Edward the Second^ i. p. 173. * Ibid, p. 186. ^ Ibid. p. 188 



212 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

we entreated ; wlien they do at last consent, they recall their promise ; 
it is a prey they want immediately, and Warwick, seizing him by force, 
*strake off his head in a trench.' Those are the men of the middle- 
age. They have the fierceness, the rage, the pride of big, well-fed, 
thorough -bred bull -dogs. It is this sternness and impetuosity of 
primitive passions which produced the Wars of the Roses, and for 
thirty years drove the nobles on each other's swords and to the block. 

What is there beyond all these frenzies and gluttings of blood ? 
The idea of crushing necessity and inevitable ruin in which everything 
sinks and comes to an end. Mortimer, brought to the block, says with 
A smile: 

• Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel 

There is a point, to which when men aspire, 

They tumble headlong down : that point I touch'd. 

And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher. 

Why should I grieve at my declining fall ? — 

Farewell, fair queen ; weep not for Mortimer, 

That scorns the world, and, as a traveller. 

Goes to discover countries yet unknown. * * 

W(ugh well these grand words ; they are a cry from the heart, the pro- 
found confession of Marlowe, as also of Byron, and of the old sea-kings. 
The northern paganism is fully expressed in this heroic and mournful 
fiigh ; it is thus they imagine the world so long as they remain on the 
outside of Christianity, or as soon as they quit it. So also, when they 
bee in life but a battle of unchecked passions, and in death but a gloomy 
sleep, perhaps filled with mournful dreams, there is no other supreme 
good but a day of joy and victory. They glut themselves, shutting 
their eyes to the issue, except that they may be swallowed up on the 
morrow. That is the master-thought of Doctor Faustus, the greatest of 
Manowe's dramas ; to satisfy his soul, no matter at what price, or with 
¥'b«k.G results : 

* A sound magician is a mighty god. . . . 

How I am glutted with conceit of this ! . . . 

I'll have them fly to India for gold, 

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. . . . 

I'll have them read me strange philosophy, 

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings ; 

I'll have them wall all Germany with brass, 

And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg. . . , 

Like lions shall they guard us when we please ; 

Like Almaiu rutters with their horsemen's staves, 

Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides ; 

Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, 

Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows 

Than have the white breasts of the queen of love.' • 

* Edicard the Becond, last scene, p, 288. 

• Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, i. p. 9 et pmnm. 



CHAP. II 1 THE THEATRE. 343 

What brilliant dreams, what desires, what vast or voluptuous wishes, 
worthy of a Roman Caesar or an eastern poet, eddy in this teeming 
brain ! To satiate them, to obtain four-and-twenty years of power, 
Faustiis gives his soul, without fear, without need of temptation, at 
the first outset, voluntarily, so sharp is the prick withiu: 
* Had I as many souls as there be stars, 
I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. 
By him I'll be great emperor of the world. 
And make a bridge thorough the moving air. . • • 
Why shouldst thou not ? Is not thy soul thy own?*' 

And with that he gives himself full swing: he wants to know every- 
thing, to have everything ; a book in which he can behold ail herbs 
and trees which grow upon the earth ; another in whicli shall be drawn 
all the constellations and planets ; another which shall bring him gold 
when he wills it, and ' the fairest courtezans ; * another which summons 
*men in armour' ready to execute his commands, and which holds 
* thunder, whirlwinds, thunder and lightning' chained at his disposal 
He is like a child, he stretches out his hands for everything shining; 
then grieves to think of hell, then lets himself be diverted by shows: 

* Faustm. 0, this feeds my soul ! 

Lucifer. Tut, Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight. 
Faustiis. Oh, might I see hell, and return again, 
How happy were I then !'...* 

He is conducted, being invisible, over the whole world; lastly to 
Rome, amongst the ceremonies of the Pope's court. Like a schoolboy 
during a holiday, he has insatiable eyes, he forgets everything before 
a pageant, he amuses himself in playing tricks, in giving the Pope a 
box on the ear, in beating the monks, in performing magic tricks 
before princes, finally in drinking, feasting, filling his belly, deadening 
his thoughts. In his transport he becomes an atheist, and says there 
b no hell, that those are ' old wives' tales.' Then suddenly the sad 
idea knocks at the gates ol his brain : 

* I will renounce this magic and repent . . . 
My heart's so harden'd, I cannot repent ; 
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven. 
But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears, 

** Faustus, thou art damn'd I " then swords, and knives. 

Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel 

Are laid before me to despatch myself. 

Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair, 

Have not I made blind Homer sing to me 

Of Alexander's love and (Enon's death ? 

And hath not he, that built the vi^alls of Thebes 

With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, 

Made music with my Mephietophilis ? 

Why should I die, then, or basely despair ? 

■ Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, i. pp. 22, 29. « Ibid. p. 4/1 



244 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

I am resolv'd ; Faustus shall ne'er repent. — 
Come Mephistophilis, let us dispute again. 
And argue of divine astrology. 
Tell me, are there many heavens above the moon ? 
Are all celestial bodies but one globe, 
As is the substance of this centric earth? . . .'* 
* One thing ... let me crave of thee 
To glut the longing of my heart's desire. . . . 
"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships^ 
And burnt the topless towers oi Ilium ? 
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss ! 
Her lips su''k forth my soul : see, where it flies !— 
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
Here .will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, 
And all is dross that is not Helena. . . . 
O thou art fairer than the evening air 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ! * * 

* Ah, my God, I would weep I but the devil draws in my tears. 

Gush forth blood, instead of tears! yea, life and soul! Oli, he stayi 
my tongue! I would lift up my hands; but see, they hold them, they 
hold them ; Lucifer and Mephistophilis.' ... * 

*Ah, Faustus, 
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, 
And then thou must be damn'd perpetually I 
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven. 
That time may cease, and midnight never come. . • • 
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike. 
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. 
Oh, I'll leap up to my God ! — Who pulls me down ? — 
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament I 
One drop would save my soul, half a drop : ah, my Christ, 
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ ! 
Yet will I call on him. . . . 

Ah, half the hour is past ! 'twill all be past anon. • • , 
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, 
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd. • • • 
It strikes, it strikes. , . . 
Oh soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, 
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found ! ' * 

There is the living, struggling, natural, personal man, not the philo- 
sophic type which Goethe has created, but a primitive and genuine 
man, hot-headed, fiery, the slave of his passions, the sport of his 
dreams, wholly engrossed in the present, moulded by his lusts, con- 
tradictions, and follies, who amidst noise and starts, cries of pleasure 
and anguish, roils, knowing it and willing it, down the slope and crags 
of his precipice. The whole English drama is here, as a plant in itft 
seed, and Marlowe is to Shakspeare what Perugino was to Raphael. 

« Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, p. 37. « Ibid. p. 75. ^ j^ia. p. 78. * Ibid. p. 80 



CRAP. :i.] THE THEATRE. 245 



Insensibly art is being formed ; and toward the close of the century 
It is complete Sbakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, Webster, 
Massinger, Ford, Middleton, Heywood, appear together, or close upon 
each otiier, a new and favoured generation, flourishing largely in the 
soil fertilised by the efforts of the generation which preceded them. 
Thenceforth the scenes are developed and assume consistency ; the 
characters cease to move by clockwork, the drama is no longer like a 
piece of statuary. The poet who just before knew only how to strike df 
kill, introduces now a sequence of situation and a rationale in intrigue. 
He begins to prepare the way for sentiments, to forewarn us of events, 
to combine effects, and we find a theatre at last, the most complete, 
the most life-like, and also the most strange that ever existed. 

We must follow its formation, and regard the drama on the ground 
where it was formed, namely, in the mind of its authors. What was 
going on in these minds ? What sorts of ideas were born there, and 
how were they born ? In the first place, they see the event, whatever 
it be, and they see it as it is ; I mean that they have it within them- 
selves, with its persons and details, beautiful and ugly, even dull and 
grotesque. If it is a trial, the judge is there, in their minds, in such 
a place, with his physiognomy and his warts ; the pleader in such a 
place, with his spectacles and brief-bag ; the accused is opposite, 
stooping and remorseful ; each with his friends, cobblers, or lords ; 
then the buzzing crowd behind, all with their grinning faces, their 
astonished or kindling eyes.^ It is a genuine trial which they imagine, 
a trial like those they have seen before the justice, where they cried 
or shouted as witnesses or interested parties, with their quibbling terms, 
their pros and cons, the scribblings, the sharp voices of the counsel, 
the stamping of feet, the crowding, the smell of their fellow-men, and 
80 forth. The endless myriads of circumstances which accompany 
and obscure every event, crowd round that event in theii heads, and 
not merely the externals, that is, the sensible and picturesque traits, 
the particular colours and costumes, but also, and chiefly, the in- 
tern aIs, that is, the motions of anger and joy, the secret tumult o/ 
the soul, the ebb and flow of ideas and passions which darken the 
face, swell the veins, and make the teeth grind, the fists clench, which 
urgft 5r restrain a man. They see all the details, the tides that sway 
a man, one from without, another from within, one over another, one 
vrithin another, both together without faltering and without ceasingc 
And what is this vision but sympathy, an imitative sympathy, which 
pats us in another's place, Avhich carries over their agitations to our own 
breasts, which makes our life a little world, able to reproduce the great 
one in abstract ? Like the characters they imagine, poets and spectators 

^ See the trial of Vittoria Corombona, of Virginia in Webster, of Corio 
lanus and Julius Caesar in Sliakspeare. 



246 THE. RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

make gestures, raise tlieir voices, act. No speech or story can show theii 
inner mood, but it is the getting up of the play which can manifest it. 
As some men find language for their ideas, so these act and mimic 
them ; theatrical and figured representation is their genuine speech : all 
other expression, the lyrical song of ^schylus, the reflective symbolism 
of Goethe, the oratorical development of Racine, would be impossible 
tor them. Involuntarily, instantaneously, without forecast, they cut. 
life into scenes, and carry it in pieces on the boards ; this goes so 
far, that often a mere character becomes an actor,^ playing a part 
within a part ; the scenic faculty is the natural form of their mind. 
Under the effort of this instinct, all the accessory parts of the drama 
come before the footlights and expand under our eyes. A battle has 
been fought ; instead of relating it, they bring it before the public, 
trumpets and drums, mingling crowds, slaughtering combatants. A 
shipwreck happens ; straightway the ship is before the spectator, with 
the sailors' oaths, the technical orders of the helmsman. Of all the 
details of human life,^ tavern-racket and statesmen's councils, scullion 
jests and court processions, domestic tenderness and pandering, — none 
is too small or too high : these things exist in life — let them exist on 
the stage, each in full, in the rough, atrocious, or absurd, just as it is, 
no matter how. Neither in Greece, nor Italy, nor Spain, nor France, 
has an art been seen which tried so boldly to express the soul, with 
the soul's most intimate relations — the truth, and the whole truth. 

How did they succeed, and what is this new art which confounds 
all ordinary rules ? It is an art for all that, since it is natural ; a great 
art, since it embraces more things, and that more deeply than others 
do, like the art of Rembrandt and Rubens ; but like theirs, it is a 
Teutonic art, and one whose every step is in contrast with these of 
classical art. What the Greeks and Romans, the originators of the 
latter, sought in everything, was propriety and order, monuments, 
statues and paintings, the theatre, eloquence and poetry : from Sophocles 
to Racine, they shaped all their work in the same mould, and attained 
beauty by the same method. In the infinite entanglement and com- 
plexity of things, they grasped a small number of simple ideas, which 
they embraced in a small number of simple representations, so that the 
vast confused vegetation of life is presented to the mind from that time 
forth, pruned and reduced, and perhaps easily embraced by a single 
glance. A square of walls Avith rows of similar columns ; a symmetrical 
group of draped or undraped forms ; a young upright man raising one 
arm ; a wounded warrior who will not return to the camp, though they 
beseech him : this, in their noblest epoch, was their architecture, their 
painting, their sculpture, and their theatre. No poetry but a few senti- 
ments slightly complex, always natural, not toned down, intelligible to 

* Falstaff in ShaVspeare ; the queen in London, by Greene and Decker j 
Rosalind in Shakspeare. 

■^ 111 W'ebstcr's Duchcas of Main, there is an admirable accoucbemeut scene 



CHAP. II.} THE THEATRE. 24^ 

all ; no eloquence but a continuous argument, a limited vocabulary, tli« 
loftiest ideas brought doAvn to their sensible origin, so that children can 
understand such eloquence and feel such poetry ; and in this sense they 
are classical.-^ In the hands of Frenchmen, the last inheritors of the 
fiimple art, these great legacies of antiquity undergo no change. If 
poetic genius is less, the structure of mind has not altered. Racine 
puts on the stage a unique action, whose details he proportions, and 
whose course he regulates ; no incident, nothing unforeseen, no appen- 
dices or incongruities ; no secondary intrigue. The subordinate parts 
are effaced ; at the most four or five principal characters, the fewest 
possible ; the rest, reduced to the condition of confidants, take the tone 
of their masters, and merely reply to them. All the scenes are held 
together, and flow insensibly one into the other ; and every scene, like 
the entire piece, has its order and progress. The tragedy is detached 
symmetrically and clear from the midst of human life, like a complete 
and solitary temple which limns its regular outline on the luminous azure 
of the sky. In England all is different. All that the French call pro- 
portion and fitness is wanting ; Englishmen do not trouble themselves 
about them, they do not need them. There is no unity ; they leap sud- 
denly over twenty years, or five hundred leagues. There are twenty scenes 
in an act — we stumble without preparation from one to the other, from 
tragedy to buffoonery ; usually it appears as though the action gained no 
ground ; the characters waste their time in conversation, dreaming, ex- 
panding their parts. We were moved, anxious for the issue, and here 
they bring us in quarrelling servants, lovers making poetry. Even the 
dialogue and speeches, which one would think ought particularly to be of 
a regular and contained flow of engrossing ideas, remain stagnant, or are 
scattered in windings and deviations. At first sight we fancy we are not 
advancing, we do not feel at every phrase that we have made a step. 
There are none of those solid pleadings, none of those probing dis- 
cussions, which moment by moment add reason to reason, objection to 
objection ; one would say that they only knew how to scold, to repeat 
themselves, and to mark time. And the disorder is as great in general 
as in particular things. They heap a whole reign, a complete war, an 
entire novel, into a drama ; they cut up into scenes an English chronicle 
or an Italian novel : to this their art is reduced ; the events matter 
little ; whatever they are, they accept them. They have no idea of pro- 
gressive and unique action. Two or three actions connected endwise, 
or entangled one within another, two or three incomplete endings badly 
contrived, and opened up again ; no machinery but death, scattered right 
iSnd left and unforeseen : such is the logic of their method. The fact 
is, that our logic, the Latin, fails them. Their mind does not march 

' This is, in fact, the English view of the French mind, which is doubtless a 
fefinement, many times refined, of the classical spirit. But M. Taine has seemingly 
not taken into account such products as the Medea on the one hand, and tbf 
•R'orks of Aristophanes and the Latin sensualists on the other. — Tk. 



248 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 1 

by the smooth and straightforward paths of rhetoric and eloquence. It 
reaches the same end, but by other approaches. It is at once more 
comprehensive and less regular than ours. It demands a concsption 
more complete, but less consecutive. It proceeds, not as with us, by a 
line :>f uniform steps, but by sudden leaps and long pauses. It does 
not rest satisfied with a simple idea drawn from a complex fact, but 
exacts the coniplex fact entire, Avith its numberless particulaiities, its 
interminable ramifications. It would see in man not a general passion -^ 
ambition, anger, or love; not a pure quality — happiness, avarice, folly; 
but a character, that is, the imprint, wonderfully complicated, which 
inheritance, temperament, education, calling, the age, society, con\^er- 
sation, habits, have stamped on every man; an incommunicable and 
individual imprint, which, once stamped in a man, is not found again 
in any other. It would see in the hero not only the hero, but the in- 
dividual, with his manner of walking, drinking, swearing, blowing his 
nose; with the tone of his voice, whether he is thin or fat;^ and thus 
plunges to the bottom of things, with every look, as by a miner's deep 
shaft. This sunk, it little cares whether the second shaft be two paces 
or a hundred from the first ; enough that it reaches the same depth, 
and serves equally well to display the inner and invisible layer. Logic 
is here from beneath, not from above. It is the unity of a character 
which binds the two acts of a person, as the unity of an impression con- 
nects the two scenes of a drama. To speak exactly, the spectator is 
like a man whom one should lead along a wall pierced at separate in- 
tervals with little windows ; at every window he catches for an instant 
a glimpse of a new landscape, with its million details : the walk over, if 
he is of Latin race and training, he finds a medley of images jostling in 
his head, and asks for a map that he may recollect himself ; if he is of 
German race and training, he perceives as a whole, by a natural con- 
centration, the wide country of which he has only seen the fragments. 
Such a conception, by the multitude of details which it has combined, 
and by the length of the vistas which it embraces, is a half-vision which 
shakes the soul. What these works are about to show us is, with what 
energy, what disdain of contrivance, what vehemence of truth, it dares 
to smite and hammer the human medal ; with what liberty it "s able 
to reproduce the full prominence of indistinct characters, and lbs 
extreme flights of virgin nature, 

VI. 

Let lis consider the different personages which this art, so sm^ed to 
depict real manners, and so apt to paint the living soul, goes in jearcn 
of amidst the real manners and the living souls of its time and cjuntry. 
They are of two kinds, as befits nature and the drama : one wLzch pro* 



' See Hamletf Coriolamis, Hotspur. The qneen in Hamlet (v. 2) says i 
*He (Hamlet) 's fat, and scant of breath.' 



CHAP. II.J THE THEATRE. 249 

duces terror, the Dther wWch produces pity; these graceful and feminine, 
those manly and violent. All the differences of sex, all the extremes of 
life, all the resources of the stage, are embraced in this contrast ; and if 
ever there was a complete contrast, it is here. 

The reader must study for himself some of these pieces, or he wil. 
have no idea of tlie fury into -which the stage is hurled ; forct- and 
transport are driven every instant to the point of atrocity, and further 
glill, if there is any further. Assassinations, poisonings, tortures, out- 
cries of madness and rage ; no passion and no suffering are too extreme 
for their energy or their effort. Anger is with them a madness, ambi- 
tion a frenzy, love a delirium. Hippolyto, who has lost his mistress, 
says, * \Yere thine eyes clear as mine, thou might'st behold her, watch- 
ing upon yon battlements of stars, how I observe them.'^ Aretus, to be 
avenged on Valentinian, poisons him after poisoning himself, and with 
the death-rattle in his throat, is brought to his enemy's side, to give him 
a foretaste of agony. Queen Brunhalt has panders with her on the stage, 
and causes her two sons to slay each other. Death everywhere ; at the 
close of every play, all the great people wade in blood : with slaughter 
and butcheries, the stage becomes a field of battle or a burial-ground.^ 
Shall I describe a few of these tragedies? In the Duke of Milan, Fran- 
cesco, to avenge his sister, who has been seduced, wishes to seduce in 
his turn the Duchess Marcelia, wife of Sforza, the seducer; he desires 
her, he will have her ; he says to her, with cries of love and rage * 

* For with this arm I'll sv/im through seas of blood, 
Or make a bridge, arch'd with the bones of men. 
But I will grasp my aims in you, my dearest, 
Dearest, and best of women ! '^ 

For lie wishes to strike the duke through her, whether she lives oi 
dies, if not by dishonour, at least by murder ; the first is as good as 
the second, nay better, for so he will do a greater injury. He calumni- 
ates her, and the duke, who adojes her, kills her ; then, being unde- 
ceived, becomes a madman, will not believe she is dead, has the body 
brought in, kneels before it, rages and weeps. He knows now the name 
Ct£ the txaitor, and at the thought of him he swoons or raves : 

* I'll follow him to hell, but I will find him, 
And then live a fourth Fury to torment him. 
Then, for this cursed hand and arm that guided 
The wicked steel, I'll have them, joint by joint, 
With burning irons sear'd olf, which I will eat, 
I being a vulture fit to taste such carrion.'* 

Suddenly his speech is stopped, and he falls ; Francesco has poisoned 

1 Middleton, The Honest Whore, Part i. iv. 1. 

* Beaumont and Flet3her, Valentiiiian, Tlderry and Theodoret. See Massinger'i 
Picture, which resembles Musset's Barherine. Its crudity, the extraordinary and 
rt-pulsive energy, will show the diflerence of the two ages. 

2 Massinger's "Works, ed. H. Coleridge, 1859, Duke of Milan, iL 1. * Ibid. v. % 



250 THE RENAISSANCE. IBOOK 11 

him. The duke dies, and the murderer is led to torture. There are 
worse scenes than this ; to find sentiments strong enough, they go to 
those which change the nature of man. Massinger puts on the stage a 
father who judges and condemns his daughter, stabbed by her husband ; 
Webster and Ford, a son who assassinates his mother ; Ford, the in- 
cestuous loves of a brother and sister.* Irresistible love overtakes 
them ; the ancient love of Pasiphae and Myrrha, a kind of madmiss* 
like enchantment, and beneath which the will entirely gives way, 
Giovanni says : 

* Lost ! I am lost ! My fates have doom'd my death 1 
The more I strive, I love ; the more I love, 

The less I hope : I see my ruin certain. . . . 
I have even wearied heaven with pray'rs, dried up 
The spring of my continual tears, even starv'd 
My veins with daily fasts : what wit or art 
Could counsel, 1 have practised ; but, alas ! 
I find all these but di-eams, and old men's tales. 
To fright unsteady youth : I am still the same ; 
Or I must speak, or biu-st.'* 

What transports follow I what fierce and bitter joys, and how short 
too, how grievous and crossed with anguish, especially for her 1 She 
is married to another. Read for yourself the admirable and horrible 
scene which represents the wedding night. She is pregnant, and 
Soranzo, the husband, drags her along the ground, with curses, demand- 
ing the name of her lover: 

* Come strumpet, famous whore ! , . , 

Harlot, rare, notable harlot, 
That with thy brazen face maintain'st thy sin. 
Was there no man in Parma to be bawd 
To your loose cunning whoredom else but 1 F 
Must your hot itch and pleurisy of lust, 
The heyday of your luxury, be fed 
Up to a surfeit, and could none but I 
Be pick'd out to be cloak to your close tricky 
Your belly-sports ? — Now I must be the dad 
To aU that gallimaufry that is stuffd 
In thy corrupted bastard-bearing womb ? 
"Why, must I ? 

Annabella. Beastly man ! why ? — 'tis thy fate, 
I sued not to thee. . . . 

S. Tell me by whom.'* 

She gets excited, feels and cares for nothing more, refuses to tell ihs 
name of her lover, and praises him in the following words : 

* Massinger, The Fatal Bowrij ; Webster and Ford, A late Murther of thi 
Sonne upon the Mother (a play not extant) ; Ford, 'I'is pity she's aWJiore, See 
also Ford's Broken Heart with its siibllme scenes of agony and madness. 

« Ford's Works, ed. H. Coleridge, 1859, 'Tispity she's a Whore, i. 3. 

8 Ihid. iv. 3. 



CHAP ik . THE THEATRE. 251 

• A. Soft, 'twas not in my bargain. 

Yet somewhat, sir, to stay your longing stomach 
I am content t' acquaint you with : the Man, 
The more than man, that got this sprightly boy,— 
(For 'tis a boy, and therefore glory, sir, 
Your heir shall be a son.) 

S. Damnable monster ! 

A. Nay, an you will not hear, I'll speak no mort, 

S. Yes, speak, and speak thy last. 

A. A match, a match ! . . . 
You, why you are not worthy once to name 
His name without true worship, or indeed. 
Unless you kneel'd, to hear another name hiio* 

S. What was he call'd ? 

A, We are not come to that ; 
Let it suffice that you shall have the glory 
To father what so brave a father got. . . , 

S. Dost thou laugh ? 
Come, whore, tell me your lover, or by truth 
. I'll hew thy flesh to shreds ; who is't ? ' * 

She laughs ; the excess of shame and terror has given her courage; 
•he insults him, she sings ; so like a woman I 

* A. (Sings.) Che morte jnu dolce che morire x>er amove. 
S. Thus will I pull thy hair, and thus I'll drag 

Thy lust be-leper'd body through the dust. . . . 

{Hales her up and doton.) 
A, Be a gallant hangman. . . , 

I leave revenge behind, and thou shalt feel it. . . . 
{To Vasquez.) Pish, do not beg for me, 1 prize my lift 
As nothing ; if the man will needs be mad. 
Why, let him take it.'* 

In the end all is discovered, and the two lovers know they must die. 
For the last time, they see each other in Annabella's chamber, listening 
to the noise of the feast below which shall serve for their funeral-feast. 
Giovanni, who has made his resolve like a madman, sees Annabella 
rich)y dressed, dazzling. He regards her in silence, and remembers 
Ibe past He weeps, and says : 

* These are the funeral tears, 
Shed on your grave ; these furrow'd up my cheeks 
When first I lov'd and knew not how to woo. . • • 
Give me your hand : how sweetly life doth run 
In these ^-ell-coloiir'd veins ! How constantly 
These pilms do promise health ! . . . 
Kiss me again, forgive me. . . . Farewell.'* . . • 

He then stabs her, enters the banqueting room, with her heart upon 
his dagger: 



'2'is pity she's a Wh&re/iv. 3. * IMd. ^ Ibid. 



252 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

• Soranzo, see this heart, which was thy wife's. 
Thus I exchange it royally for thine. ' * 

He l^ills him, and casting himself on the swords of banditti, dies. It 

would suem that tragedy could go no further. 

But it did go further ; for if these are melodramas, they are sincere, 
composed, not like those of to-day, by Grub Street writers for peaceful 
citizens, but by impassioned men, experienced in tragical arts, for a 
violent, over-fed, melancholy race. From Shakspeare to Milton, Swift, 
Hogarth, no race has been more glutted with crudities and horrors, and 
its poets supply them plentifully; Ford less so than Webster ; the latter a 
sombre man, whose thoughts seem incessantly to be haunting tombs and 
charnel-houses. * Places in court,' he says, * are but like beds in the 
hospital, where this man's head lies at that man's foot, and so lower and 
lower.'^ Such are his images. No one has equalled Webster in creating 
desperate characters, utter wretches, bitter misanthropes,^ in blackening 
and blaspheming human life, above all, in depicting the shameless de- 
pravity and refined ferocity of Italian manners.* The Duchess of 
Malfi has secretly married her steward Antonio, and her brother learns 
that she has children; almost mad* with rage and wounded pride, he 
remains silent, waiting until he knows the name of the father; then he 
arrives, means to kill her, but so that she shall taste the lees of death. 
She must suffer much, but above all she must not die too quickly I 
She must suffer in mind ; these griefs are worse than the body's. He 
sends assassins to kill Antonio, and meanwhile comes to her in the 
dai k, with affectionate words ; pretends to be reconciled, and suddenly 
shows her waxen figures, covered with wounds, whom she takes for 
her slaughtered husband and children. She staggers under the blow 
and remains in gloom, without crying out. Then she sayss 

* Good comfortable fellow, 
Persuade a wretch that's broke upon the wheel 
To have all his hones new set ; entreat hiui live 
To he executed again. "Who must despatch me f . , r 

' 'Tis pity site's a Whore, v. 6. 

' Webster's Works, ed. Dyce, 1857, Duchess of Malfi, i. 1. 
' The characters of Bosola. Flaminio. 

■* See Stendhal The Chronicles of Italy , The Cenci, The Duchess of Palliano 
• nd all the biographies of the time : of the Borgias, of Biauca Capello, ol 
Vittoria Accoramboni, etc. 

* Ferdinand, one of the brothers, says (ii. 5) : 

' I would have their bodies 

Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp'd 

That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven ; 

Or dip the sheets they lie in, in pitch or sulphur, 

Wrap them in't, and then light them as a match ; 

Or else to boil their bastard to a cullis. 

And giv't his lecherous father to renew 

The sin of his back.' 



CHAP Il.j THE THEATRE. 253 

Bosola Come, be of comfort, I will save your life. 

Duchess. Indeed, I have not leisure to tend so small a business. 

B. Now, by my life, I pity you. 

D. Thou art a fool, then. 
To waste thy pity on a thing so wretched 
As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers. * ' , , . 

Slow words, spoken in a constrained voice, as in a dream, or as if she 
were speaking of a third person. Her brother sends to her a company 
of madmen, who leap and howl and hover around her in mournful wise ; 
a pitiful sight, calculated to unseat the reason ; a kind of foretaste of 
hell. She says nothing, looking upon them; her heart is dead, hei 
eyes fixed : 

* Cariola. What think you of, madam ? 
Duchess. Of nothing : 

"When I muse thus, I sleep. 

C. Like a madman, with your eyes open ? 

D. Dost thou think we shall know one another 
In th' other world ? 

C. Yes, out of question. 

D. 0, that it were possible we might 

But hold some two days' conference with the dead 1 

From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure, 

I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle ; 

I am not mad yet. . . . 

The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass, 

The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad. 

I am acquainted with sad misery 

As the tanu'd galley-slave is with his oar.' ' . • • 

In this state, the limbs, like those of a condemned, still quiver, but the 
sensibility is worn out ; the miserable body only atirs mechanically ; it 
has suffered too much. At last the gravedigger comes with executioners, 
a coffin, and they sing before her a f unerul dirge : 

* Duchess. Farewell, Cariola . . . 

I pray thee, look thou giv'st my little boy 

Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl 

Say her prayers ere she sleep. — Now, what you please: 

What death ? 

Bosola. Strangling ; here are your executioners. 

D. I forgive them : 
The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' th* lungs 
Yfould do as much as they do. . . . My body 
Bestow upon my women, will you ? . . . 
Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out, 
They then may feed in quiet.' ^ 

After the mistress the maid ; the latter cries and struggles : 

• Duchess of Malfi. iv. 1. 2 m^ i^, 3. » Ihid, 



254 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOH li 

* Ca/riola. I will not die ; I must not ; I am contracted 
To a young gentleman. 

Ist Executioner. Here's your wedding-ring. 

C. If you kill me now, 
I am damn'd. I liave not been at confession 
This two years. 

B. When ? ' 

G. I am quick with child.' ' 

They strangle her also, and the two children of the duchess. Antonio 
is assassinated ; the cardinal and his mistress, the duke and his confidant, 
are poisoned or butchered ; and the solemn words of the dying, in the 
midst of this butchery, utter, as from funereal trumpets, a general curse 
upon existence : 

* We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves, 
That, ruin'd, yield no echo. Fare you well. . . . 
O, this gloomy world ! 

In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness. 
Doth womanish and fearful mankind live 1' '. . . 

* In all our quest of greatness. 

Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care. 

We follow after bubbles blown in the air. 

Pleasure of life, what is't ? only the good hours 

Of an ague ; merely a preparative to rest. 

To endure vexation. . . . 

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, 

Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.* * 

You will find nothing sadder or greater from the Edda to Lord Byron. 
We can well imagine what powerful characters are necessary to 
sustain these terrible dramas. All these personages are ready for ex- 
treme acts ; their resolves break forth like blows of a sword ; we follow, 
meet at every change of scene their glowing eyes, wan lips, the starting 
of their muscles, the tension of their whole frame. The unrestraint of 
their wills contracts their violent hands, and their accumulated passion 
breaks out in thunder, which tears and ravages all around them, and in 
their own hearts. We know them, the heroes of this tragic population, 
lago, Richard iii., Lady Macbeth, Othello, Coriulanus, Hotspur, full of 
genius, courage, desire, generally enraged and criminal, always self- 
driven to the tomb. There are as many around Shakspeare as in his 
own works. Let me exhibit one more, again in the same man, Webster. 
No one, except Shakspeare, has seen further forward into the depths of 
diabolical and unchained nature. The ' White Devil' is the name which 
he gives to his heroine. His 'V ittoria Corombona receives as her lover 
the Duke of Brachiano, and at the first interview dreams of the issue : 

1 * When,' an exclamation of impatience, equivalent to * make haste,' very 
common among the old English dramatists. — Tr. 

2 Duchess of Malfi, iv. 2. ^ jj^i^^ y. 5. < lUd. v. 4 and 5. 



CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 265 

• To pass away the time, I'll tell your grace 
A dream I had last night.' 

It is certainly well related, and still better chosen, of deep meaning and 
very clear import. Her brother Flaminio says, aside : 

* Excellent devil ! she hath taught him in a dream 
To make away his duchess and her husband.' ^ 

In short, her husband, Camillo, is strangled, the duchess poisoned, and 
Vittoria, accused of the two crimes, is brought before the tribunal. 
Step by step, like a soldier brought to bay with his back against a 
wall, she defends herself, refuting and defying advocates and judges, 
incapable of blenching or quailing, clear in mind, ready in word, amid 
insults and proofs, even menaced with death on the scaffold. The 
advocate begins to speak in Latin. 

• Vittoria. Pray, my lord, let him speak his usual tongue; 
I'll make no answer else. 
Francisco de Medicis. Why, you understand liatin. 
V. I do, sir ; but amongst this auditory 
Which come to hear my cause, the half or more 
Miy be ignorant in't.' 

She wants a duel, bare-breasted, in open day, and challenpjes the advocate J 

* I am at the mark, sir: I'll give aim to you. 
And tell you how near you shoot.' 

She mocks his speech, insults him, with biting irony : 

Surely, my lords, this lawyer here hath swallow'd 
Some pothecaries' hills, or proclamations ; 
And now the hard and undigestible words 
Come up, like stones we use give hawks for phyaio ; 
Why, this is Welsh to Latin.' 

Then, to the strongest adjuration of the judges: 

• To the point. 
Find me guilty, sever head from body. 
We'll part good friends : I scorn to hold my lift 
At yours, or any man's entreaty, sir. . . . 
These are but feigned shadows of my evils : 
Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils ; 
I am past such needless palsy. For your namea 
Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you. 
As if a man should spit against the wind ; 
The filth returns in's face.' 

Argument for argument : she has a parry for every blow * a parry and 

a thrust : 

* But take you your course ; it seems you have heggar'd me firs^ 
And now would fain undo me. I have houses, 
Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes: 
Would those would make you charitable I * 

* Vittoria Corombona, i. 2. 



856 THE RENAISSANCE. I'BOOK U 

Then, m a harsher voice : 

* In faitli, my lord, you might go pistol flies ; 
Tlie sport would be more noble.' 

They condemn her to be shut up in u house of convertites : 

* V. A house of convertites ! What's that f 

Monticelso. A house of penitent whores. 

V. Do the noblemen in Rome 
Erect it for their wives, that I am sent 
To lodge there f 

The sarcasm comes home like a sword-thrust ; then another behind it ; 
then cries and curses. She will not bend, she will not weep. Sb4 
goes off erect, bitter and more haughty than ever : 

* I will not weep ; 
No, I do scorn to call up one poor tear 
To fawn on your injustice : bear me hence 
Unto this house of — . what's your mitigating title? 

Mont. Of convertites. 

V. It shall not be a house of convertites ; 
My mind shall make it honester to me 
Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable 
Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal.'^ 

Against her furious lover, who accuses her of unfaithfulness, s}»e is «s 
strong as against her judges ; she copes with him, casts in his teeth the 
death of his duchess, forces him to beg pardon, to marry her ; she will 
play the comedy to the end, at the pistol's mouth, with the shameless- 
ness and courage of a courtesan and an empress;^ snared at last, she 
will be just as brave and more insulting at the dagger's point : 

* Yes, I shall welcome death 
As princes do some great ambassadors ; 
I'll meet thy weapon half way. . . . 'Twas a manly blow ; 
The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant ; 
And then thou wilt be famous.'* 

When a woman unsexes herself, her actions transcend man's, and there 
is nothing which she will not suffer or dare. 

VII. 

Opposed to this band of tragic figures, with their contorted features, 
brazen fronts, combative attitudes, is a troop of sweet and timid figures, 
tender before everything, the most graceful and loveworthy, whom it 
has been given to man to depict. In Shakspeare you will meet them 
in Miranda, Juliet, Desdemona, Virginia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen ; 

* Vittoria Coromhona, iii. 2. 

* Compare Mme. Marneffe in Balzac's La Cousine BetUi, 
■ Vittoria Coromhona, v. last scene. 



CHAP. n.J THE THEATRE. 257 

but they aboiinci also in the others ; and it is a iharacteristic of the 
race to have furnished them, as it is of the drama to have represented 
them. By a singular coincidence, the women are more of women, the 
men more of men, here than elsewhere. The two natures go each to 
its extreme : in the one to boldness, the spirit of enterprise and resist- 
ance, the warlike, imperious, and unpolished character ; in the other to 
sweetness, devotion, patience, inextinguishable affection,* — a thing un- 
known in distant lands, and in France especially: a woman here gives 
herself without drawing back, and places her glory and duty in obe- 
dience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing and pretending only to be melted 
and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she has freely and 
for ever chosen.^ It is this, an old German instinct, which these great 
painters of instinct diffuse here, one and all : Penthea, Dorothea, in Ford 
and Greene ; Isabella and the Duchess of Malfi, in Webster ; Bianca, 
Ordella, Arethusa, Juliana, Euphrasia, Amoret, and others, in Beaumont 
and Fletcher : there are a score of them who, under the severest tests 
and the strongest temptations, display this admirable power of self- 
abandonment and devotion.^ The soid, in this race, is at once primitive 
and serious. Women keep their candour longer than elsewhere. They 
lose respect less quickly ; weigh worth and characters less suddenly . 
they are less apt to think evil, and to take the measure of their hus- 
bands. To this day, a great lady, accustomed to company, can blush in 
the presence of an unknown man, and feel troubled like a little girl : 
the blue eyes are dropt, and a child -like shame flies to her rosy cheeks 
English women have not the smartness, the boldness of ideas, the assur- 
ance of bearing, the precocity, which with the French make of a younji 
girl, in six months, a woman of intrigue and the queen of a drawing 
room.^ A narrowed life and obedience are more easy to them. Mor< 
pliant and more sedentary, they are at the same time more concentrated 
and introspective, more disposed to follow the noble dream called duty, 
which is hardly generated in mankind but by silence of the senses. 
They are not tempted by the voluptuous sweetness which in southern 
countries is breathed out in the climate, in the sky, in the general 
spectacle of things ; which dissolves every obstacle, which makes priva- 



1 Hence the happiness and strength of the itamage tie. In France it is but 
■n association of two comrades, tolerably alike and tolerably equal, which givea 
rise to endless disturbance and bickering. 

* See the representation of this character throughout English and German 
literature. Stendhal, an acute observer, saturated with Italian and French morals 
and ideas, is astonished at this phenomenon. He understands nothing of this 
kind of devotion, 'this slavery which English husbands have had the wit to 
impose on their wives under the name of duty. ' These are * the manners of a 
seraglio.* See also Corinne, by Madame de Stael. 

' A perfect woman already: meek and patient. — HeywooD. 

* See, by way of contrast, all Moliere's women, so French ; even Agnes andlittlt 
Louison. 

B 



258 THE RENAISSANCE. 



[BOOK II 



tion a snsre and virtue a theory. They can rest content with dull 
sensations, dispense with excitement, endure weariness; and in this 
monotony of a regulated existence, fall back upon themselves, obey a 
pu-^*; idea, employ all the force of their hearts in maintaining their 
moral dignity. Thus supported by innocence and conscience, they in^ 
troducc into love a profound and upright sentiment, abjure coquetry, 
vanity, and flirtations: they do not lie, they are not affected. When 
they love, they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are binding them- 
selves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes almost a 
holy thing ; the spectator no longer wishes to be malicious or to jest ; 
women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the loved 
ones ; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion. Euphrasia, relating 
her history to Philaster, says : 

* My father oft would speak 
Tour worth and virtue ; acd, as I did grow 
More and more apprehensive, I did thirst 
To see the man so prais'd ; but yet all this 
Was but a maiden longing, to be lost 
As soon as found ; till sitting in my window. 
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god, 
I thought (but it was you), enter our gates. 
My blood flew out, and back again as fast, 
As I had puffed it forth, and suck'd it in 
Like breath : Then was I call'd away in haste 
To entertain you. Never was a man, 
Heav'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, raised 
So high in thoughts as I : You left a kiss 
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep 
From you for ever. I did hear you talk, 
Far above singing ! After you were gone, 
I grew acquainted with my heart, and search'd 
What stirr'd it so : Alas ! I found it love ; 
Yet far from lust ; for could I but have liv'd 
In presence of you, I had had my end.' ' 

She had disguised herself as a page,^ followed him, was his servant , 
and what greater happiness for a woman than to serve on her knees 
the man she loves? She let him scold her, threaten her with death, 
wound her, 

* Blest he that hand ! 
It meant me well. Again, for pity's sake 1 * • 

Do what he will, nothing but words of tenderness and adoration can 
leave this heart, these wan lips. More, she takes upon herself a crime 
of which he is accused, contradicts his assertions, is ready to die in hia 
place. Still more, she is of use to him with the Princess Arethusay 

> Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, ed. G. Colman, 3 vols. 1811, PhUoiter, v. 6 
• Like Kaled in Byron's Lara. ^ Philaster, iv. 4. 



OHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 259 

whom he loves; sTie justifies her rival, brings about their marriage^ 
and asks no other thanks but that she may serve them both. And 
•trange to say, the princess is not jealous. 

* Euphrasia. Never, Sir, willl 

Marry ; it is a thing within my voav : 
But if I may have leave to serve the princesa, 
To see the virtues of her lord and her, 
I shall have hope to live. 

Arethtisa. , . . Come, live with ni» ; 

Live free as I do. €he that loves my lord, 
Curst be the wife that hates her ! * * 

Wliat notion of love have they in this country ? Whence happent 
it that all selfishness, all vanity, all rancour, every little feeling, either 
personal or base, flees at its approach ? How comes it that the soul 
is given up wholly, without hesitation, without reserve, and only 
dreams thenceforth of prostrating and annihilating itself, as in the 
presence of a God? Biancha, thinking Cesario ruined, offers herself 
to him as his wife; and learning that he is not so, gives him up straight- 
way, without a murmur : 

* Biancha. So dearly I respected both your fame 
And quality, that I would first have perish'd 
In my sick thoughts, than e'er have given consent 
To have undone your fortunes, by inviting 
A marriage with so mean a one as I am : 
I should have died sure, and no creature known 
The sickness that had kill'd me. . . . Now since I know 
There is no difference 'twixt your birth and mine, 
Not much 'twixt our estates (if any be 
The advantage is on my side), I come willingly 
To tender you the first-fruits of my heart, 
And am content t'accept you for my husband. 
Now when you are at lowest . . . 

CemHo. Why, Biancha, 

Report has cozen'd thee ; I am not fallen 
From my expected honours or possessions, 
Tho' from the hope of birth-right. 

B. Are you not ? 

Then I am lost again I I have a suit too ; 
You'll grant it, if you be a good man. . . . 
Pray do not talk of aught what I have said t'ye. . 

. . . Pity me ; 
But never love me more. . . . Ill pray for you. 
That you may have a virtuous wife, a fair one ; 
And when I'm dead ... G. Fy, fy 1 B. Think on me BiCietimei 
With mercy for this trespass 1 C. Let us kiss 
At parting, as at coming. B. This I have 

* Phila^er, v. 6. 



260 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

As a free dower to a virgin's grave, 
All goodness dwell with you 1 ' ^ 

Tlie Duchess of Brachiano is betrayed, insulted by her faithless 
husljand ; to shield him from the vengeance of her family, she takes 
upon herself the blame of the rupture, purposely plays the shrew, and 
leaving him at peace with his courtesan, dies embracing his pictusCi 
Arethusa allows herself to be wounded by Philaster, stays the peopU 
who would hold back the murderer's arm, declares that he has doni 
nothing, that it is not he, prays for him, loves him in spite of all, c^e» 
to the end, as though all his acts were sacred, as if he had power of life 
and death over her. Ordella devotes herself, that the king, her husband 
may have children; ^ she offers herself for a sacrifice, simply, without 
grand words, with her whole heart : 

' Ordella. Let it be what it may then, what it dare. 
1 have a mind will hazard it. 

Thierry. But hark you ; 

What may that woman merit, makes this blessing? 

0. Only her duty, sir. T. 'Tis terrible I 

0. 'Tis so much the more noble. 

T. 'Tis full of fearful shadows I 0. So is sleep, sir, 
Or anything that's merely ours, and mortal ; 
We were begotten gods else : but those fears, 
Feeling but once the fires of nobler thoughts. 
Fly, like the shapes of the clouds we form, to nothing. 

T. Suppose it death ! 0. I do. 2\ And endless partiujf 
With all we can call ours, with all our sweetness, 
With youth, strength, pleasure, people, time, nay reason, 
For in the silent grave, no conversation, 
No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, 
No careful father's counsel, nothing's heard. 
Nor nothing is, but all oblivion, 

Dust and an endless darkness : and dare you, woman. 
Desire this place ? 0. 'Tis of all sleeps the sweetest : 
Children begin it to us, strong men seek it. 
And kings from height of all their painted glories 
Fall, like spent exhalations, to this centre. . . . 

2\ Then you can suffer ? 0. As willingly as say it. 

T. Martell, a wonder ! 
Here's a woman that dares die. —Yet tell me. 
Are you a wife ? 0. I am, sir. T. And have children ?- 
She sighs and weeps ! 0. Oh, none, sii. T. Dare you venture. 
For a poor barren praise you ne'er shall hear, 
To part with these sweet hopes ? 0. With all but Heaven.* • 
fs not this grand ? Can you understand how one human being can 

* Beaumont and Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn, iv. 

"^ Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret^ The Maid's Tragedy 
Philaster. See also the part of LucLna in Yalentinian. 

* Thierry and Theodoret^ iv. 1. 



CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 261 

thus be separated from herself, forget and lose herself in another? 
They do so lose themselves, as in an abyss. When they love in vain 
and without hope, neither reason nor life resist; they languish, grovr 
mad, die like Ophelia. Aspasia, forlorn, 

* "Walks discontented, with her watry eyes 
Bent on the earth. The unfrequented woods 
Are her delight ; and when she sees a bank 
Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell 
Her servants what a pretty place it were 
To bury lovers in ; and make her maids 
Pluck 'era, and strew her over like a corse. 
She carries with her an infectious grief 
That strikes all her beholders ; she will sing 
The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, 
And sigh and sing again ; and when the rest 
Of our young ladies, in their wanton blood, 
TeU mirthful tales in course, that fill the room 
"With laughter, she will with so sad a look 
Bring forth a story of the silent death 
Of some forsaken virgin, which her gi'ief 
Will put in such a phrase, that, ere she end. 
She'll send them weeping one by one away.' • 

Like a spectre about a tomb, she wanders for ever about the remains 
of her slain lover, languishes, grows pale, swoons, ends by causing her- 
self to be killed. Sadder still are those who, from duty or submission, 
•illow themselves to be led to other nuptials. They are not resigned, 
^o not recover, like Pauline in Polyeucte, They are shattered. Pen- 
thea, in the Broken Heart, is as upright, but not so strong, as Pauline ; 
she is the English wife, not the Roman, stoical and calm.* She despairs, 
sweetly, silently, and pines to death. In her innermost heart she holds 
herself married to him to whom she has pledged her soul: it is the 
marriage of the heart which in her eyes is alone genuine; the other is 
cnly disguised adultery. In marrying Bassanes she has sinned against 
Orgilu5 ; moral infidelity is worse than legal infidelity, and thenceforth 
it <a is fallen in her own eyes. She says to her brother : 



^ Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, i 1, 
* Pauline says, in Corneille's Polyeucte (iii. 2) : 

*Avant qu'abandonner mon ame hmes douleuia^ 
II me faut essay er la force de mes pleurs ;" 
En quaUt^ de femme ou de fille, j'espere 
Qu'ils vaincront un epoux, ou flechiront un p^re. 
Que si sur I'un et I'autre ils manquent de pouvoir, 
Je ne prendrai conseil que de mon desespoir. 
Apprends-moi cependant ce qu'ils ont fait au temple.' 
We could not find a more reasonable and reasoning woman. So with Elianteti 
Henriette, in Moliere. 



262 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOJk 11 

•Piay, kill me. ... 
Kill, me, pray ; nay, will you ? 

Ithocles. How does thy lord esteem thee ? P. fcJu ch An one 
As only you have made me ; a faith-breaktr, 
A spotted whore ; forgive me, I am one — 
In act, not in desires, the gods must witness. . . , 
For she that's wife to Orgilus, and lives 
In known adultery with Bassanes, 
Is. at the best, a whore. Wilt kill me now ? . , . 
The handmaid to the wages 
Of country toil, drinks the untroubled streams 
With leaping kids, and with the bleating lambs. 
And so allays her thirst secure ; whilst I 
Quench my hot sighs with fleetings of my tears.' * 

With tragic greatness, from the height of her incurable grie^ she 
tb rows her gaze on life : 

' My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes 

Remaining to run down ; the sands are spent • 

For by an inward messenger I feel 

The summons of departure short and certain. . . . Glories 

Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams, 

And shadows soon decaying ; on the stage 

Of my mortality, my youth hath acted 

Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length 

By varied pleasures, sweeten'd in the mixture, 

But tragical in issue. . . . That remedy 

Must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead, 

And some untrod-on corner in the earth.' ' 

There is no revolt, no bitterness; she affectionately assists her brother 
who has caused her unhappiness ; she tries to enable him to win the 
woman he loves ; feminine kindness and sweetness overflow in her in 
the depths of her despair. Love here is not despotic, passionate, as in 
W)uthern climes. It is only deep and sad ; the source of life is dried 
up, that is all; she lives no longer, because she cannot; all goes by 
degrees — tealtli, reason, soul ; in the end she becomes mad, and behold 
her dishevelled, with wide staring eyes, with broken words. For ten 
days she nas not slept, and will not eat again ; and the same fatal 
thought continually afflicts her heart, amidst vague dreams of maternal 
tenderness and happiness brought to nought, which come and go in I'lei 
mind like phantoms : 

* Sure, if we were all sirens, we should sing pitifully, 

And 'twere a comely music, when in parts 

One sung another's knell ; the turtle sighs 

"When he hath lost his mate ; and yet some say 

He must be dead first : 'tis a fine deceit 

To pass away in a dream ! indeed, I've slept 

> Ford's Broken Heart, iu. 2. « Ihid. iii. o. 



CHAP. IL] THE THEATRE. 2^3 

With mine eyes open, a great while. No falsehood 

Equals a broken faith ; there's not a hair 

Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet, 

It sinks me to the grave : I must creep thither ; 

The journey is not long. . . . 

Since I was first a wife, I might have been 

Mother to many pretty prattling babes ; 

They would have smiled when I smiled ; and, for certain 

I should have cried when they cried ; — truly, brother, 

My father would have picked me out a husband. 

And then my little ones had been no bastards ; 

But 'tis too late for me to marry now, 

I am past child-bearing ; 'tis not my fault. ... 

Spare your hand ; 
Believe me, I'll not hurt it. . . . 
Complain not though I wring it hard : I'll kiss it ; 
Oh, 'tis a fine, soft palm ! — hark, in thine ear ; 
Like whom do I look, prithee ? — nay, no whispering. 
Goodness 1 we had been happy ; too much happiness 
Will make folk proud, they say. . . 
There is no peace left for a ravish'd wife, 
Widow'd by lawless marriage ; to all memory 
Penthea's, poor Penthea's name is strumpeted. . . , 
Forgive me ; Oh 1 I faint.' ^ 

She dies, imploring that some gentle voice may sing her a plaintive air, 
a farewell ditty, a sweet funeral song. I know nothing in the drama 
more pure and touching. 

When we find a constitution of soul so new, and capable of such 
great effects, it behoves us to look at the bodies. Man's extreme actions 
come not from his will, but his nature.^ In order to understand the 
great tensions of the whole machine, we must look upon the whole 
machine, — I mean man's temperament, the manner in which his blood 
flows, his nerves quiver, his muscles are interwoven : the moral 
interprets the physical, and human qualities have their root in the 
animal species. Consider then the species in this case — the race, that 
is ; for the sisters of Shakspeare*s Ophelia and Virginia, Goethe's Clara 
and Margaret, Otway's Belvidera, Richardson's Pamela, constitute a 
race by themselves, soft and fair, with blue eyes, lily whiteness, 
blushing, of timid delicacy, serious sweetness, framed to yield, bend^ 
cling,, Their poets feel it clearly when they bring them on the 
stage; they surround them with the poetry which becomes them, the 
murmur of streams, the pendent willow-tresses, the frail and humid 
flowers of the country, so like themselves : 

' Ford's Broken Heart, iv. 2. 
_' Schopenhauer, Metaphysics of Lorn and Death Swift also said that 
death and love are the two things in which man is fundamentally irrational. 
In fact, it is the species and the instiDct which are displayed in them, not the 
will and the Iwiividual. 



364 THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK H 

* Tlie flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
Thf azure harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath. ' * 

They make them sweet, like the south wind, which with its gentle 
breath causes the violets to bend their heads, abashed at the slightest 
reproach, already half bowed down by a tender and dreamy melan 
choly.^ Philaster, speaking of Euphrasia, whom he takes for a page, 
and who has disguised herself in order to be near him, says : 

* Hunting the buck, 
I found him sitting, by a fountain-side. 
Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst, 
And paid the nymph again as much in tears. 
A garland lay him by, made by himself. 
Of many several flowers, bred in the bay. 
Stuck in that niystic order, that the rareness 
Delighted me : But ever when he turn'd 
His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weep, 
As if he meant to make 'em grow again. 
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence 
Dwell in his face, I ask'd him all his story 
He told me, that his parents gentle dy'd. 
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields, 
Which gave him roots ; and of the crystal springs, 
"Which did not stop their courses ; and the sun 
Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light. 
Then he took up his garland, and did shew 
What every flower, as country people hold, 
Did signify ; and how all, order'd thus, 
Express'd his grief ; And, to my tlioughts, did read 
The prettiest lecture of his country art 
That could be wish'd. ... I gladly entertained him, 
Who was as glad to follow ; and have got 
The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy 
That ever master kept. ' ' 

The idyl is self-produced among these human flowers; tie yramn 
delays before the angelic sweetness of their tenderness and nf'desty, 
Sometimes even the idyl is born complete and pure, and the whole 
theatre is occupied by a sentimental and poetical kind of cjy.era. 
There are two or three such in Shakspeare ; in rude Jonson The 
Sad Shepherd; in Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess. Ridiculous 
titles nowadays, for they remind us of the interminable platitudes of 
d'Urfe, or the affected conceits of Florian ; charming titles, if we note 
the sincere and overflowing poetry which they contain. Amoret, the 
faithful shepherdess, lives in an imaginary country, full of old gods, 

* Cymbeline, iv. 3. 

' The death of Ophelia, the obsequies of Imogen, 

• Philaster, i. 1, 



L'HAP II.] THE THEATRE. 265 

yet English, Ifke the dewy verdant landscapes in which Rubens sets 
his nymphs dancing : 

*Thro' yon same bending plain 

That flings his arms down to the main. 

And thro' these thick woods have I run, 

Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun 

Since the lusty spring began.* . . . 

*ror to that holy wood is consecrate 

A virtuous well, about whose flowVy banks 

The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds, 

By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes 

Their stolen children, so to make them free 

From dying flesh and dull mortality.' . , .* 

*See the dew-drops, how they kiss 

Ev'ry little flower that is ; 

Hanging on their velvet heads, 

Like a rope of christal beads. 

See the heavy clouds low falling. 

And bright Hesperus down calling 

The dead Night from underground.'* 
These are the plants and the aspects of the ever iresh English country, 
now enveloped in a pale diaphanous mist, now glistening under the 
absorbing sun, teeming with plants so full of sap, so delicate, that in 
the midst of their most brilliant splendour and their most luxuriant 
life, we feel that to-morrow will wither them. There, on a summer- 
night, the young men and girls, after their custom,' go to gather flowers 
and plight their troth. Amoret and Perigot are together ; Amoret, 

* Fairer far 
Than the chaste blushing mom, or that fair star 
That guides the wand'ring seaman thro' the deep,* 

modest like a virgin, and tender as a wife, says to Perigot: 
* I do believe thee : 'Tis as hard for me 
To think thee false, and harder, than for thee 
To hold me foul.'* 

Strongly as she is tried, her heart, once given, never draws back 
Perigot, deceived, driven to despair, persuaded that she is unchaste, 
r;iikes h^jr with his sword, and casts her bleeding to the ground. 
The sullen Shepherd throws her into a well ; but the god lets fall * a 
droj from his watery locks' into the wound : the chaste flesh closes at 
the touch of the divine water, and the maiden, recovering, goes onoe 
more in se«»rch of him she loves : 

* Speak if thou be here, 
My Perigot ! Thy Amoret, thy dear, 

* Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, i. 1 
» Md. ii, 1. 

* See the description in Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times, 

* Beaumont and Fletcher, T?ie Fadthful Shepherdess, i. 1, 



THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK H 

Calls on thy loved name, . . . 'Tis thy friend. 

Thy Amoret ; come hither to give end 

To these consumings. Look up, gentle boy; 

I have forgot those pains and dear annoy 

I suffer'd for thy sake, and am content 

To be thy love again. Why hast thou rent 

Those curled locks, where I have often hung 

Ribbons, and damask roses, and have flung 

Waters distill'd to make thee fresh and gay, 

Sweeter than nosegays on a bridal day ? 

Why dost thou cross thine arms, and hang thy &ce 

Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace. 

From those two little Heav'ns, upon the ground, 

Show'rs of more price, more orient, and more round. 

Than those that hang upon the moon's pale brow t 

Cease these complainings, shepherd ! I am now 

The same I ever was, as kind and free. 

And can forgive before you ask of me : 

Indeed, I can and will' * 

Who could resist her sweet and sad smile? Still deceived, Perigot 
wounds her again ; s^e falls, but without anger. 

* So this work hath end ! 

Farewell, and live ! be constant to thy friend 

That loves thee next. ' * 

A nymph cures her, and at last Perigot, disabused, comes and throwi 
himself on his knees before her. She stretches out her arms j in spite 
of all that he had done, she was not changed : 

*I am thy love! 
Thy Amoret, for evermore thy love ! 
Strike once more on my naked breast, 111 prove 
As constant still. Oh, cou'dst thou love me yet, 
How soon could I my former griefs forget ! ' * 

Such are the touching and poetical figures which these poets in- 
troduce in their dramas, or in connection with their dramas, amidst 
murders, assassinations, the clash of swords, the howl of slaughter, in 
contrast with the furious men who adore or woo them, like them car- 
ried to excesa, transported by their tenderness as the others by their 
violence: it is the complete exposition, the perfect opposition of the 
feminine instinct led to self-abandoning recklessness, and the masculine 
harshness led to murderous rage. Thus built up and thus provided, 
the drama of the age was enabled to exhibit the inner depths of 
man, and to set in motion the, most powerful human emotions; to 
bring upon the stage Hamlet and Lear, Ophelia and Cordciia, the death 
of Desdemona and the butcheries of Macbeth. 

^ The Faithful SheplierdesSy iv. * Ibid. 

* Ibid. V. Compare, as an illustration of the contras'!; of races, the Italian 
pastorals, Tasso's Amintat Guarini*6 II Pastor ^o^ etc 



CHAP. IJL BEN JONSON 267 



CHAPTER III. 

Ben Jonson, 

I. The masters of tlic sclicol, in the school and in their age— Jonson — ^His mood 
— Character— Education — First efforts — Struggles — Poverty — Sickness — 
Death. 
II His learning — Classical tastes — Didactic characters — Good management of 
his plots — Freedom and precision of his style — Vigour of his will and 
passion. 

III. His drainas — Catiline and Sejamts — How he was able to depict the personages 

and the passions of the Eoman decadence. 

IV. His comedies — His reformation and theory of the theatre — His satirical 

comedies — Volpone — Why these comedies are serious and warlike — How 
they depict the passions of the Renaissance — His farces — The Silent Woman 
— ^Why these comedies are energetic and rude — How they conform with the 
tastes of the Renaissance. 
V. Limits of his talent — Wherein he remains beneath Molike— Want of higher 
philosopliy and comic gaiety — His imagination and fancy — The Staple oj 
News and Cynthia's Revels — How he treats the comedy of society, and 
lyrical comedy — His smaller poems — His masques — Theatrical and pictu- 
resque manners of the court — The Sad Shepherd — How Jonson remains a 
poet to his death. 
VL General idea of Shakspeare— The fundamental idea in Shakspeare— Conditions 
of human reason — Shakspeare's master faculty — Conditions of exact repre- 
sentation. 



WHEN a new civilisation brings a new art to light, there are about 
a dozen men of talent who express the general idea, surround- 
ing one or two men of genius who express it thoroughly. Guilhem 
de Castro, Peres de Montalvan, Tirso de Molina, Ruiz de Alarcon, 
Augustin Moreto, surrounding Calderon and Lope de Vega; Grayer, 
Van Oost, Romboust, Van Thulden, Van Dyk, Honthorst, surrounding 
Rubens ; Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher, sur- 
rounding Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. The first constitute the chorus, 
the others are the leaders. They sing the same piece together, and at 
times the chorus is equal to the solo ; but only at times. Thus, in the 
dramas which I have just referred to, the poet occasionally reaches the 
summit of his art, hits upon a complete character, a burst of sublime 
passion; then he falls back, gropes amid qualified successes, rough 
•ketches, feeble imitations, and at last takes refuge in the tricks of hii 



26S THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK II 

trade It is not in him, but in great men like Ben Jonson and Shak- 
speare, that we must look for the attainment of his idea and the fulness 
of his art. * Numerous were the wit-combats,* says Fuller, * betwixt 
him (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish 
great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson (like the 
former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his perfor- 
mances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but 
lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advan- 
tage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.'^ Such 
was Jonson physically and morally, and his portraits do but confirm 
this just and lively sketch : a vigorous, heavy, and uncouth person ; a 
wide and long face, early marred by scurvy, a square jaw, enormous 
cheeks ; his animal organs as much developed as those of his intellect: 
the sour aspect of a man in a passion or on the verge of a passion ; to 
which add the body of an athlete, about forty years of age, ' mountain 
belly, ungracious gait.' Such was the outside, and the inside is like it. 
He was a genuine Englishman, big and coarsely framed, energetic, 
combative, proud, often morose, and prone to strange splenetic imagi- 
nations. He related to Drummond that for a whole night he imagined 
* that he saw the Carthaginians and the Romans fighting on his great 
toe.** Not that he is melancholic by nature ; on the contrary, he loves 
to escape from himself by a wide and blustering licence of merriment, 
by copious and varied converse, assisted by good Canary wine, with 
which he drenches himself, and which ends by becoming a necessity to 
him. These great phlegmatic butchers' frames require a generous liquor 
to give them a tone, and to supply the place of the sun Avhich they 
lack. Expansive moreover, hospitable, even prodigal, with a frank 
imprudent heartiness,^ making him forget himself wholly before Drum- 
mond, his Scotch host, a vigorous and malicious pedant, who has 
marred his ideas and vilified his character. What we know of his life 
is in harmony with his person : he suffered much, fought much, dared 
much. He was studying at Cambridge, when his father-in-larw, a 
bricklayer, recalled him, and set him to the trowel. He ran away, 
enlisted as a volunteer into tho army of the Low Countries, killed and 
despoiled a man in single combat, 'in the view of both armies.' You 
see he was a man of bodily action, and that he exercised his limbs in 
early life.* On his return to England, at the age of nineteen, he went 
on the stage for his livelihood, and occupied himself also in touching up 
dramas. Having been provoked, he fought, was seriously wounded, but 
killed his adversary ; after that, he was cast into prison, and found 



» Fuller's Worthies, ed. Nuttall, 1840, 3 vols., iii. 284. 

■ There is a similar hallucination to be met with in the life of Lord Castlereagh, 

who afterwards cut his throat. 

^ His character lies between those of Fielding and Samuel Johnson, 
•* At the age of forty -four he went to Scotland on foot. 



CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 269 

himself * nigh :h.e gallows.' A Catholic priest visited and converted 
him ; quitting his prison penniless, at twenty years of age, he married. 
At last, two years later, he produced his first play. Children came, 
he must earn them bread ; and he was not of the stuff to follow the 
beaten track to the end, being persuaded that a fine philosophy ought 
to be introduced into comedy, a special nobleness and dignity, — that it 
Vk'as necessary to follow the example of the ancients, to imitate theii 
feverity and their accuracy, to be above the theatrical racket and the 
rude improbabilities in which the common herd delighted. He openly 
proclaimed his intention in his prefaces, roundly railed at his rivals, 
proudly set forth on the stage^ his doctrines, his morality, his character. 
He thus made bitter enemies, who defamed him outrageously and before 
their audiences, whom he exasperated by the violence of his satires, 
and against whom he struggled without intermission to the end. 
More, he constituted himself a judge of the public corruption, rudely 
attacked the reigning vices, ' fearing no strumpets drugs, nor ruffians 
stab.'^ He treated his hearers like schoolboys, and spoke to them always 
like a censor and a master. If necessary, he ventured further. His com- 
panions, Marston and Chapman, had been put in prison for an irreverent 
phrase in one of their pieces ; and the report spreading that their noses 
and ears were to be slit, Jonson, who had taken part in the piece, 
voluntarily made himself a prisoner, and obtained their pardon. On 
his return, amid the feasting and rejoicing, his mother showed him a 
violent poison which she intended to put into his drink, to save him 
from the sentence; and *to show that she was not a coward,' adds 
Jonson, * she had resolved to drink first.' We see that in the matter 
of vigorous actions he found examples in his own family. Toward 
the end of his life, money failed him ; he was liberal, improvident ; 
his pockets always had holes in them, as his hand was always open •, 
though he had written a vast quantity, he was obliged to write still in 
order to live. Paralysis came on, his scui'vy was aggravated, dropsy 
attacked him. He could not leave his room, nor walk without assist- 
ance. His last plays did not succeed. In the epilogue to the New 
Inn he says : 

* If you expect more than you had to-night, 

The maker is sick and sad. . . . 

All that his faint and falt'ring tongue doth crave, 

Is, that you not impute it to his brain, 

That's yet unhurt, altho' set round with pain. 

It cannot long hold out.' 

His enemies brutally insulted hina : 

^ Thy P^afifus - . «^ 
He had bequeathed his belly unto thee, 
To hold that little learning which is fled 
Into thy guts from out thy emptye head.' 

' Parts of Crites a*id Asper ■ Every 3Ian out of 7ns IJumovr. L 



270 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

Inigo tjTone?, his colleague, deprived him of the patronage of the court. 
He was obliged to beg a supply of money from the Lord Treasurer, 
then from the Earl of Newcastle : 

* Disease, the enemy, and his engineers, 
"Want, with the rest of his concealed compeers, 
Have cast a trench about me, now five years. . . • 
The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days ; 
But lies blocked up and straitened, nan-owed in. 
Fixed to the bed and boards, unlike to win 
Health, or scarce breath, as «he had never been.'* 

His wife and children were dead ; he lived alone, forsaken, serred by 
an old woman. Thus almost always, sadly and miserably is dragged out 
and ends the last act of the human comedy. After so many years, after 
80 many sustained efforts, amid so much glory and genius, we find a 
poor shattered body, drivelling and suffering, between a servant and • 
priest. 

n. 

This is the life of a combatant, bravely endured, w^orthy of the seven 
teenth century by its crosses and its energy; courage and force abounded 
throughout. Few writers have laboured more, and more conscienti- 
ously ; his knowledge was vast, and in this age of great scholars he 
was one of the best classics of his time, as deep as he was accurate 
and thorough, having studied the minutest details of ancient life. It 
was not enough for him to have stored himself from the best writers, 
to have their whole works continually in his mind, to scatter his pages, 
whether he would or no, with recollections of them. He dug into the 
orators, critics, scholiasts, grammarians, and compilers of inferior rank • 
he picked up stray fragments ; he took characters, jokes, refinements, 
from Athenaeus, Libanius, Philostratus. He had so well entered into 
and digested the Greek and Latin ideas, that they were incorporated 
with his own. They enter into his speech without discord ; they 
spring forth in him as vigorous as at their first birth; he originates 
even when he remembers. On every subject he had this thirst for 
knowledge, and this gift of mastering knowledge. He knew alchemy 
^hen he wrote the Alchemist. He is familiar with alembics, retorts, 
receivers, as if he had passed his life seeking after the philosopher*! 
stone. He explains incineration, calcination, imbibition, rectification, 
reverberation, as well as Agrippa and Paracelsus. If he speaks of cos- 
metics,* he brings out a shopf ul of them ; one might make out of hii 
plays a dictionary of the oaths and costumes of courtiers ; he seems to 
have a specialty in all branches. A still greater proof of his force is, 

' Ben Jonson's Poems, ed Bell, An Epistle Mendicant, to Richard, Lord 
Weston, Lord High Treasurer (1631), p. 244. 
' The Devil is an A-'ss. 



CHAP. 111.! BEN JONSON. 271 

that his learning in nowise mars his vigour ; heavy as is the mass with 
which he loads himself, he carries it without stooping. This wonderful 
compound of reading and observation suddenly begins to move, and 
falls like a mountain on the overwhelmed reader. We must hear Sir 
Epicure Mammon unfold the vision of splendours and debauchery, in 
which he means to plunge, when he has learned to make gold. The 
refined and unchecked impurities of the Roman decadence, the splendid 
obscenities of Heliogabalus, the gigantic fancies of luxury and lewdness, 
tables of gold spread with foreign dainties, draughts of dissolved pearls, 
nature devastated to provide a single dish, the crimes committed by 
sensuality, against nature, reason, and justice, the delight in defying 
snd outraging law, — all these images pass before the eyes with the dash 
of a torrent and the force of a great river. Phrase on phrase, event 
upon event, ideas and facts crowd into the dialogue to paint a situation, 
to give clearness to a character, produced from this deep memory, 
directed by this solid logic, launched by this powerful reflection. It is 
a pleasure to see him advance under the weight of so many observa- 
tions and recollections, loaded with technical details and learned remi- 
niscences, without deviation or pause, a genuine literary Leviathan, 
like the war elephants which used to bear towers, men, weapons, ma- 
chines on their backs, and ran as SAviftly under the freight as a nimble 
steed. 

In the great dash of this heavy advance, he finds a path which suits 
him. He has his style. Classical erudition and education made him a 
classic, and he writes like his Greek models and his Roman masters. The 
more we study the Latin races and literatures in contrast with the Teu* 
tonic, the more fully we become convinced that the proper and distinctive 
gift of the first is the art of development, that is, of drawing up ideas 
in connected rank, according to the rules of rhetoric and eloquence, by 
studied transitions, with regular progress, without shock or discontinuity. 
Jonson received from his acquaintance with the ancients the habit of 
decomposing ideas, unfolding them part by part in natural order, mak- 
ing himself understood and believed. From the first thought to the 
final conclusion, he conducts the reader by a continuous and uniform 
ascent. The track never fails with him, as with Shakspeare. He does 
not advance like the rest by sudden intuitions, but by consecutive 
deductions ; we can walk with him without need of bounding, and we 
are continually kept upon the straight path : antithesis of words unfolds 
antithesis of thoughts ; symmetrical phrases guide the mind through 
difficult ideas ; they are like barriers set on either side of the road to 
prevent our falling in the ditch. We do not meet on our way extra- 
ordinary, sudden, brilliant images, which might dazzle or delay us ; we 
travel on, enlightened by moderate and sustained metaphors. Jonson 
ha^ all the procedures of Latin art ; even, when he wishes it, especially 
on Latin subjects, he has the last and most erudite, the brilliant con- 
cision of Seneca and Lucan, the parallel equipoised, filed off antitheses, 



SI 



272 THE RENAISSANCE. ["BOOK 

the most happy and studied artifices of oratorical architecture.* Othei 
poets for the most part are visionaries ; Jonson is all but a logician. 

Hence his talent, his successes, and his faults : if he has a bettef 
style and better plots than the others, he is not, like them, a creator 
of souls. He is too much of a theorist, too preoccupied by rules. Hia 
argumentative habits spoil him when he seeks to shape and motion com- 
plete, and living men. No one is capable of fashioning these unlesf 
he possesses, like Shakspeare, the imagination of a seer. Tho humsii» 
being is so complex, that the logician who perceives his different ele- 
ments in succession can hardly study them all, much less gather ihem 
all in one flash, so as to produce the dramatic response or action in 
which they are concentrated, and which would manifest them. To dis- 
cover such actions and responses, we need a kind of inspiration and 
fever. Then the mind works as in a dream. The characters move 
v/ithin the poet, almost involuntarily : he waits for them to speak, 
he remains motionless, hearing their voices, withdrawn into himself, in 
order that he may not disturb the drama which they are about to act 
in his soul. That is his artifice : to let them alone. He is altogether 
astonished at their discourse ; as he observes them, he forgets that it is 
he who invents them. Their mood, character, education, disposition of 
mind, situation, attitude, and actions, make up to him so well-connected 
a whole, and so readily unite into palpable and solid beings, that he 
dares not attribute to his reflection or reasoning a creation so vast and 
speedy. Beings are organised in him as in nature, that is, of themselves, 
and by a force which the combinations of his art could not replace.* 
Jonson has nothing wherewith to replace it but these combinatiomi 
of art. He chooses a general idea — cunning, folly, severity — andl 
makes a person out of it. This person is called Crites, Asper, Sordido, 
Deliro, Pecunia, Subtil, and the transparent name indicates the logical 
process which produced it. The poet took an abstract quality, and 
putting together all the acts to which it may give rise, trots it out on 
the stage in a man's dress. His characters, like those of la Bruyere 
and Theophrastus, were hammered out of solid deductions. Now it is a 
vice selected from the catalogue of moral philosophy, sensuality thirst- 
ing for gold : this perverse double inclination becomes a personage, Sij 
Epicure Mammon ; before the alchemist, before the famulus, before his 
friend, before his mistress, in public or alone, all his words denote a 
greed of pleasure and of gold, and they express nothing more.* Now 
it is a piece of madness gathered from the old sophists, a babbling 
with horror of noise ; this form of mental pathology becf/mes a per- 
ijonage. Morose ; the poet has the air of a doctor who has undertaken 



* Sejamts, Catilina, passim. 

* Alfred de Musset, preface tc La Coupe et les Levres. Plato : Ion. 

* Compare Sir Epicure ^fammon with Baron Hulot froro Balzac's Cousins 
Sette. Balzac, who is learned like Jonson, creates real beings \isa Shakspeai* 



CHAP III.] BEN JONSON. 273 

the task of recording exactly all the desires of speech, all the necessitiea 
»f silence, and of recording nothing else. Now he picks out a laughable 
incident, an affectation, a species of folly, from the manners of the 
dandies and the courtiers ; a mode of swearing, an extravagant style» 
a habit of gesticulating, or any other oddity contracted by vanity or 
fashion. The hero whom he covers with these eccentricities, is overloaded 
b} them. He disappears beneath his enormous trappings; he drags them 
shout with him everywhere; he cannot get rid of them for an instant 
We no longer see the man under the dress; he is like a mannikin, 
oj/presyed under a cloak, too heavy for him. Sometimes, doubtless, hit 
habits of geometrical construction produce personages almost life-like. 
Bobadil, the grave boaster; Captain Tucca, the begging bully, inventive 
buffoon, ridiculous talker ; Amorphus the traveller, a pedantic doctor of 
good manners, laden with eccentric phrases, create as much illusion as 
one can wish ; but it is because they are flitting comicalities and low 
characters. It is not necessary for a poet to study such creatures ; it 
is enough that he discovers in them three or four leading features ; it 
is of little consequence if they always present themselves in the same 
light ; they produce laughter, like the Countess d^Escarbagnas or any of 
the Fdcheiu in Moliere ; we want nothing else of them. On the con- 
trary, the others weary and repel us. They are stage-masks, not living 
figures. Moulded into a fixed expression, they persist to the end of 
the piece in their unvarying grimace or their eternal frown. A man 
I s not an abstract passion. He stamps the vices and virtues which he 
possesses with his individual mark. These vices and virtues receive, on 
entering into him, a bent and form which they have not in others. No 
Jne is unmixed sensuality. Take a thousand sensuaHsts, and you will 
find a thousand modes of sensuality ; for there are a thousand paths, a 
thousand circumstances and degrees, in sensuality. To make Sir Epi- 
cure Mammon a real being, we must give him the kind of disposition, 
the species of education, the manner of imagination, which produce 
sensuality. When we wish to construct a man, we must dig down to 
the foundations of mankind ; that is, we must define to ourselves the 
«tructure of his bodily machine, and the primitive gait of his mind. 
J jnson has not dug sufficiently deep, and his constructions are incom- 
plete ; he has built on the surface, and he has built but a single story, 
ire was not acquainted with man in his fulness, and he ignored man's 
hasif. ; he put on the stage and gave a representation of moral treatises, 
fragments of history, scraps of satire ; he did not stamp new beings on 
the imagination of mankind. 

He possesses all the other gifts, and in particular the classical ; 
£r&t of all, the talent for composition. For the first time we see a con- 
cocted plot, a complete intrigue, with its beginning, middle, and end ; 
subordinate actions well arranged, well combined; an interest which 
groAvs and never flags ; a leading truth which all the events combine to 
demonstrate; a ruling idea which all the characters combine to illustrate; 



'274: THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

in sliort, an art like that which Moliere and Racine were about to appljy 
and teach. He does not, like Shakspeare, take a novel from Greene, a 
chronicle from Holinshed, a life from Plutarch, promiscuously, to cut 
them into scenes, irrespective of likelihood, indifferent as to order and 
unity, caring only to set up men, at times wandering into poetic reveries 
at need finishing up the piece abruptly with a recognition or a butcn^ry. 
He governs himself and his characters ; he wiils and he knows all *ha\ 
they do, and all that he does. But beyond his habits of Latin regularity, 
he possesses the great faculty of his age and race, — the sentiment of 
nature and existence, the exact knowledge of precise detail, the power 
in frankly and boldly handling frank passions. This gift is not wanting 
in any writer of the time ; they do not fear words that are true, shock- 
ing, and striking details of the bedchamber or medical study; th« 
prudery of modern England and the refinement of monarchical France 
veil not the nudity of their figures, or dim the colouring of their 
pictures. They live freely, liberally, amidst living things; they see 
the ins and outs of lust, raging without shame, hypocrisy, or redeeming 
softness ; and they exhibit it as they see it, Jonson as boldly as the 
rest, occasionnlly more boldly than the rest, strengthened as he is by 
the vigour and roughness of his athletic temperament, by the extraordi- 
nary exactness and abundance of his observations and his knowledge. 
Add yet his moral loftiness, his sourness, his powerful railing wrath. 
exasperated and bitter against vice, his resolution strengthened by prid€ 
and by conscience : 

* With an armed and resolved hand, 
1*11 strip the ragged follies of the time 
Naked as at their birth . . . and with a whip of steel, 
Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. 
I fear no mood stampt in a private brow, 
When I am pleas'd t' unmask a public vice. 
I fear no strumpets drugs, nor ruffians stab, 
Should I detect their hateful luxuries ; ' * 

above all, a scorn of base compliance, a disdain for 

' Those jaded wits 
That run a broken pace for common hir^* — * 

an enthusiasm, or deep love of 

* A happy muse, 
Bom on the wings of her immortal thought, 
That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel, 
And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs.'* 

Suoh are the energies which he brought to the drama and to comecly , 
they were great enough to ensure him a high position, and a position 
apart. 

' EJverp Man out of his Humour Proloaue « Poetaster, 1. 3 « Ibid. 



CHAP. Ill.J BEN JONSON. 27b 



in. 

For wnatever Jonson undertakes, wliatever be liis faults, haughti- 
ness, rough-handling, predilection for morality and the past, antiquarian 
and censorious instincts, he is never little or commonplace. It signitiea 
nothing that in his Latinised tragedies, Sejanus, Catiline^ he is fettered 
by the worship of the old worn models of the Roman decadence; 
noll.ing that he plays the scholar, hammers out Ciceronian harangues, 
hauls in choruses imitated from Seneca, holds forth in the style of Lucan 
and the rhetoricians of the empire: he more than once attains a genuine 
accent; through his pedantry, heaviness, literary adoration of the 
ancients, nature forces its way ; he lights, at his first attempt, on the 
crudities, horrors, gigantic lechery, shameless depravity of imperial 
Rome ; he takes in hand and sets in motion the lusts and ferocities, the 
passions of courtesans and princesses, the daring of assassins and of 
great men, which produced Messalina, Agrippina, Catiline, Tiberius.^ 
In the Rome which he places before us we go boldly and straight to 
the end ; justice and pity oppose no barriers. Amid victorious and 
slavish customs, human nature is upset ; corruption and crime are held 
as marks of insight and energy. Observe how, in Sejanics, assassination 
is plotted and carried out with marvellous coolness. Livia discusses 
with Sejanus the methods of poisoning her husband, in a clear style, 
without circumlocution, as if the subject were how to gain a lawsuil 
or how to serve up a dinner. There are no equivocations, no hesita-. 
tion, no remorse in the Rome of Tiberius. Glory and virtue consist iu 
power ; scruples are for common souls ; the mark of a lofty heart is U 
desire all and to dare all. Macro says rightly : 

* Men's fortune there is virtue ; reason their will ; 
Their licence, law ; and their observance skill. 
Occasion is their foil ; conscience, their stain ; 
Frolit, their lustre : and what else is vain. * • 

Bejanus addresses Livia thus : 

* Royal lady, . , • 
Yet, now I see your wisdom, judgment, strengtl^ 
Quickness, and will, to apprehend the means 
To your own good and greatness, I protest 
Myself through rarified, and turn'd all flame 
In your afi'ection. ' * 

These are the loves of the wolf and his mate ; he praises her for 
being so ready to kill. And observe in one moment the morals of a 
prostitute appear behind the manners of the poisoner. Sejanus goes out, 
and immediately, like a courtesan, Livia turns to her physician, saying : 

* See the second Act of Catiline. 

• Z7w Fail of Sejanus iii last Scene • Ibid ii. 



876 THE RENAISSANCE. ''B'^OK U 

' How do I look to-day ? 

Eiidemus. Excellent clear, believe it. This same fhcoB 
"Was well laid on. L. Methinks 'tis here not white. 

E. Lend me your scarlet, lady. 'Tis the sun 
Hath giv'n some little taint unto the ceruse, 
You should have us'd of the white oil I gave you. 
Sejanus, for your love ! His very name 
Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts. . . . 

'Tis now well, lady, you should 
Use of the dentifrice I prescrib'd you too. 
To clear your teeth, and the prepar'd pomatum, 
To smooth the skin. A lady cannot be 
Too curious of her form, that still would hold 
The heart of such a person, made her captive, 
As you have this : who, to endear him more 
In your clear eye, hath put away his wife . . . 
Fair Apicata, and made spacious room 
To your new pleasures, L. Have we not retum'd 
That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery 
Of all his counsels ? . . . 

E. When will you take some physick, lady ? L. When 
I shall, Eudemus : but let Drusus' drug 
Be first prepar'd. E. Were Lygdus made, that's done. . • . 
I'll send you a perfume, first to resolve 
And procure sweat, and then prepare a bath 
To cleanse and clear the cutis ; against when 
I'll have an excellent new fucus made 
Resistive 'gainst the sun, the rain or wind, 
Which you shall lay on with a breath or oil, 
As you best like, and last some fourteen hours. 
This change came timely, lady, for your health.'* 

He ends by congratulating her on her approaching change of husbands : 
Drusus was injuring her complexion; Sejanus is far preferable; a 
physiological and practical conclusion. The Roman apothecary had on 
the same shelf his medicine- chest, his chest of cosmetics, and his chest 
ftf poisons.* 

After this you find one after another all the scenes of Roman life 
nnfolded, the bargain of murder, the comedy of justice, the shameless- 
ness of flattery, the anguish and vacillation of the senate. When 
Sejanus wishes to buy a conscience, he questions, jokes, plays round 
the offer he is about to make, throws it out as if in pleasantry, so as 
to be able to withdraw it, if need be ; then, when the intelligent look 
of the rascal, whom he is traflacking with, shows that he is understood : 



» The Fall of Sejanus, ii. 

' See Oatiline, Act ii. ; a fine scene, no less frank and lively, on the dissipa 
tiou of the higher ranks in Rome. 



CHAP, mj BEN JONSON. 27^ 

* Protest not. 
Tliy looks are vows to me. . . • 
Thou art a man, made to make consuls. Go.** 

Elsewhere the senator Latiaris brings to him his friend Sahinns, storms 
before the latter against tyranny, openly expresses a desire for liberty, 
provoking him to speak. Then two spies who were hid behind the 
floor, cast themselves on Sabinus, crying, * Treason to Caesar 1 ' and 
irag him, with his face covered, before the tribunal, thence to 'bo 
thrown upon the Gemonies.'^ So, when the senate is assembled, 
Tiberius has chosen beforehand the accusers of Silius, and their parts 
distributed to them. They mumble iu a corner, whilst aloud is heard^ 
in the emperor's presence : 

* Ccesar, 
Live long and happy, great and royal Caesar ; 
The gods preserve thee and thy modesty, 
Thy wisdom and thy innocence. . . . Guard 
His meekness, Jove, his piety, his care. 
His bounty. '3 

Then the herald cites the accused ; Varro, the consul, pronounces the 
indictment ; Afer hurls upon them his bloodthirsty eloquence : the 
senators get excited ; we see laid bare, as in Tacitus and Juvenal, the 
depths of Roman servility, hypocrisy, insensibility, the venomous craft 
of Tiberius. At last, after so many others, the turn of Sejanus comes. 
The fathers anxiously assemble in the temple of Apollo ; for some days 
past Tiberius has seemed to be trying to contradict himself; he has 
lemoved the friend of his favourite, and next day sets his enemies in 
high positions. They mark the face of Sejanus, and know not what 
to anticipate ; Sejanus is troubled, then after a moment's cringing is 
more arrogant than ever. The plots are confused, the rumours con- 
tradictory. Macro alone is in the confidence of Tiberius, and soldiers 
are seen^ drawn up at the porch of the temple, ready to enter at the 
earliest sound. The formula of convocation is read, and the council 
marks the names of those who do not respond to the summons ; then 
I?itgulus addresses them, and announces that Caesar 

* Propounds to this grave senate, the bestowing 
Upon the man he loves, honour'd Sejanus, 
The tribunitial dignity and power : 
Here are his letters, signed with his signet. 
What pleaseth now the Fathers to be done ! * 

* Senators. Read, r3ad 'em, open, publicly read 'em. 
Cotta. Csesar hath honour'd his own greatness much 
In thinking of this act. iTrio. It was a thought 
Happy, and worthy Csesar. Latiaris. And the lord 
As worthy it, on whom it is directed I 

» TJie Fall of Ssjauus, i. * IMd. iv. ^ ji^^ jji 



^g THE RENAISSANCE. [BOCR II 

Haterius. Most worthy ! Sanquinius. Kome did never Tjoast the virtue 
That could give envy bounds, but his : Sejanus. — 

1st Sen. Honoiir'd and noble ! 2d Sen. Good and great Sejanus ! 
Prescones. Silence ! ' * 

Tiberius' letter is read. First, long obscure and vague phrases, 
mingled with indirect protests and accusations, foreboding something 
and revealing nothing. Suddenly comes an insinuation against Se- 
janus. The fathers are alarmed, but the next line reassures thvm. 
A word or two further on, the same insinuation is repeated with 
greater exactness. 'Some there be that would interpret this his 
public severity to be particular ambition ; and that, under a pretext 
of service to us, he doth but remove his own lets: alledging the 
strengths he hath made to himself, by the prastorian soldiers, by his 
faction in court and senate, by the offices he holds himself, and con- 
fers on others, his popularity and dependents, his urging (and almost 
driving) us to this our im willing retirement, and lastly, his aspiring 
to be our son-in-law.' The fathers rise : * This 's strange I ' Their 
eager eyes are fixed on the letter, on Sejanus, who perspires and grows 
pale ; their thoughts are busy with conjectures, and the words of the 
letter fall one by one, amidst a sepulchral silence, caught as they fali 
with a devouring eagerness of attention. The senators anxiously weigh 
the value of these varying expressions, fearing to compromise them- 
selves with the favourite or with the prince, all feeling that they must 
understand, if they value their lives. 

* ** Your wisdoms, Conscript Fathers, are able to examine, and censure these 
suggestions. But, were they left to our absolving voice, we durst pronounce them, 
as we think them, most malicious. " 

Senator. 0, he has restor'd all ; list. 

Frceco. "Yet are they offer 'd to be averr'd, and on the lives of the informers."** 

At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those next Sejanus 
forsake him. ' Sit farther. ... Let's remove !' The heavy San quinius 
leaps panting over the benches, The soldiers come in ; then Macro. 
And now, at last, the letter orders the arrest of Sejanus. 

* Eegulus. Take him hence. 
And all the gods guard Caesar ! Trio. Take him hence. 

Haterius. Hence. Cotta. To the dungeon with him. San. He desenree H 

Sen. Crown all our doors with bays, San. And let an ox, 
With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led 
Unto the Capitol. Hat. And sacrific'd 
To Jove, for Cfcsar's safety. Trio. All our gods 
Be present still to Csesar ! . . . 

Cotta. I^et all the traitor's titles be defac'd. 

Trio. His images and statues be puU'd down. . . . 

• The Fall of Sejanus, v. ' Ihid. 



1 



CHAP III BEN JON SON. 2^9 

Sen. Liberty ! liberty I liberty 1 Lead on. 
And praise to MacP3 that liath sa-ved Kome.' * 

It is the baying of a furious pack of hounds, let loose at last on him^ 
under whose band they had crouched, and who had for a long time 
beaten and bruised them. Jonson discovered in his own energetic soul 
the energy of these Roman passions; and the clearness of his mind, 
added to his profound knowledge, unable to construct characters, fur- 
uished him with general ideas and striking incidents, which suffice to 
depict manners. 

IV. 

Moreover, it was to this that he turned his talent Nearly all hi? 
work consists of comedies, not sentimental and fanciful as Shakspeare'a, 
but imitative and satirical, written to represent and correct lollies and 
vices. He introduced a new model; he had a doctrine; his masters 
were Terence and Plautus. He observes the unity of time and place 
almost exactly. He ridicules the authors who, in the same play, 

* Make a child now-swaddled, to proceed 
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed. 
Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swordSi 
And help of some few foot and half-foot words, 
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars. . , , 
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see 
One such to-day, as other plays should he ; 
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, 
Kor creaking throne comes down the boys to please I 
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard 
The gentlewomen. . . . 

But deeds, and language, such as men do use. . , , 
You, that have so gi-ac'd monsters, may like men.'* 

Men, as we see them in the streets, with their whims and humours — 

* When some one peculiar quality 
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw 
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers 
In their confluxions, all to run one way, 
This may be truly said to be a humour. ' * 

It is these humours which he exposes to the light, not v/ith the artist 
curiosity, but with the moralist's hate : 

* I will scourge those apes, 
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirrour. 
As large as is the stage whereon we act ; 
Where they shall see the time's deformity 
Anatomiz'd in every nerve, and sinew. 
With constant courage and contempt of fear. * , ,' 

* Tlie Fall of Sejanus, v. ' Every Man in his Humour, Prol'ogue 

• Every Man out of his Humour, Prologue. 



880 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

My strict hand 
Was made to seize on vice, and with a grip© 
Squeeze out the humour of such spongy natures, 
As lick up every idle vanity.' ^ 

Doubtless a determination so strong and decided does violence to the 
dramatic spirit. Jonson's comedies are not rarely harsh; his characters 
are too grotesque, laboriously constructed, mere automatons ; the poet 
thought less of making living beings than of scotching a vice; the 
scenes get arranged mechanically, or are confused together ; we see the 
process, we feel the satirical intention throughout; delicate and easy- 
flowing imitation is absent, as well as the graceful sprightliness which 
abounds in Shakspeare. But if Jonson comes across harsh passions, 
visibly evil and vile, he will derive from his energy and wrath the 
talent to render them odious and visible, and will produce a Volpone^ 
a sublime work, the sharpest picture of the manners of the age, in 
which is displayed the full brightness of the evil lusts, in which lewd- 
ness, cruelty, love of gold, shamelessness of vice, display a sinister yet 
splendid poetry, worthy of one of Titian's bacchanalians.^ All thii 
makes itself apparent in the first scene, when Volpone says : 

* Good morning to the day ; and next, my gold : 
Open the shrine, that I may see my saint ! ' 

This saint is his piles of gold, jewels, precious plate : 

* Hail the world's soul, and mine ! . . . thou son of Sol, 
But brighter than thy father, let me kiss, 

With adoration, thee, and every relick 
Of sacred treasure in this blessed room ! * * 

Presently after, the dwarf, the eunuch, and the hermaphrodite of 
the house sing a sort of pagan and fantastic interlude ; they chant in 
strange verses the metamorphoses of the hermaphrodite, who was first 
the soul of Pythagoras. We are at Venice, in the palace of the mag- 
nifico Volpone. These deformed creatures, the splendour of gold, this 
strange and poetical buffoonery, transport the thought immediately to 
the sensual city, queen of vices and of arts. 

The rich Volpone lives in the antique style. Childless and without 
relatives, playing the invalid, he makes ail his flatterers hope to be his 
heir, receives their gifts, 

* Letting the cherry knock against their lips, 
And draw it by their mouths, and back again. ' * 

Glad to have their gold, but still more glad to deceive them, artistic in 
guile as in avarice, and just as pleased to look at a contortion of sufier- 
ing as at tie sparkle of a ruby. 

* Every Man out of Ms Humour, Prologue. 

* Compare Volpone with Regnard's Legataire ; the end of the six fceentb 
with the beginning of the eighteenth century. 

* Yolpone, i. 1. * iWd. 



CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 2S1 

The advocate Voltore arrives, bearing a *hnge piece of plate.* 
Volpone casts himself on his bed, wraps himself in furs, heaps up 
bis pillows, and coughs as if at the point of death : 

* Volpone. I thank you, signior Voltore, 

Where is the plate ? mine eyes are bad. . . . Your loTO 
H ith taste in this, and shall not be unanswer'd . • • 
I cannot now last long. ... I feel me going,— 
Uh, uh, uh, uh r » 

He doses his eyes, as though exhausted* 

* Voltore. Am I inscrib'd his hei/ for certain ? 
Mosca ( Volpone' s Parasite). Are yon I 

I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe 
To write me i' your family. All my hopes 
Depend upon your worship. I am lost. 
Except the rising sun do shine on me. 

Volt. It shall both shine and warm thee, Mosca. M Sir, 
I am a man, that hath not done your love 
All the worst offices : here I wear your keys, 
See all your coffers and your caskets lockt. 
Keep the poor inventory of your jewe-Is, 
Your plate and moneys ; am your steward, sir, 
Husband your goods here. Volt. But am I sole heir t 

M. Without a partner, sir, coufirm'd this morning ; 
The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry 
Upon the parchment. Volt. Happy, happy, me ! 
By what good chance, sweet Mosca? M. Your desert, sir ; 
I know no second cause.'* 

And he details the abundance of the wealth in which Voltore is about 
to swim, the gold which is to pour upon him, the opulence which is to 
flow in his house as a river : 

* When will you have your inventory brought, sir? 
Or see a copy of the will ? * 

The imagination is fed with precise words, sensible details Thus, 
one after another, the would-be heirs come like beasts of prey. The 
second is an old miser, Corbaccio, deaf, worn out, almost dying, who 
nevertheless hopes to survive Volpone. To make more sure of it, he 
would fain have Mosca give his master a narcotic He has it about 
him, this excellent opiate ; he has bad it prepared under his own eyes, 
he suggests it. His joy on finding Volpone more ill than himself is 
bitterly humorous : 

* C. How does your patron 1 , , , M. His month 
Is ever gaping, and his eyelids haf.ig. 

a Good. 

M. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints^ 
And makes the colour of his flesh like lead. 

» Volpone, I 3. « Ibid. 



3g2 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK D 

C. Tisgood. 

M. His pulse beats slow, and dull. C. Good symptams stilL 

M. And from his brain. C. I conceive you, good. 

M. Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum, 
Forth the resolved corners of his eyes. 

C. Is't possible ? Yet I am better, ha f 
How does he, with the swimming of his head f 

M. 0, sir, 'tis past the scotomy ; he now 
Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort : 
You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes. 

C. Excellent, excellent, sure I shall outlast him : 
This makes me young again, a score of years,' * 

If yon would be his heir, says Mosca, the moment is favourable ; bul 
you must not let yourself be forestalled. Voltore has been here, and 
presented him with this piece of plate : 

*(7. See, Mosca, look. 

Here, I have brought a bag of bright cecchiues, 
Will quite weigh down his plate. . . . 

M. Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed. 
There, frame a will ; whereto you shall inscribe 
My master your sole heir. . . . C7. This plot 
Did I think on before. . . . 

M. And you so certain to survive him. C. L 

M. Being so lusty a man. C. 'Tis true.' * 

And the old man hobbles away, not hearing the insults and ridictle 
thrown at him, he is so deaf. 

When he is gone the merchant Corvino arrives, bringing an orient 
pearl and a superb diamond : 

* Corvino. Am I his heir ? 

Mosca, Sir, I am sworn, I may not shew the will 
Till he be dead : but here has been Corbaccio, 
Here has been Voltore, here were others too> 
I cannot number 'em, they were so many. 
All gaping here for legacies ; but I, 
Taking the vantage of his naming you, 
Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino, took 
Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I ask'd him, 
Whom he would have his heir ? Corvino Who 
Should be executor ? Corvino. And, 
To any question he was silent to, 
I still interpreted the nods, he made 
(Through weakness) for consent : and sent home th' otlien^ 
Nothing bequeath'd them, but to cry and curse. 

Cor. my dear Mosca! . . . Has he children? M. Bastards, 
gome dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars, 
Gypsies and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk. . • • 

' V^lpone, i. 4. * Ibid. 



JHAP. III.J BEN JONSON. ^33 

Speak out : 
Yon may be louder yet . . . 
Faith, I could stifle him rarely with a pillow, 
As well as any woman that should keep him. 
C Do as you will, but I'll begone.' * 

Corvino presently departs ; for the passions of the time have all the 
beauty of frankness. And Volpone, casting aside his sick man's garb 
cries; 

* My divine Mosca ! 

Thou hast to-day out-gone thyself. . . . Prepare 

Me musick, dances, banquets, all delights ; 

The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures, 

Than will Volpone. ' * 

On this invitation, Mosca draws a most voluptuous portrait of Corvino'i 
wife, Celia. Smitten -with a sudden desire, Volpone dresses himself 
as a mountebank, and goes singing under her windows with all the 
sprightliness of a quack ; for he is naturally a comedian, like a true 
Italian, of the same family as Scaramouch, as good an actor in the 
public square as in his house. Having once seen Celia, he resolvei 
to obtain her at any price : 

* Mosca, take my keys, 

Gold, plate, and jewels, all's at thy devotion ; 

Employ them how thou wilt ; nay, coin me too : 

So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca.'' 

Mosca tells Corvino that some quack's oil has cured his master, and 
that they are looking for a * young woman, lusty and full of juice,' to 
complete the cure : 

* Ha'e you no kinswoman ? 
Godso. — Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, sir. 
One o' the doctors ofFer'd there his daughter. 

C. How ? M. Yes, signior Lupo, the physician. 

C His daughter ? M. And a virgin, sir. . . , C. "Wretch ! 
Covetous wretch ! ' * 

Though unreasonably jealous, Corvino is gradually induced to offer 
his wife. He has given too much already, and would not lose his 
idvantage. He is like a half-ruined gamester, who with a shaking 
hand throws on the green cloth the remainder of his fortune. He 
brings the poor sweet woman, weeping and resisting. Excited by hia 
own hidden pain, he becomes fuiious : 

* Be damn'd. 

(Heart) I will drag thee hence, home by the hair ; 

Cry thee a strumpet through the streets ; rip up 

Thy mouth unto thine ears ; and slit thy nose ; 

Like a raw rotchet — Do not tempt me, come. 

Yield, I am loth — (Death !) I will buy some slav» 

» Volpone, i. 5. « Ibid, » Ibid, ii. 4. ^ Ibid. ii. 6. 



iJ84 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

Whom 1 will kill, and bind thee to him, alive ; 
And at my window hang you forth, devising 
Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters, 
Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis, 
And burning cor'sives, on this stubborn breast. 
Now, by the blood thou hast incens'd, I'll do't ! 

Celia. Sir, what you please, you may, I am your muiiy t 
Cor. Be not thus obstinate ; I ha' not deserved it 
Think who it is intreats you. Pr'ythee, sweet, 
(Good faith), thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires, 
What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him, 
Or touch him, but. For my sake. At my suit. 
This once No ? not ? I shall remember this. 
Will you disgrace me thus ? Do you thirst my undoing ? * * 

Mosca turns, the moment before, to Yolpone : 

•Sir, 
Signior Corvino . , . hearing of the consultation had 
So lately, for your health, is come to offer, 
Or rather, sir, to prostitute. — U. Thanks, sweet Mosca. 

M. Freely, unask'd, or unintreated. G. Well. 

M. As the true fervent instance of his love. 
His own most fair and proper wife : the beauty 
Only of price in Venice. C. 'Ti3 well urg'd.' * 

Where can we see such blows launched and driven hard, full in the 
face, by the violent hand of satire ? Celia is alone with Volpone, who, 
throwing off his feigned sickness, comes upon her, * as fresh, as hot, aa 
high, and in as jovial plight,' as on the gala-days of the Republic, 
when he acted the part of the lovely Antinous. In his transport he 
sings a love song ; his voluptuousness culminates in poetry ; for poetry 
was then in Italy the blossom of vice. He spreads before her pearls, 
diamonds, carbuncles. He is in raptures at the sight of the treasurea, 
which he causes to roll and sparkle before her eyes : 

♦ Take these, 
And wear, and lose *em : yet remains an earring 
To purchase them again, and this whole state. 
A gem but worth a private patrimony, 
Is nothing : we will eat such at a meal. 
The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, 
The brains of peacocks, and of estrichea 
Shall be our food. . . . 

Conscience ? 'Tis the beggar's virtue. . • » 
Thy baths shall be the juice of July flowers. 
Spirit of roses, and of violets. 
The milk of unicorns, and panthers* breath 

^ Volpone, iii. 7. We pray the reader to pardon us for Ben Jonson's broad, 
ness. If I omit it, I cannot depict the sixteenth century. Grant the same ia 
dulgence to the historian as to the anatomist. 

' Volpone, iii. 7. 



I 



CEAP. II1.J - BEN JONSON. 

Oatlier*d in bags, and mixt with Cretan winet. 
Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber ; 
Which we will take, until my roof whirl round 
With the vertigo : and my dwarf shall dance, 
My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antick. 
Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales, 
Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove, 
Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine ; 
So, of the rest, till we have quite run through, 
And wearied all the fables of the gods. ' ^ 

We recognise Venice in this splendour of debauchery — Venice, the 
throne of Aretinus, the country of Tintoret and Giorgione. Volpone 
seizes Celia: * Yield, or I'll force thee I' But suddenly Bonario, dis- 
inherited son of Corbaccio, whom Mosca had concealed there with 
another design, enters violently, delivers her, w^ounds Mosca, and 
accuses Volpone before the tribunal, of imposture and rape. 

The three rascals who aim at being his heirs, work together to savp 
Volpone. Corbaccio disavows his son, and accuses him of parricide. 
Corvino declares his wife an adulteress, the shameless mistress ol 
Bonario. Never on the stage was seen such energy of lying, such 
open villany. The husband, who knows his wife to be innocent, ta 
the most eager : 

* This woman (please your fatherhoods) is a whore, 
Of most hot exercise, more than a partrich, 
Upon record. 1st Adv. No more. C. Neighs like a jennet 

Notary. Preserv-^e the honour of the court. C. I shaJ', 
And modesty of your most reverend ears. 
And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes 
Have seen her glew'd unto that piece of cedar. 
That fine well-timber'd gallant ; and that here 
The letters may be read, thorow the horn. 
That make the story perfect. . . . 

3c? Adv. His grief hath made him frantic. {Celia swoofts.) 

C. Rare ! Prettily feign'd ! again I '* 

Tliey ha ve Volpone brought in, like a dying man ; manufacture false 
* testimony,' to which Voltore gives weight with his advocate's tongue, 
with words worth a sequin apiece. They put Celia and Bonario mto 
prison, and Volpone is saved. This public imposture is for him only 
afli'Jther comedy, a pleasant pastime, and a masterpiece. 

* Mosca. To gull the court. Volpone. And quite divert the torrent 
Upon the innocent. . . . 
M. You are not taken with it enough, methinka. 
K. O, more than if I had enjoy 'd the wench ? '' 

To conclude, he writes a will in Mosca's favour, has his death reported^ 
hides behind a curtain, and enjoys the looks of the would-be heirs. 



Volpone, iii. 7. « Ibid. iv. 5. a Ibid. v. 2- 



286 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK H 

Tliey had just saved him, which makes the fun all the better ; the 
wickedness will be all the greater and more exquisite. * Torture *em 
rarely,' Volpone says to Llosca. The latter spreads the will on the 
table, and reads the inventory aloud. ' Turkey carpets nine. Two 
cabinets, one of ebony, the other, mother-of-pearl. A perfum'd box, 
made of an onyx.' The heirs are stupefied with disappointment, and 
Mosca drives them off with insults. He says to Corvino : 

• "Why would you stay here ? with what thought, what promise f 
Hear you ? do you not know, I know you an ass ? 

And that you would most fain have been a wittol, 
If fortune would have let you ? That you are 
A declar'd cuckold, on good terms ? This pearl, 
You'll say, was yours ? Right : this diamond ? 
I'll not deny't but thank you. Much here else f 
It may be so. Why, think that these good works 
May help to hide your had. . , . 

Corv. I am cozen'd, cheated, by a parasite slave ; 
Harlot, th' hast gull'd me. M. Yes, sir. Stop your mouth* 
Or I shall draw the only tooth is left. 
Are not you he, that filthy covetous wretch, 
"With the three legs, that here, in hope of prey, 
Have any time this three years snufft about, 
With your most grov'ling nose, and would have hir'd 
Me to the pois'ning of my patron, sir ? 
Are not you he that have to-day in comt 
Profess'd the disinheriting of your son ? 
Perjur'd yourself? Go home, and die, and stink.'* 

Volpone goes out disguised, comes to each of them in turn, and suc- 
ceeds in w^ringing their hearts. But Mosca, who has the will, acts with 
a high hand, and demands of "Volpone half his fortune. The dispute 
between the two rascals discovers their impostures, and the master, 
the servant, with the three would-be heirs, are sent to the galleys, to 
prison, to the pillory — as Corvino says, to 

* Have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish, 
Bruis'd fruit, and rotten eggs. — 'Tis welL I'm glad, 
I shall not see my shame yet. ' • 

No mor? vengeful comedy has been written, none more persistently 
athjrst to make vice suffer, to unmask, triumph over, and punish it. 

Where can be the gaiety of such a theatre ? In caricature and 
farce. There is a rude gaiety, a sort of physical, external laughter 
which suits this combative, drinking, blustering mood. It is thus 
that this mood relaxes from a war- waging and murderous satire ; the 
pastime is appropriate to the manners of the time, excellent to attract 
men who look upon hanging as a good joke, and laugh to see the 
Puiitans' ears cut. Put yourself for an instant in their place, and you 

* Volpone^ V. 3. » Ibid. v. 12 



CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 28^ 

will think like them, that The Silent Woman is a masterpiece. Morose 
is an old monomaniac, who has a horror of noise, but loves to speak. 
He inhabits a street so narrow that a carriage cannot enter it. He 
dr v^es off with his stick the bear-leaders and sword-players, who venture 
to pass under his windows. He has sent away his servant whose shoes 
croaked ; and Mute, the new one, wears slippers * soal'd with wool,* and 
only speaks in a whisper through a tube. Morose ends by forbidding 
the whisper, and making him reply by signs. For the rest, he is rich 
he is an uncle, and ill-treats his nephew Sir Dauphine Eugenie, a man 
of wit, with a lack of money. You see beforehand all the tortures 
which poor Morose is to suffer. Sir Dauphine finds him a supposed 
silent woman, the beautiful Epicoene. Morose, enchanted by her brief 
replies and her voice which he can hardly hear, marries her, to play 
his nephew a trick. It is his nephew who has played him a trick. As 
soon as she is married, Epicoene speaks, scolds, argues as loud and as 
long as a dozen women : 

* Why, did you think you had married a statue ? or a motion only ? one of the 
French puppets, with the eyes turn'd with a wire ? or some innocent out of the 
hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a playse mouth, and look upon 
you ? ' * 

She orders the valets to speak louder ; she opens the doors wide to 
her friends. They arrive in troops, offering their noisy congratulations 
to Morose. Five or six women's tongues overwhelm him all at once 
with compliments, questions, advice, remonstrances. A friend of Sir 
Dauphine comes with a band of music, who play all together, suddenly, 
with their whole force. * 0, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot, upon me I 
This day I shall be their anvil to work on, they will grate me asunder. 
'Tis worse than the noise of a saw.' * A procession of servants is seen 
coming, with dishes in their hands ; it is the bustle of the tavern which 
Sir Dauphine is bringing to his uncle. The guests clash the glasses, cry 
out, drink healths ; they have with them a drum and trumpets vhich 
make great noise. Morose flees to the top of the house, puts *a whole 
nest of night-caps ' on his head, and stuffs up his ears. Captain Otter 
cries, 'Sound, Tritons o' the Thames ! Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libera. 
* Villains, murderers, sons of the earth and traitors,' cries Morose from 
above, ' what do you there ? ' The racket increases. Then the captain, 
somewhat 'jovial,' maligns his wife, who falls upon him and gives him 
a good beating. Blows, cries, music, laughter, resound like thunder. 
It is the poetry of uproar. Here is a subject to shake rude nerves, 
and raise with inextinguishable laughter the mighty chests of the com- 
panions of Drake and Essex. ' Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors I . . . They 
have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder, with their brazen 
throats!' Morose casts himself on the people with his long sword, 
breaks the instiuments, chases the musicians, disperses the guests amidst 



Epicene, iii. 4. « Ibid. iii. t. 



288 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

an inexpressible "uproar, gnashing his teeth, looking clreadfully. After- 
wards they pronounce him mad, and discuss his madness before him.^ 
* The disease in Greek is called ^ai/Za, in Latin insam'a, fnror, vel ecstasii 
melancholica^ that is, egressio. when a man ex melancholico evadit fanat.icus, 
, . . But he may be but phreneticus yet, mistress ; and phrenetis is only 
delirium^ Dr so.' They talk of the books which he must read aloud to 
cure him. They add, by way of consolation, that his wife talks in her 
sleep, 'and snores like a porcpisce ' ' 0, redeem me, fate; redeem m<^ 
fate!' cries the poor man. 2 'For how many causes may a man be 
divorc'd. nephew ? ' Sir Dauphine chooses two knaves, and disguises 
them, one as a priest, the other as a lawyer, who launch at his head 
Latin terms of civil and canon law, explain to IVfiorose the twelve cases 
of nullity, jingle in his ears one after another the most barbaroua 
words in their obscure vocabuhiry, wrangle, and make between them as 
much noise as a couple of bells in a bell-tower. On their advice he 
declares himself impotent. The wedding-guests propose to toss him in 
a blanket; others demand an immediate inquisition. Fall after fall, 
shame after shame ; nothing serves him ; his wife declares that sh« 
consents to 'take him with all his faults.' The lawyer proposes another 
legal method ; Morose shall obtain a divorce by proving that his wife 
is faithless. Two boasting knights, who are present, declare that they 
have been her lovers. Morose, m raptures, casts himself at their knees, 
and embraces them. Epicoene Aveeps, and Morose seems to be delivered. 
Suddenly the lawyer decides that the plan is of no avail, the infidelity 
having been committed before the marriage. ' O, this is worst of all 
worst worsts that hell could have devis'd ! marry a whore I and so 
much noise ! ' There is Morose then, declared impotent and a deceived 
husband, at his own request, in the eyes of the world, and moreover, 
married for ever. Sir Dauphine comes in like a clever rascal, and as a 
succouring deity. * Allow me but five hundred during life, uncle,' and 
I free you. Morose signs the deed of gift with alacrity; and his 
nephew shows him that Epicoene is a boy in disguise.® Add to this 
enchanting farce the funny parts of the two accomplished and gallarit 
knights, who, after having boasted of their bravery, receive gratefully, 
and before the ladies, flips and kicks.* Never was coarse phyfical 
laughter more adroitly produced. In this broad coarse gaiety, this 
excess of noisy transport, you recognise the stout roysterer, the stalwait 
drinker who swallowed down torrents of Canary, and made the glasi 
windows of the Mermaid shake with his bursts of humour. 

V. 
Jonscn did not go beyond this; he was not a philosopher like Moliere, 
able to grasp and dramatise the crises of human life, education, marriage, 

* See M. de Pourceaugnac in Moliere. 

* Epic.cene, iv. 4. ' IMd. v. 5. 

* Polichinelle in Le Malade imaginaire ; Geronte in Les Fburberies de Soapin 



I 



<:HAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 289 

sickness, the chief characters of his country and century, the coTirtier. 
the tradesman, the hypocrite, the man of the world. ^ 'He remained on 
a lower level, in the comedy of plot,^ the painting of the grotesque,^ the 
representation of too transient subjects of ridicule,* too general vices.* 
If at times, as in the Alchemist^ he has succeeded by the perfection o{ 
plot and the vigour of satire, he has miscarried more frequently by the 
pcnderousness of his work and the lack of comic lightness. The critic 
ia him mars the artist ; his literary calculations strip him of sponta- 
neous invention ; he is too much of a writer and moralist, not enough of 
a mimic and an actor. But he is loftier from another side, for he is a 
poet ; almost all writers, prose-authors, preachers even, were so at the 
time we speak of. Fancy abounded, as well as the perception of colours 
and forms, the need and wont of enjoying through the imagination and 
the eyes. Many of Jonson's pieces, the Staple of News, Cynthia's 
Revels^ are fanciful and allegorical comedies, like those of Aristophanes. 
He there dallies with the real, and beyond the real, with characters who 
are but theatrical masks, abstractions personified, buffooneries, decora- 
tions, dances, music, pretty laughing whims of a picturesque and senti- 
mental imagination. Thus, in Cynthids Revels, three children come on 
* pleading possession of the cloke' of black velvet, which an actor 
usually wore when he spoke the prologue. They draw lots for it ; one 
of the losers, in revenge, tells the audience beforehand the incidents 
of the piece. The others interrupt him at every sentence, put their 
hands on his mouth, and taking the cloak one after the other, begin 
the criticism of the spectators and authors. This child's play, these 
gestures and voices, this little amusing dispute, divert the public from 
their serious thoughts, and prepare them for the oddities which they 
are to look upon. 

We are in Greece, in the valley of Gargaphie, where Diana ' has 
proclaimed ' a solemn revels.' Mercury and Cupid have come down, 
and begin by quarrelling ; the latter says : 

* My light feather-heel'd conz, what are you ? any more than my uncle Jove's 
paTidar ? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a light message 
to a loose wench with some rouiid volulDility ? . . . One that sweeps the gods' 
dunking- Toom every morning, and sets the cushions in order again, which they 
threw on« at another's head over uigh^ ? ' ' 

These are the gods of good humour. Echo, awoke by Mercury, 
weeps for the beauteous boy Narcissus : 



* UEcole des Femmes, Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Le Bourgeois-gentUhomme, 
Le Malude imaginaire, Georges Dandin. 

* In the style of the Fourberiea de Scapin. 

* In the style of the Fdcheux. * In the style of the Prdcieuset, 

* In the style of the plays of Destouches. 

* By Diana, Queen Elizabeth is meant. ^ CyntUa's Revels, L 1. 

T 



890 THE RENAISSANCE. [1500K 11 

'That tropliy of self-love, and spoil of nature, 
"Who (now transformed into this drooping flower) 
Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream. . . • 
"Witness thy youth's dear sweets, here spent untasted, 
Like a fair taper, with his own flame wasted I . . , 
And with thy water let this curse remain, 
(As an inseparate plague,) that who but tastes 
A drop thereof, may, with the instant touch, 
Grow dotingly enamour'd on themselves. ' ^ 

Tlie courtiers and ladies drink thereof, and behold, a sort of review c( 
the follies of the time, arranged, as in Aristophanes, in an improbable 
farce, a brilliant show. A sill}' spendthrift, Asotus, wishes to become 
a man of the court, and of fashionable manners; he takes for his 
master Amorphus, a learned traveller, expert in gallantry, who, to 
believe himself, is 

* An essence so sublimated and refined by travel . . . able ... to speak the mere 
extraction of language ; one that . . . was your first that ever enrich'd his country 
with the true laws of the duello ; whose optiques have drunk the spirit of beauty, in 
some eight-score and eighteen princes' courts, where I have resided, and been there 
fortunate in the amours of three hundred forty and five ladies (all nobly if not 
princely descended) ... in all so happy, as even admiration herseK doth seem 
to fasten her kisses upon me.' ' 

Asotus learns at this good school the language of the court, fortifies 
himself like other people with quibbles, learned oaths, and metaphors ; 
he fires off in succession supersubtle tirades, and duly imitates the 
grimaces and tortuous style of his masters. Then, when he has drunk 
the water of the fountain, becoming suddenly pert and rash, he pro- 
poses to all comers a tournament of * court compliment.' This odd 
tournament is held before the ladies ; it comprises four jousts, and at 
each the trumpets sound. The combatants perform in succession * the 
bare accost ; the better regard ; the solemn address ; and the perfect 
close.'^ In this grave buffoonery the courtiers are beaten. The severe 
Crites, the moralist of the play, copies their language, and pierces them 
with their own weapons. ALlready, with grand declamation, he had 
rebuked them thus: 

* vanity, 

How are thy painted beauties doated on, 

By light, and empty ideots ! how pursu'd 

With open and extended appetite ! 

How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath, 

Bais'd on their toes, to catch thy airy forms. 

Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards, 

That buy the merry madness of one hour, 

With the long irksomeness of following time ! ' * 

To complete the overthrow of the vices, appear two symbolical masqueg 

^Cunthia's Bevd.% i. 3. « Ibid. i. 3. ^ jijid [y. 5. 4 2bicl I -j. 



(TH^. III.J BEN JONSON. 291 

representing the contrary virtues. They pass j^ravely before the spec- 
tators, in splendid array, and the noble verses exchanged by the 
goddess and her companions raise the mind to the lofty regions of 
serene morality, whither the poet desires to carry us : 

* Queen, and huntress, chaste and fair, 
Now the sun is laid to sleep, 
Seated m thy silver chair, 
State in wonted manner keep. . • , 
Lay thy bow of pearl apart, 
And thy crystal shining quiver ; 
Give unto the flying hart 
Space to breathe, how short soever.' * 

In the end, bidding the dancers to unmask, Cynthia shows that the vices 
have disguised themselves as virtues. She condemns them to make fit 
reparation, and to bathe themselves in Helicon. Two by two they go 
off singing a palinode, whilst the chorus sings the supplication * Good 
Mercury defend us.' ^ Is it an opera or a comedy ? It is a lyrical comedy; 
and if we do not discover in it the air}' lightness of Aristophanes, at 
least we encounter, as in the Birds and the Frogs, the contrasts and 
medleys of poetic invention, which, through caricature and ode, the 
real and the impossible, the present and the past, comprehending the 
four quarters of the globe, simultaneously unites all kinds of incom- 
patibilities, and culls all flowers. 

Jonson went further than this, and entered the domain of pure 
poetry. He wrote delicate, voluptuous, charming love poems, worthy 
of the ancient idyllic muse.^ Above all, he was the great, the inex- 
haustible inventor of Masques, a kind of masquerades, ballets, poetic 
dances, in which all the magnificence and the imagination of the English 
Renaissance is displayed. The Greek gods, and all the ancient Olympus, 
the mythic personages whom the artists of the time delineate in their 
pictures ; the antique heroes of popular legends ; all worlds, the actual, 
the abstract, the divine, the human, the ancient, the modern, are 
searched by his hands, brought on the stage to furnish costumes, har- 
monious groups, emblems, songs, whatever can excite, intoxicate the 
artistic sense. The elite, moreover, of the kingdom is there on the 
stage. They are not buffoons figuring in borrowed clothes, clumsily 
worn, for which they are still in debt to the tailor ; they are ladies of 
the court, great lords, the queen ; in all the splendour of their rank 
and pride, with real diamonds, bent on displaying their riches, so that 
the whole splendour of the national life is concentrated in the opera 
which they enact, like jewels in a casket. What array ! what profusioi? 
of splendours I what medley of strange characters, gipsies, witches^ 
gods, heroes, pontiffs, gnomes, fantastic beings 1 How many met9» 

* Cynthia's Bevels, v. 6. * Ibid. v. "kst »ceue. 

' Cdehration of Chana — Miscellaneous Poems. 



THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 31 

morphoses, jousts, dances, marriage songs 1 What variety of scenery, 
architecture, floating isles, triumphal arches, symbolic spheres ! Gold 
glitters ; jewels flash ; purple absorbs the lustre-lights in its costly folds; 
streams of brightness play upon the silken pleats ; diamonds twisted, 
darting flame, clasp the bare bosoms of women ; necklets of pearl float, 
loop after loop, down the silver-sown brocaded dresses ; gold embroidery, 
weaving whimsical arabesques, depicts upon their dresses flowers, fnrt* 
and flgures, setting picture within picture. The steps of the throne 
bear groups of Cupids, each with a torch in his hand.^ On eithei side 
the fountains cast up plumes of pearls ; the musicians, in purple and 
scarlet, laurel-crowned, make harmony in the bowers. The trains of 
masques cross, commingling their groups ; * the one half in orange- 
tawny and silver, the other in sea-green and silver. The bodies and 
short skirts (were of) white and gold to both.* 

Such pageants Jonson wrote year after year, almost to the end of his 
life, true eye-feasts, like a procession of Titian. Even when he grew 
to be old, his imagination, like that of Titian, remained abundant and 
fresh. Though forsaken, gasping on his bed, feeling the approach of 
death, in his supreme bitterness he did not lose his tone, but wrote Thi 
Sad Shepherd^ the most graceful and pastoral of his pieces. Consider 
that this beautiful dream was dreamed in a sick-chamber, to an accom- 
paniment of bottles, physic, doctors, with a nurse at his side, amidst 
the anxieties of poverty and the choking-fits of a dropsy 1 He is 
transported to a green forest, in the days of Kobin Hood, amidst jovial 
chace and the great barking greyhounds. There are the malicious 
fairies, the Oberon and Titania, who lead men aflounder in misfoi-tunei 
There are open-souled lovers, the Daphne and Chloe, tasting with awo 
the painful sweetness of the first kiss. There lived Earine, whom the 
sti earn has ' suck'd in/ whom her lover, in his madness, will not nease 
to lament : 

* Earine, 
Who had her very being, and her name 
With the first knots or buddings of the spring, 
Born with the primrose or the violet. 
Or earliest roses blown : when Cupid smU'd, 
And Venus led the graces out to dance, 
And all the flowers and sweets in nature's lap 
Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration 
To last but while she liv'd.' . . . ^ 
*But slie, as chaste as was her name, Earine, 
Dy'd undeliower'd : and now her sweet soul hovels 
Here in the air above us.' ' 

Above the poor old paralytic artist, poetry still hovers like a haze ol 

light. Yes, he had cumbered himself with science, clogged himself with 

' Masque of Beauty. ' The Sad Shepherd, i. 5. « Ibid,, iii. 8. 



CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 293 

theories, constituted himself theatrical critic and social censor, filled his 
soul with unrelenting indignation, fostered a combative and morose dis- 
position ; but heaven's dreams never deserted him. He is the brother 
»)£ Shakspeare. 

VI. 

So now at last we are in the presence of one, whom we perceiyed 
before us through all the vistas of the Renaissance, like some vast oak 
fco whish all the forest ways converge. I will treat of Shakspeaie by 
himself. In order to take him in completely, we must have a wide and 
open space. And yet how shall we comprehend him ? how lay bare 
his inner constitution ? Lofty words, eulogies, all is vain by his side ; 
be needs no praise, but comprehension merely ; and he can only be 
comprehended by the aid of pcience. As the complicated revolutions 
of the heavenly bodies become intelligible only by use of a superior 
calculus, as the delicate transformations of vegetation and life need for 
their comprehension the intervention of the most difficult chemical 
processes, so the great works of art can be interpreted only by the 
most advanced psychological systems ; and we need the loftiest of all 
these to attain to Shakspeare's level — to the level of his age and his 
work, of his genius and of his art. 

After all practical experience and accumulated observations of the 
soul, we find as the result that wisdom and knowledge are in man only 
effects and fortuities. Man has no permanent and distinct force to 
secure truth to his intelligence, and common sense to his conduct. On 
the contrary, he is naturally unreasonable and deceived. The parts of his 
inner mechanism are like the wheels of clockwork, which of themselves 
go blindly, carried away by impulse and weight, and which yet some- 
times, by virtue of a certain unison, end by indicating the hour. This 
final intelligent motion is not natui al, but fortuitous ; not spontaneous, 
but forced ; not inherent, but acquired. The clock did not always go 
regularly ; it had to be regulated little by little, with much difficulty. 
Its regularity is not ensured ; it may go wrong in an instant. Its regu- 
larity is uot complete; it only approximately marks the time. The 
mechanical force of each piece is always present, ready to drag all the 
f :ist from their proper action, and to disarrange the whole agreement. 
So ideas, once in the mind, pull each blindly and separately, and their 
imperfect agreement threatens confusion every moment. Strictly 
speaking, man is idiotic, as the body is sick, by nature ; reason and 
health come to us as a momentary success, a lucky accident.^ If we 
forget this, it is because we are now regulated, dulled, deadened, and 
because our internal motion has become gradually, by friction and 

* This idea may he expanded psychologically : external perception, memory, 
are real hallucinations, etc. This is the analytical aspect ; under another asp»cl 
reason and health are the natural goals. 



294 -HE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

ten?ion, half harmonised with the motion of external things. But this 
is only a semblance ; and the dangerous primitive forces remaia untamed 
and independent under the order, which seems to restrain then. Let a 
great danger arise, a revolution break out, they will make an eruption 
and an explosion, almost as terribly as in the earlier times. For an 
idea is not a mere inner mark, employed to designate one aspect oi 
things, inert, always ready to fall into order with other similar ones, so 
as to make an exact whole. However it may be reduced and disci- 
plined, it still retains a visible tinge which shows its likeness to an 
hallucination ; a degree of individual persistence which shows its like- 
ness to a monomania ; a network of particular affinities which shows its 
likeness to the ravings of delirium. Being such, it is beyond question 
the rudiment of a nightmare, a habit, an absurdity. Let it become 
once developed in its entirety, as its tendency leads it,^ and you will 
find that it is essentially an active and complete image, a vision drawing 
along with it a train of dreams and sensations, which increases of itself, 
suddenly, by a sort of manifold and absorbing growth, and which ends 
by possessing, shaking, exhausting the whole man. After this, another, 
perhaps entirely opposite, and so on successively : there is nothing else 
in man, no free and distinct power ; he is in himself but the process ol 
these headlong impulses and swarming imaginations: civilisation has 
mutilated, attenuated, but not destroyed them ; fits, shocks, transports, 
sometimes at long intervals a sort of transient partial equilibrium : this 
is his real life, the life of a lunatic, who now and then simulates reason, 
but who is in reality * such stuff as dreams are made on ;'* and this is 
man, as Shakspeare has conceived him. No writer, not even Moliere, 
has penetrated so far beneath the semblance of common sense and logic 
in which the human machine is enclosed, in order to crush the brute 
powers which constitute its substance and its mainspring. 

How did Shakspeare succeed ? and by what extraordinary instinct 
did he divine the remote conclusions, the deepest insights of physiology 
and psychology ? He had a complete imagination ; his whole genius is 
in that single word, A small word, which seems commonplace and 
hollow. Let us examine it closer, to understand what it contains. 
VS^ien we think a thing, we, ordinary men, we only think a part of it *, 
u e see one side, some isolated mark, sometimes two or three marks 
together ; for what is beyond, our sight fails us ; the infinite network 
of its infinitely-complicated and multiplied properties escapes us ; we 
feel vaguely that there is something beyond our shallow ken, and this 
vague suspicion is the only part of our idea which at all reveals to 
us the great beyond. We are like tyro-naturalists, quiet people ot 
limited understanding, who, wishing to represent an animal, recall its 
name and ticket, with some indistinct image of its hide and figure; out 

^ See Spinoza and D. Stewart ; Couception iu its natural state is belief 
* Tlmpest; iv. 1. 



II 



CHAP. Ill ! BEN JONSON 298 

their mind rests there If it so happens that they wish to complete, 
their knowledge, they lead their memory, by regular classifications, 
over the principal characters of the beast, and skwly, discursively, 
gradually, bring at last the bare anatomy before their eyes. To this 
their idea is reduced, even when perfected ; to this also most frequently 
is o'^ir conception reduced, even when elaborated. What a distance 
thare is between this conception and the object, how imperfectly and 
meanly the one represents the other, to what extent this mutilates that ; 
how the consecutive idea, disjointed in little, regularly arranged and 
inert fragments, represents but slightly the complete, organised, living 
thing, ever in action, and ever transformed, words cannot explain. 
Picture to yourself, instead of this poor dry idea, propped up by a 
miserable mechanical linkwork of thought, the complete idea, that is, 
an inner representation, so abundant and full, that it exhausts all the 
properties and relations of the object, all its inward and outward 
aspects ; that it exhausts them instantaneously ; that it conceives of the 
animal all at once, its colour, the play of the light upon its skin, its 
form, the quivering of its outstretched limbs, the flash of its eyes, and 
at the same time its passion of the moment, its excitement, its dash ; 
and beyond this its instincts, their composition, their causes, their 
history ; so that the hundred thousand characteristics which make up 
its condition and its nature find their analogues in the imagination 
which concentrates and reflects them : there you have the artist's con- 
ception, the poet's — Shakspeare's ; so superior to that of the logician, 
of the mere savant or man of the world, the only one capable of pene- 
trating to the basis of things, of extricating the inner from beneath the 
outer man, of feeling through sympathy, and imitating without effort, 
the disorderly roundabout of human imaginations and impressions, of 
reproducing life with its infinite fluctuations, its apparent contradictions, 
its concealed logic ; in short, to create as nature creates. This is what 
is done by the other artists of this age ; they have the same kind o^ 
mind, and the same idea of life : you will find in Shakspeaie on^y the 
same faculties, with a still stronger impulse ; the same idea, with a still 
more prominent relief 



296 THE RENAISSANCE. I BOOK U 



CHAPTER IV. 

Shakspeare. 

I. Life and character of ShaTcspeare — Family — ^Youth — Marriage — He become 
an actor — Adonis — Sonnets — Loves — Humour — Conversation — Melan- 
choly — The constitution of the productive and sympathetic character- 
Prudence — Fortune — Retirement. 
II. Style — Images — Excesses — Incongraities — Copiousness — DiflFerence between 
the creative and analytic conception. 

III. Manners— Familiar intercourse — Violent bearing — Harsh language — Con- 

versation and action — Agreement of manners and style. 

IV. The dramatis personcB — All of the same family— Brutes and idiots — Caliban, 

Ajax, Cloten, Polonius, the Nurse — How the mechanical imagination can 
precede or survive reason. 
V. Men of wit — Difference between the wit of reasoners and of artists — Mer- 
cutio, Beatrice, Rosalind, Benedict, the clowns — Falstaff. 
VI. Women — Desdemona, Virginia, Juliet, Miranda, Imogen, Cordelia, Ophelia, 
Volumnia — How Shakspeare represents love — Why he bases virtue on 
instinct or passion. 
VII. Villains — lago, Richard ill. — How excessive lusts and the lack of conscience 

are the natural province of the impassioned imagination. 
VIII. Principal characters — Excess and disease of the imagination — Lear, Othello, 
Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Hamlet — Comparison of Shakspeare'a 
psychology with that of the French tragic authors. 
IX. Fancy — Agreement of imagination with observation in Shakspeare — In- 
teresting nature of sentimental and romantic comedy — As you Lih. V— 
Idea of existence — Midsummer NigMs Dream — Idea of love— Harmony 
of all parts of the work — Harmony between the aitist and his work. 

I AM about to describe an extraordinary species of mind, perpUx* 
ing to all the French modes of analysis and reasoning, all-power 
f ul, excessive, equally master of the sublime and the base ; the mo&6 
creative that ever engaged in the exact copy of the details of actual 
existence, in the dazzling caprice of fancy, in the profound complica- 
tions of superhuman passions; a nature poetical, immoral, inspired, 
superior to reason by the sudden revelations of his seer's-madness ; so 
extreme in joy and pain, so abrupt of gait, so stormy and impetuous 
in his transports, that this great age alone could have cradled such a 
child. 



crHAP. IV.l SHAKSPEARE. 291 



Of Shak-peare all came from -within — ^T mean from his soul and his 
genius ; external circumstances contributed but slightly to his develop- 
ment.^ He was intimately bound up with his age ; that is, he knew 
by experience the manners of country, court, and town ; he had visited 
the heights, depths, the middle regions of the condition of mankind; 
nothing more. For the rest, his life was commonplace; the irregu- 
larities, troubles, passions, successes through which he passed, were, on 
the whole, such as we meet with everywhere else.^ His father, a glover 
and wool stapler, in very easy circumstances, having married a sort of 
country heiress, had become high-bailiff and chief alderman in his little 
tcwn ; but when Shakspeare reached the age of fourteen he was on 
the verge of ruin, mortgaging his wife's property, obliged to resign his 
municipal offices, and to remove his son from school to assist him in his 
business. The young fellow applied himself to it as well as he could, 
not without some scrapes and escapades : if we are to believe tradition, 
he was one of the thirsty souls of the place, with a mind to support the 
reputation of his little town in its drinking powers. Once, they say^ 
having been beaten at Bideford in one of these ale-bouts, he returned 
staggering from the fight, or rather could not return, and passed the 
night with his comrades under an apple-tree by the roadside. Without 
doubt he had already begun to write verses, to rove about like a genuine 
poet, taking part in the noisy rustic feasts, the gay. pastoral plays, the 
rich and bold outbreak of pagan and poetical life, as it was then to be 
found in an English village. At all events, he was not a pattern of 
propriety, and his passions were as precocious as they were reckless. 
While not yet nineteen years old, he married the daughter of a sub- 
stantial yeoman, about eight years older than himself — and not too soon, 
as she was about to become a mother.^ Other of his outbreaks were 
DC more fortunate. It seems that he was fond of poaching, after the 
manner of the time, being ' much given to all unluckinesse in stealing 
venison and rabbits,' says the Rev. Richard Davies ;* ' particularly from 

Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and 

at last made him fly the country ; . . . but his reveng was so great, that 
he is his Justice Clodpate.' Moreover, about this time Shakspeare's 
father was in prison, his affairs were desperate, and he himself had 
thrae children, following one close upon the other ; he must live, and 
life was hardly possible for him in his native town. He went to 

* Halliwell's Life of SliaTcspeare. 

* Born 1564, died 1616. He adapted plays as early as 1591. The first play 
entirely from his pen appeared in 1593. — Payne Collier. 

^ Mr. Halliwell aud other commentators try to prove that at this time the pre- 
liminary trothplight was regarded as the real marriage ; that this trothphght had 
taken place, and that there was therefore no irregularity in Shakspeare's conduct. 
HaUiwell, 123. 



298 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

London, and took to the stage : took the lowest parts, was a • servant 
in the theatre, that is, an apprentice, or perhaps a supernumerary. 
They even said that he had begun still lower, and that to earn his 
bread he had held gentlemen's horses at the door of the theatre.* At 
all events he tasted misery, and felt, not in imagination but in fact, the 
sharp thorn of care, humiliation, disgust, forced labour, public discredit^ 
the power of *he people. He was a comedian, one of * His Majesty's 
pojr players,'^ — a sad trade, degraded in all ages by the contrasts and 
the falsehoods inseparable from it ; still more degraded then by the 
brutalities of the crowd, who not seldom would stone the actors, and 
by the severities of the magistrates, who would sometimes condemn 
them to lose their ears. He felt it, and spoke of it with bitterness : 

* Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there 
And made myself a motley to the view, 

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.'* 

And again : 

* When in disgrace with fortune * and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state, 

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless criea^ 

And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed. . . . 
With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
Yet in those thoughts myself almost despising.'*- 

We shall find further on the traces of this long-enduring disgust, in 
his melancholy characters, as where he says : 

* For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely. 
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 

The insolence of office and the spurns 
That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin ? ' • 

But the worst of this degraded position is, that it eats into the s<jiul. 
In the company of buffoons we become buffoons : it is vain to wish tc 
keep clean, if you live ir a dirty place , it cannot be. No matter if a 
man braces himself ; necessity drives and soils him. The machineiy of 
the decorations, the tawdriness and medley of the costumes, the smell of 

* All these anecdotes are traditions, and consequently more or less ioubtfttl j 
but the other facts are authentic. 

' Terms of an extant document. He is named along with Burbadge and Greene. 
3 Sonnet 110. 

* See Sonnets 91 and 111 ; also Hamlet, iii. 2. Many of Hamlet's words would 
come better from the mouth of an actor than a prince. See also the 66th Sonneti 
•Tired with all these.' 

* Sonnet 2©. • Bmnkt, iii 1. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 299 

the tallow and the candles, in contrast with the parade pf refinement and 
loftiness, all the cheats and sordidness of the representation, the bitter 
alternative of hissing or applause, the keeping of the highest and lowest 
company, the habit of sporting with human passions, easily unhinge 
the soul, drive it down the slope of excess, tempt it to loose manners, 
gieen-room adventures, the loves of strolling actresses. Shakspeare 
tscaped them no more than Moliere, and grieved for it, like MoUei'e 

* 0, for my sake do you with Fortune chide. 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manners breeds.' * 

They used to relate in London, how his comrade Burbadge, who 
played Richard in., having a rendezvous with the wife of a citizen, 
Shakspeare went before, was well received, and was pleasantly occupied 
when Burbadge arrived, to whom he sent the message, that William 
the Conqueror came before Richard iii.^ You may take this as an 
example of the tricks and somewhat coarse intrigues which are planned, 
and follow in quick succession, on this stage. Outside the theatre he 
lived with fashionable young nobles, Pembroke, Montgomery, South- 
ampton,* and others, whose hot and licentious youth fed his imagi- 
nation and senses by the example of Italian pleasures and elegances. 
Add to this the rapture and transport of poetical nature, and this afflux, 
this boiling over of all the powers and desires which takes place in 
brains of this kind, when the world for the first time opens before them, 
and you will understand the Verncs and Adonis^ * the first heir of his 
invention.* In fact, it is a first cry, a cry in which the whole man is 
displayed. Never was seen a heart so quivering to the touch of beauty, 
of beauty of every kind, so ravished with the freshness and splendour 
of things so eager and so excited in adoration and enjoyment, so vio- 
lently and entirely carried to the very limit of voluptuousness. His 
Venus is unique ; no painting of Titian's has a more brilliant and de- 
licious colouring ;* no strumpet-goddess of Tintoret or Giorgione is more 
•oft and beautiful : 

* With blindfold fury she begins to forage, 
Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boiL . . • 
And glutton-like she feeds, yet never fiUeth ; 
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey. 
Paying what ransom the insulter willeth ; 
"Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high, 
That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.' * 



» Sonnet 111. 

■ Anecdote written in 1602 on the authority of Tooley the actor. 

* The Earl of Southampton was nineteen years old when Shakspeare dedicated 
his A donis to him. 

* See Titian's picture, Loves of the Gods, at Blenheim, 

* Vemis and Adonis^ v. 548-553. 



300 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

*Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast. 
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone, 
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, 
Till either gorge be stuffd or prey be gone ; 
Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, hie chin, 
And where she ends she doth anew begin.* * 

All is taken by storm, the senses first, the eyes daxzlei by carnal 
beauty, but the heart also from whence the poetry overflows ; the 
ailness of yontli inundates even inanira-itc things ; the landscape looks 
charming amidst the rays of the rising sun, the air, saturated with 
brightness, makes a gala-day : 

* Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest, 
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, 
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breas 
The sun ariseth in his majesty ; 
Who doth the world so gloriously behold 
That cedar-tops and hUls seem burnish'd gold.'* 

An admirable debauch of imagination and rapture, yet disquieting ; foi 
such a mood wUl carry one a long way.^ No fair and frail dame in 
London was without Adonis on her table.* Perhaps he perceived that 
he had transcended the bounds, for the tone of his next poem, the 
Eape ofLucrece, is quite different; but as he had already a spirit wide 
enough to embrace at the same time, as he did afterwards in his dramas, 
the two extremes of things, he continued none the less to follow his 
bent. The * sweet abandonment of love' was the great occupation of his 
life ; he was tender-hearted, and he was a poet : nothing more is required 
to be smitten, deceived, to suffer, to traverse without pause the circle 
of illusions and pains, which whirls and whirls round, and never ends. 

He had many loves of this kind, amongst others one for a sort of 
Marion Delorme, a miserable blind despotic passion, of which he felt 
the oppression and the shame, but from which nevertheless he could 
not and would not deliver himself. Nothing can be sadder than his 
confessions, or mark better the madness of love, and the sentiment of 
human weakness : 

* When my love swears that she is made of truth, 
I do believe her, though I know she lies. ' * 

So said Alceste of Celimene ; * but what a soiled Celim^ne is the crea- 
ture before whom Shakspeare kneels, with as much of scorn as of desire ! 

* Those lips of thine, 
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments 

1 Venus and Adonis, v. 55-60. * Ibid. v. 853-858, 

* Compare the first pieces of Alfred de Musset, Contes d'ltalie et d'Espagne. 

* Crawley, quoted by Ph. Chasles, Etudes sur Shakspeare. ^ Sonnet 138. 

* Two characters in Molifere's Misanthrope. The scene referred to is Act V, 
BO. 7.— Te. 



1 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 301 

And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine, 

EoLli'd others' beds' revenues of their rents. 
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those 
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee.** 

This is plain-speaking and deep shamelessness of soul, sucH as we find 
only in the stews ; and these are the intoxications, the outbreaks, the 
delirium into which the most refined artists fall, when they resign their 
own noble hand to these soft, voluptuous, and clinging ones. They are 
higher than princes, and they descend to the lowest depths of passion. 
Good and evil then lose their names ; all things are inverted : 

* How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame 
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose, 
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name ! 

O, in what sweets dost thoii thy sins enclose I 
That tongue that tells the story of thy days, 
Making lascivious comments on thy sport, 
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise ; 
Naming thy name blesses an ill report. ' * 

What are proof, reason, the will, honour itself, when the passion is 
so absorbing ? What, think you, can be said further to a man who 
answers, ' I know all that you are going to say, and what does it all 
amount to ? ' Great loves are inundations, which drown all repugnance 
and all delicacy of soul, all preconceived opinions and all accepted 
principles. Thenceforth the heart is found dead to all ordinary plea- 
sures ; it can only feel and breathe on one side. Shakspeare envies 
the keys of the instrument over which his mistress' fingers run. If he 
looks at flowers, it is she whom he pictures beyond them ; and the 
mad splendours of dazzling poetry flood him repeatedly, as soon as he 
thinks of those glowing black eyes : 

* From you have I been absent in the spring, 
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim, 
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, 

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.*' 

He saw none of it : 

* Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, 

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose. ' * 

All this sweetness o/ spring was but her perfume and her shade ; 

* The forward violet thus I did chide : 
** Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smelly 
If not from my love's breath ? The purple pride, 
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells 
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. " 

' Sonnet 142. « Sonnet >5. 

» Sonnet 98. * Jbid. 



302 THE RENAISSANCE. (BOOH [I 

The lily I condemned for thy hand. 
And buds of marjoram had stoFn thy hair : 
The roses fairfully on thorns did stand, 
One blushing shame, another white despair : 
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both 
And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath ; . . . 
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see 
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.' * 

Passionate trifles, delicious affectations, worthy of Heine and the coii» 
temporaries of Dante, which tell us of long rapturous dreams centred ,. 
around one object. Under a domination so imperious and sustained, 11 
what sentiment could maintain its ground? That of family? He 
was married and had children, — a family which he went to see ' once 
a year ; ' and it was probably on his return from one of these journeys 
that he used the words above quoted. Conscience ? ' Love is too 
younp; to know what conscience is.' Jealousy and anger? 



Repulses ? 



* For, thou betraying me, I do betray 
My nobler part to my gross body's treason.' ^ 



' He is contented thy poor drudge to be, 
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. * ^ 

He is no longer young; she loves another, a handsome, young, light - 
haired fellow, his own dearest friend, whom he has presented to her, 
and whom she wishes to seduce : 

* Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 
"Which like two spirits do suggest me still : 
The better angel is a man right fair, 
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. 
To win me soon to hell, my female evil 
Terapteth my better angel from my side.'* 



selO 

hese } 



And when she has succeeded in this,* he dares not confess it to him 
but suffers all, like Moliere. What wretchedness there is in these 
trifles of every-day lifel How man's thoughts instinctively place 
by Shakspeare's side the great unhappy French poet (Moliere), also 
a philosopher by nature, but more of a professional laugher, a mocker 
of passionate old men, a bitter railer at deceived husbands, who, after 
having played one of his most approved comedies, said aloud to a 
companion, ' My dear friend, I am in despair ; my wife does not love 
me 1 ' Neither glory, nor v/ork, nor invention satisfy these vehaiient 

^ Sonjiet 99. '-^ Sonnet 141. « Ihid. 

* Sonnet 144 ; also the Passionate Pilgrim, 2. 

' This new interpretation of the Sonnets is due to the ingenious and learned 
conjectures of M. Ph. Chasles. — For a short history of these Sonnets, see Dyce'a 
Shakspeare^ i. pp. 96-103. This learned editor says : ' I contend that allusions 
Ecattered through the whole series are not to be hastily referred to the per 
aonal circumstances of Shakspeare.' — Tr. 



CHAP. IV j SHAKSPEARE. 3(j3 

souls ; love alone can fill them, because, with their senses and heart, 
it contents also their brain ; and all the powers of man, imagination 
like the rest, find in it their concentration and their employment. 
* Love is my sin,' he said, as did Musset and Heine ; and in the 
Sonnets we find traces of yet other passions, equally abandoned ; one 
in particular, seemingly for a great lady. The first half of his dramas, 
Midsummer Nights Dream^ Romeo and Juliet^ the Two Gentlemen oj 
Verona^ preserve the warm imprint more completely; and we have 
only to consider his latest women's character,^ to see with what ex- 
quisite tenderness, what full adoration, he loved them to the end. 

In this is all his genius ; his was one of those delicate souls which, 
Uke a perfect instrument of music, vibrate of themselves at the slightest 
touch. This fine sensibility was the first thing observed in him. ' My 
darling Shakspeare,' ' Sweet Swan of Avon :' these words of Ben Jonson 
only confirm what his contemporaries reiterate. He was affectionate 
and kind, * civil in demeanour, and excellent in the qualitie he pro- 
fesses;'^ if he had the transports, he had also the effusion of true 
artists ; he was loved, men were delighted in his company ; nothing is 
more sweet or engaging than this charm, this half-feminine abandon- 
ment in a man. His wit in conversation was ready, ingenious, nimble ; 
his gaiety brilliant ; his imagination easy, and so copious, that, as his 
comrades tell us, he never erased what he had written — at least when 
he wrote out a scene for the second time : it was the idea which he 
would change, not the words, by an after-glow of poetic thought, not 
with a painful tinkering of the verse. All these characteristics are 
combined in a single one ; he had a sympathetic genius ; I mean that 
naturally he knew how to forget himself and become transfused into 
all the objects which he conceived. Look around you at the great 
authors of your time, try to approach them, to become acquainted with 

' Miranda, Desdemona, Viola. The followiug are the first words of the 
Duke la Twelfth Night ;— 

* If music be the food of love, play on ; 
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, 
The appetite may sicken, and so die. 
That strain again J it had a dying fall : 
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
That breathes upon a bank of violets. 
Stealing and giving odour 1 Enough ; no more : 
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. 
O spirit of love ! how quick and fresh art thou, 
That, notwithstanding thy capacity 
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there. 
Of what validity and pitch soe'er. 
But falls into abatement and low price. 
Even in a minute ; so full of shapes is fancy 
That it alone is high-fantastical.' 
' H. Chett*e, in repudiating Greene's sarcasm, attributed to him. 



304 THE kENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

them, to see them as they think, and you will observe the full force of 
this word. By an extraordinary instinct, they put themselves at once 
in the position of existences : men, animals, flo^vers, plants, landscapes, 
whatever the objects are, living or not, they feel by intuition the forces 
and tendencies which produce the visible external ; and their soul, 
infmitely complex, becomes by its ceaseless metamorphoses, a sort of 
abstract of the universe. This is why they seem to live more than 
other men ; they have no need to be taught, they divine. I have seen 
such a man, apropos of a piece of armour, a costume, a collection of 
furniture, enter into the middle-age more deeply than three savants 
together. They reconstruct, as they build, naturally, surely, by an 
inspiration which is a winged chain of reasoning. Shakspeare had 
only an imperfect education, * small Latin and less Greek,' barely 
French and Italian,^ nothing else ; he had not travelled, he had only 
read the current literature, he had picked up a few law words in the 
court of his little town ; reckon up, if you can, all that he knew of man 
and of history. These men see more objects at a time ; they grasp 
them more closely than other men, more quickly and thoroughly ; 
their mind is full, and runs over. They do not rest in simple reason- 
ing ; at every idea their whole being, reflections, images, emotions, are 
set aquiver. See them at it ; they gesticulate, mimic their thought, 
brim over with comparisons ; even in their talk they are imaginative 
and original, with familiarity and boldness of speech, now happily, al- 
ways irregularly, according to the whims and starts of the adventurous 
improvisation. The sway, the brilliancy of their language is marvel- 
lous ; so are their fits, the wide leaps with which they couple widely- 
removed ideas, annihilating distance, passing from pathos to humour, 
from vehemence to gentleness. This extraordinary rapture is the last 
ihing to quit them. If perchance ideas fail, or if their melancholy 
is too harsh, they still speak and produce, even if it be buffooneries ; 
they become clowns, though at their own expense, and to their own 
hurt. I know one who will mutter bad puns when he thinks he is 
dying, or has u mind to kill himself; the inner wheel continues to turn, 
even upon nothing, that wheel which man must needs see ever turning, 
even though it tear him as it turns ; his clown-tricks are an outlet ; 
you will find him, this inextinguishable fellow, this ironical puppet, at 
Ophelia's tomb, at Cleopatra's death-bed, at Juliet's funeral. High or 
low, these men must always be at some extreme. They feel their 
good and their ill too deeply ; they expand the state of their soul too 
widely, by a sort of involuntary novel. After the scandals and the 
disgusts by which they debase themselves beyond measure, they rise 
and become exalted in a marvellous fashion, even trembling with pride 
and joy. * Haply,' says Shakspeare, after one of these dull moods : 

1 Dyce, SJiakspeare, i. 27 ; ' Of French and Italian, I apprehend, he knew 
but little.'— Tb. 



CHAP IV.] SHAKSPEARE. . 30a 

* Haply I think on tliee, and then my state^ 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.** 

Then all fades away, as in a grate where a strcnger flame than usual 
has left no substantial fuel behind it. 

* That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
"When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare min'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang 
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day 

As after sunset fadeth in the west, 

"Which by and by black night doth take away. 

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.'* . . J 

* Ko longer mourn for me when I am dead 
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
Give warning to the world that I am fled 

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell : 
Kay, if you read this line, remember not 
The hand that writ it ; for I love you so, 
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot . 
If thinking on me then should make you woe.' ' 

These snclden alternations of joy and sadness, divine transports and deep 
melancholies, exquisite tenderness and womanly depressions, depict the 
poet, extreme in emotions, ceaselessly troubled with grief or merriment, 
sensible of the slightest shock, more strong, more dainty in enjoyment 
and suffering than other men, capable of more intense and sweeter 
dreams, within whom is stirred an imaginary world of graceful or 
terrible beings, all impassioned like their author. 

Such as I have described him, however, he found his resting-place. 
Early, at least from an external point, he settled down to an orderly, 
sensible, citizen-like existence, engaged in business, provident of the 
future. He remained on the stage for at least seventeen years, though 
taking secondary parts;* he sets his wits at the same time to the 
touching up of plays with so much activity, that Greene called him 'an 
upstart crow beautified with our feathers; ... an absolute Johannes 
factotum^ in his owne conceyt the onely shake-scene in a countrev.' ' 
At the age of thirty-three he had amassed enough to buy at Stratford 
a house with two barns and two gardens, and he went on steadier and 
steadier in the same course. A man attains only to easy circumstancea 
by his own labour ; if he gains wealth, it is by making others labour 
for him. This is why, to the trades of actor and author, Shakspeare 
added those of manager and director of a theatre. He acquired a 
partial proprietorship in the Blackfriars and Globe theatres, fiirmed 

> Sonnet 29. 2 Sonnet 73. ' Sonnet 71. 

^ The part iu which he excelled was that of the ghost in Hamlet. 
^ Greene's A OroatsiooHli of Wit, etc. 

U 



306 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK n 

tithes, bought large pieces of land, more houses, gave a do^vry to bis 
daughter Susanna, and finally retired to his native town on his property. 
in his own house, like a good landlord, an honest citizen, who manages 
his fortune fitly, and takes his share of municipal work. He had an 
income of two or three hundred pounds, which would be equivalent to 
about eight or twelve hundred at the present time, and according to 
tradition, lived cheerfully and on good terms with his neighbours ; at 
all erents, it does not seem that he thought much about his literary 
glory, for he did not even take the trouble to collect and publish his 
works. One of his daughters married a physician, the other a wine 
merchant ; the last did not even know^ how to sign her name. He lent 
money, and cut a good figure in this little world. Strange close ; one 
which at first sight resembles more that of a shopkeeper than of a poet. 
Must we attribute it to that English instinct which places happiness in 
the life of a country gentleman and a landlord with a good rent-roll, 
well connected, surrounded by comforts, who quietly rejoices in his 
settled respectability,^ his domestic authority, and his county standing? 
Or rather, was Shakspeare, like Voltaire, a common-sense man, though 
of an imaginative brain, keeping a sound judgment under the sparkling 
of his genius, prudent from scepticism, economical through lack of 
independence, and capable, after going the round of human ideas, of 
deciding with Candide,^ that the best thing one can do is * to cultivate 
one's garden ? ' I had rather think, as his full and solid head suggests,* 
that by the mere force of his overflowing imagination he escaped, like 
Goethe, the perils of an overflowing imagination; that in depicting 
passion, he succeeded, like Goethe, in quelling passion in his own case ; 
that the lava did not break out in his conduct, because it found issue in 
his poetry ; that his theatre redeemed his life ; ,and that, having passed 
by sympathy, through every kind of folly and wretchedness that ih 
incident to human existence, he was able to settle down amidst them 
with a calm and melancholy smile, listening, for distraction, to the aerial 
music of the fancies in which he revelled* I am willing to believe, 
lastly, that in frame as in the rest, he belonged to his great generation 
and his great age; that with him, as with Rabelais, Titian, Michael 
Angelo, and Rubens, the solidity of his muscles balanced the sensibihty 
of his nerves ; that in those days the human machine, more severely 
tried and more firmly constructed, could withstand the storms of passion 
and the fire of inspiration ; that soul and body were still at equilibrium; 
that genius was then a blossom, and not, as noAV, a disease. Of all thij 
we can but conjecture : if we would see the man more closely, we mui* 
seek him in his works. 

^ * He was a respectable man.' ' A good word ; what does it mean ? '' * H« 
kept a gig.' — (From Thurtell's trial for the murder of Weare.) 

« The model of an optimist, the hero of one of Voltaire's tales. — Tu. 

3 See his portraits, and in particular his bust. 

4 Especially iu his later plays . I'empest, Twelfth Nighi. 



CilAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 307 

II. 

Let us then look for the man, and in his style. The style explains 
the work ; whilst showing the principal features of the genius, it infers 
the rest. When we have once grasped the dominant faculty, we see 
the whole artist developed like a flower. 

Shakspeare imagines with copiousness and excess ; he spreads meta- 
phors profusely over all he writes ; every instant abstract ideas are 
changed into images ; it is a series of paintings which is unfolded in 
his mind. He does not seek them, they come of themselves; they 
crowd within him, covering his arguments ; they dim with their bright- 
ness the pure light of logic. He does not labour to explain or prove ; 
picture on picture, image on image, he is for ever copying the strange 
and splendid visions which are engendered one within another, and are 
heaped up within him. Compare to our dull writers this passage, which 
T take at hazard from a tranquil dialogue : 

* The single and peculiar life is bound, 
With all the strength and ardour of the mind. 
To keep itself from noyance ; but much more 
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest 
The lives of many. The cease of majesty 
Dies not alone ; but, like a gulf, doth draw 
"What's near it with it : it is a massy wheel, 
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount. 
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things 
Are mortised and adjoin'd ; which, when it falls, 
Each small annexment, petty consequence. 
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone 
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.* * 

Here we have three successive images to express the same thought. 
It is a whole blossoming ; a bough grows from the trunk, from that an- 
other, which is multiplied into numerous fresh branches. Instead of a 
smooth road, traced by a regular line of dry and well-fixed stakes, you 
enter a wood, crowded with interwoven trees and luxuriant bushes, 
which conceal you and close your path, which delight and dazzle your 
eyes by the magnificence of their verdure and the wealth of their 
bloom. You are astonished at first, modern mind that you are, busi- 
ness man, used to the clear dissertations of classical poetry; you 
become cross ; you think the author is joking, and that through self- 
esteem and bad taste he is misleading you and himself in his garden 
thickets. By no means ; if he speaks thus, it is not from choice, but of 
necessity ; metaphor is not his whim, but the form of his thought. In 
the height of passion, he imagines still. When Hamlet, in despair^ 
remembers his father's noble form, he sees the mythological picturei 
with whicli the taste of the age filled the very streets : 

• Hamlet, iii. 3. 



308 THE RENAISSANCE.. [BOOK h 

A station like the herald Mercury 
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.'* 

This charming visioj, in the midst of a bloody invective, proves thai 
there lurks a painter underneath the poet. Involuntarily and out of 
season, he tears off the tragic mask which covered his face ; and the 
reader discovers, behind the contracted features of this terrible mask, a 
graceful and inspired smile of which he had not dreamed. 

Such an imagination must needs be vehement. Every metaphor 19 
ii convulsion. Whosoever involuntarily and naturally transforms a dry 
idea into an image, has his brain on fire : true metaphors are flaming 
apparitions, which are like a picture in a flash of lightning. Never, I 
think, in any nation of Europe, or in any age of history, has so deep a 
passion been seen. Shakspeare^s style is a compound of furious expres- 
sions. No man has submitted words to such a contortion. Mingled 
contrasts, raving exaggerations, apostrophes, exclamations, the whole 
fury of the ode, inversion of ideas, accumulation of images, the horrible 
and the divine, jumbled into the same line ; it seems to my fancy as 
though he never writes a word without shouting it. * What have I 
done?' the queen asks Hamlet. He answers: 

* Such an act 
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, 
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose 
From the fair forehead of an innocent love, 
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows 
As false as dicers' oaths : 0, such a deed 
As from the body of contraction plucks 
The very soul, and sweet religion makes 
A rhapsody of words : heaven's face doth glow ; 
Yea, this solidity and compound mass, 
"With tristful visage, as against the doom, 
Is thought-sick at the act.' ^ 

It is the style of phrensy. Yet I have not given all. The metaphors are 
all exaggerated, the ideas all verge on the absurd. All is transformed 
and disfigured by the whirlwind of passion. The contagion of the crime, 
which he denounces, has marred his whole nature. He no longer sees 
anything in the world but corruption and lying. To vilify the virtuous 
were little; he vilifies virtue herself. Inanimate things are sucked into 
the whirl of grief. The sky's red tint at sunset, the pallid shade spread 
by night over the landscape, become the blush and the pallor of shame, 
and the wretched man who speaks and weeps sees the whoh world totter 
with him in the dimness of despair. 

Hamlet, it will be said, is half-mad ; this explains his vehemence olt 
expression. The truth is that Hamlet, here, is Shakspeare. Be the 
situation terrible or peaceful, whether he is engaged on an invective ol 

' Act iii. So. 4. • Ibid. 



::hap. ivj shakspeare. 3i)9 

a conversation, the style is excessive throughout. Shakspeare never 
sees things tranquilly. All the powers of his mind are concentrated in 
the present image or idea. He is buried and absorbed in it. With 
such a genius, we are on the brink of an abyss ; the eddying water 
dashes in headlong, devouring whatever objects it meets, bringing them 
to light again, if at all, transformed and mutilated. We pause stupe- 
fied, before these convulsive metaphors, which might have been written 
by a fevered hand in a night's delirium, which gather a pageful of ideas 
and pictures in half a sentence, which scorch the eyes they would en- 
lighten. Words lose their sense ; constructions are put out of joint ; 
paradoxes of style, apparently false expressions, which a man might 
occasionally venture upon with diffidence in the transport of his rapture, 
become the ordinary language; he dazzles, he repels, he terrifies, he 
disgusts, he oppresses; his verses are a piercing and sublime song, 
pitched in too high a key, above the reach of our organs, which offends 
our ears, of which our mind alone can divine the justice and beauty. 

Yet this is little; for that singular force of concentration is re- 
doubled by the suddenness of the dash which it displays. In Shak- 
speare there is no preparation, no adaptation, no development, no care 
to make himself understood. Like a too fiery and powerful horse, he 
bounds, but cannot run. He bridges in a couple of words an enormous 
interval; is at the two poles in a single instant. The reader vainly 
looks for the intermediate track ; confounded by these prodigious leaps, 
he wonders by what miracle the poet has entered upon a new idea 
th? very moment when he quitted the last, seeing perhaps between the 
two images a long scale of transitions, which we pace painfully step by 
step, but which he has spanned in a stride. Shakspeare flies, we creep. 
Hence comes a style made up of conceits, bold images shattered in an 
instant by others still bolder, barely indicated ideas completed by others 
far removed, no visible connexion, but a visible incoherence ; at every 
step we halt, the track failing ; and there, far above us, lo, stands the 
poet, and we find that we have ventured in his footsteps, through a 
craggy land, full of precipices, which he threads, as if it were a 
straightforward road, but on which our greatest efforts barely carry 
us along. 

What will you think, further, if we observe that these vehement ex- 
piessions, so unexpected, instead of following one after the other, slowly 
and with effort, are hurled out by hundreds, with an impetuous ease 
and abundance, like the bubbling waves from a welling spring, which are 
heaped together, rise one above another, and find no place wide enough 
to spread themselves and fall ? You may find in Romeo and Juliet a 
score of examples of this inexhaustible inspiration. The two lovers 
pile up an infinite mass of metaphors, impassioned exaggerations, 
clenches, contorted phrases, amorous extravagances. Their language 
is like the trill of nightingales. Shakspeare's wits, Meicutio, Beatrice, 
Hosalind, his clowns, buffoons, sparkle with far fetched jokes, which 



810 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK D 

rattle out like a musketry-fire. There is none of them but provides 

enough play of words to stock a whole theatre. Lear's curses, or Queen 
Margaret's, would suffice for all the madmen in an asylum, or all the 
oppressed of the earth. The sonnets are a delirium of ideas and images, 
turneo out with an energy enough to make a man giddy. His firsi 
poem, Venus and Adonis, is the sensual ecstasy of a Correggio, insatiable 
and excited. This exuberant fecundity intensifies qualities already in 
excess, and multiplies a hundred-fold the luxuriance of metaphor, thp 
Incoherence of style, and the unbridled vehemence of expression.^ 

All that I have said may be compressed into a few words. Objects 
were taken into his mind organised and complete ; they pass into ours 
disjointed, decomposed, fragmentarily. He thought in the lump, we 
think piecemeal; hence his style and our style — two languages not 
to be reconciled. We, for our part, writers and reasoners, can note 
precisely by a word each isolated fraction of an idea, and represent 
the due order of its parts by the due order of our expressions. We 
advance gradually ; we affiliate, go down to the roots, try and treat oui 
words as numbers, our sentences as equations ; we employ but general 
terms, which every mind can understand, and regular constructions, intc 
which any mind can enter ; we attain justness and clearness, not life. 
Shakspeare lets justness and clearness look out for themselves, and attains 
life. From amidst his complex conception and his coloured semi-vision 
he grasps a fragment, a quivering fibre, and shows it ; it is for you, 
from this fragment, to divine the rest. He, behind thfe word, has a 
whole picture, an attitude, a long argument abridged, a mass of swarm- 
ing ideas ; you know them, these abbreviative, condensive words : these 
are they which we launch out from the furnace of invention, in a fit of 
passion — words of slang or of fashion, which appeal to local memory 
or individual experience ;2 little concocted and incorrect phrases, which, 
by their irregularity, express the suddenness and the breaks of the 
inner sensation ; trivial words, exaggerated figures.^ There is a gesture 
beneath each, a quick contraction of the brows, a curl of laughing lips, 
a clown's trick, an unhinging of the whole machine. None of them 
mark ideas ; each is the extremity and issue of a complete mimic action ; 
none is the expression and definition of a partial and limited idea. 
This is why Shakspeare is strange and powerful, obscure and original, 
beyond all the poets of his or any other age ; the most immoderate of 
all violators of language, the most marvellous of all creators of souls, 

^ This is why, in the eyes of a writer of the seventeenth century, Shakspeare's 
style is the most obscure, pretentious, painful, barbarous, and absurd, that could 
be imagined. 

^ Shakspeare's vocabulary is the most copious of all. It comprises about 15,000 
Urords ; Milton's only 800O. 

* See the conversation of Laertes and his sister, and of Laertes and Poloniua, 
in Hamlet. The style is foreign to the situation ; and we see here plainly tlw 
natural and necessary process of Shakspeare's thought. 



CHAP. IV.] iSHAKSPEARE. 31 j 

the farthest removed from regular logic and classical reason, the one 
most capable of exciting in us a world of forms, and of placing living 
beings before us. 

III. 

Let Uf reconstruct this world, so as to find in it the imprint of it« 
creator. A poet does not copy at random the manners which surround 
him ; he selects from this vast material, and involuntarily brings upon 
the stage the moods of the heart and the conduct which best suit his 
talent. If he is a logician, a moralist, an orator, as, for instance, one 
of the French great tragic poets (Racine) of the seventeenth century, 
he will only represent noble manners ; he wUl avoid low characters ; he 
will have a horror of valets and the plebs ; he will observe the greatest^ 
decorum in respect of the strongest outbreaks of passion ; he will reject 
as scandalous every low or indecent word ; he will give us reason, 
loftiness, good taste throughout ; he will suppress the familiarity, child- 
ishness, artlessness, gay banter of domestic life ; he will blot out precise 
details, special traits, and will raise tragedy into a serene and sublime 
region, where his abstract personages, unencumbered by time and 
space, after an exchange of eloquent harangues and able dissertations, 
will kill each other becomingly, and as though they were merely con- 
cluding a ceremony. Shakspeare does just the contrary, because his 
genius is the exact opposite. His master faculty is an impassioned 
imagination, freed from the fetters of reason and morality. He aban- 
dons himself to it, and finds in man nothing that he would care to lop 
off. He accepts nature, and finds it beautiful in its entirety. He 
paints it in its littlenesses, its deformities, its weaknesses, its excesses, 
its irregularities, and in its rages ; he exhibits man at his meals, in 
bed, at play, drunk, mad, sick ; he adds that which passes behind the 
stage to that which passes on the stage. He does not dream of en- 
nobling, but of copying human life, and aspires only to make his copy 
more energetic and more striking than the original. 

Hence the morals of this drama ; and first, the want of dignity. 
Dignity arises from self-command. A man selects the most nobie of 
ids acts and attitudes, and allows himself no other. Shakspeare's cha- 
racters select none, but allow themselves all. His kings are men, and 
fathers of families. The terrible Leontes, who is about to order the 
death of his wife and his friend, plays like a child with his son : 
caresses him, gives him all the pretty little pet names which motheri 
are wont to employ ; he dares be trivial ; he gabbles like a nurse j he 
has her language, and fulfils her offices : 

* Leontes. What, hast smutch'd thy nose ? 
They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, captain, 
We must be neat ; not neat, but cleanly, captain : . . * 
Come, sir page, 
Look on me with your welkin eye : sweet villain ! 



312 THE RENAISSANCE JBOOK h 

Most dear'st ! my coUop . . . Looking on the lines 
Of my boy's face, methouglits 1 did recoil 
Twenty-three years, and saw Tiyself unbreech'd, 
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled, 
Lest it shoidd bite its master. . . . 
How like, methought, 1 then was to this kernel, 
This squash, this gentleman ! . . . My brother, 
Are you so fond of your young prince as we 
Do seem to be of ours 

Polixenes. If at home, sir, 

He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter, 
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy, 
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all : 
He makes a July's day short as December, 
And with his varying childness cures in me 
Thoughts that would thick my blood. ' ^ 

There are a score of such passages in Shakspeare. The great 
passions, with him as in nature, are preceded or followed by trivial 
actions, scraps of talk, commonplace sentiments. Strong emotions are 
accidents in our life : to drink, to eat, to talk of indifferent things, to 
carry out mechanically an habitual duty, to dream of some stale 
pleasure or some ordinary annoyance, that is the business of our lives. 
Shakspeare paints us as we are ; his heroes bow, ask people for news, 
speak of rain and fine weather, as often and as casually as ourselves, en 
the very eve of falling into the extremity of misery, or of plunging int ) 
fatal resolutions. Hamlet asks what's o'clock, finds the wind biting 
talks of feasts and music heard without ; and this quiet talk, so little in 
harmony with action, so full of slight, insignificant facts, which chance 
alone has raised up, lasts until the moment when his father's ghost, 
rising in the darkness, reveals the assassination which it is his duty to 
avenge. 

Reason tells us that our manners should be measured ; this is ivhy 
the manners which Shakspeare paints are not so. Pure nature is 
violent, passionate; she admits no excuses, suffers no moderation, lakes 
no count of circumstances, wills blindly, breaks out into railing, has the 
irrationality, ardour, anger of children. Shakspeare's characters liave 
hot blood and a ready hand. They cannot restrain themselves, thej 
abandon themselves at once to their grief, indignation, love, and j]xivg% 
fatally down the steep slope, where their passion urges them IJow 
many need I quote ? Timon, Leonato, Cressida, all the young girls, all 
the chief characters in the great dramas ; everywhere Shakspeare paints 
the unreflecting impetuosity of immediate action. Capulet tells his 
daughter Juliet that in three days she is to marry Earl Paris, and bids 
her be proud of it ; she answers that she is not proud of it, and yet she 
fehanks the earl for this proof of love. Compare Capulet's fury with the 

» Winter's Tale, i. 2. 



CHAt* 17 .J SHAKSPEARE. 31Jj 

anger of Orgor.,' and you may measure the difference of the two poet^ 
wxd \he two civilisations : 

* Capulet, How now, how noAv, chop-logic ! What is thia I 
** Proud," and '*! thank you," and **I tlianlc*j'ou not ;" 
And yet "not proud," mistress minion, you. 
Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, 
But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next, 
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church, 
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. 
Out, you green-sickness carrion ! out, you baggage ! 
You tallow-face ! 

Juliet. Good father, I beseech you on my knees, 
Hear me with patienci but to speak a word. 

C. Hang thee, young baggage ! disobedient WTetch ! 
I tell thee what : get thee to church o' Thursday, 
Or never after look me in the face : 
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me ; 
My fingers itch. . . . 

Lady Q You are too hot. 

G. God's bread ! it makes me mad : 
Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play. 
Alone, in company, still my care hath been 
To have her match'd : and having now provided 
A gentleman of noble parentage, 
Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train 'd. 
StuflTd, as they say, with honourable parts, 
Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a maD • 
And then to have a wretched puling fool, 
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender, 
To answer, *' I'll not wed ; I cannot love, 
I am too young ; I pray you, pardon me," — 
But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you : 
Graze where you will, you shall not house with w^ 
Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest. 
Thursday is near ; lay hand on heai't, advise : 
An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend ; 
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the strt«ta> 
For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee.'* 

This method of exhorting one's child to marry is p»xnr^' S' 
Shakspeare and the sixteenth century. Contradiction to these n*eD 
was like a red rag to a bull '. it drove them mad. 

We might be surs that in this age, and on this stage, decency was 
a thing unknown.. It is wearisome, being a check ; men got rid of it, 
because it was Avearisome. It is a gift of reason and moral/ty; as in- 
decency is produced by nature and passion. Shakspeare's words are 
too indecent to be translated. His characters call things by their dirty 

1 One of Molier's characters in Tartuffe. — Tb. 
' Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5. 



314.. THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

names, and compel the thoughts to particular images of physical love. 
The talk of gentlemen and ladies is full of coarse allusions ; we should 
have to find out an alehouse of the lowest description to hear the like 
words nowadays. ^^ 

It would be in an alehouse too that we should have to look for the 
rude jests and brutal kind of wit which form the staple of these conver- 
sations. Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of an advanced reflection \ 
it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every- 
day discourse ; it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself 
in others ; it constrains simple nature, which is selfish and gross. This 
is why it is absent from the manners of the drama we are considering. 
You will see carmen, out of sportiveness and good humour, deal one 
another hard blows : so it is pretty well with the conversation of the 
lords and ladies who are in a sportive mood ; for instance, Beatrice and 
Benedick, very well bred folk as things go,^ with a great name for 
wit and politeness, whose smart retorts create amusement for the 
bystanders. These * skirmishes of wit' consist in telling one another 
plainly : You are a coward, a glutton, an idiot, a buffoon, a rake, a 
brute I You are a parrot's tongue, a fool, a . . . (the word is there). 
Benedick says : 

* I will go ... to the Antipodes . . . rather than hold three words' conference 
with this havpy. ... I cannot endure my Lady Tongue. . . . 

Don Pedro. You have put him down, lady, you have put him down. 

Beatrice. So 1 would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should provi 
the mother of fools. ' ' 

We can infer the tone they use when in anger. Emilia, in Othello^ says : 

* He call'd her v/hore ; a beggar in his drink 
Could not have laid »ich terms upon his callat.'* 

They have a vocabulary of foul words as complete as that of Kabelais, 
and they drain it dry. They catch up handluls of mud, and hurl it at 
their enemy, not conceiving themselves to be smirched. 

Their actions correspond. They go without shame or pity to the 
limits of their passion. They kill, poison, violate, burn ; the stage is full 
of abominations. Shakspeare lugs upon the stage all the atrocious de*;ds 
of the civil wars. These are the ways of wolves and hyaenas. We must 
read of Jack Cade's sedition to gain an idea of this madness and fury. 
We might imagine we were seeing infuriated beasts, the murderou!» 
recklessness of a wolf in a 'sheepfold, the brutality of a hog fouling and 
rolling himself in filth and blood. They ruin, kill, butcher each other ; 
with their feet in the blood of their victims, they call for food and 

» Henry VIII. ii. 3, etc. 

* Much Ado about Nothing. See also the manner in which Henry v. payi 
court to Katharine of France (v. 2). 

• Much Ado about Nothing, ii 1. * Act iv. 2. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE, 3l0 

drink ; they stick heads on pikes and make them kiss one another, nud 
they laugh. 

* Jack Cade. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny, 
. . . There shall he no money ; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will 
apparel them all in one livery. . . . And here, sitting upon London-stone, I 
charge and command that, of the city's cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing h'at 
claret wine this first year of our reign. . . . Away, burn all the records of the 
realm : my mouth shall be the parliament of England. . . . And henceforth all 
things shall be in common. . . . What canst thou answer to my majesty for 
giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the aauphin of France ? . . . 
The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders, unless he 
pay me tribute ; there shall not a maid be married, but she shall pay to me her 
maidenhead er^hey have it. {Re-enter rebels with the heads of Lord Say and his 
son-in-law.) But is not this braver ? Let them kiss one another, for they loved 
well when they were alive.' ^ 

Man must not be let loose ; we know not what lusts and furies 
may brood under a sober guise. Nature was never so hideous, and 
this hideousness is the truth. 

Are these cannibal moods only met with among the scum ? Why, 
the princes are worse. The Duke of Cornwall orders the old Earl of 
Gloucester to be tied to a chair, because, owing to him. King Lear has 
escaped : 

* Fellows, hold the chair. 
Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot. 

{Gloucester is held down in the chair, lohile Cornwall pluck* 
out one of his eyes, and sets his foot on it.) 
Gloster. He that will think to live till he be old, 
Give me some help ! cruel ! you gods ! 

Began. One side will mock another ; the other too. 
Cornwall. If you see vengeance, — 
Servant. Hold your hand, my lord : 

I have served you ever since I was a child ; 
But better service have I never done you, 
Than now to bid you hold. Beg. How now, you d<^ f 

Serv. If you did wear a beard upon your chin, 
I'd shake it on this quarreh What do you mean ? 

Corn. My villain ! {Draws, and runs at kmi. ) 

Serv. Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger. 

{Draws; they fight ; Cornwall is wounded.) 
Regan. Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus ! 

{Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him. ) 
Serv. 0, I am slain ! ^ly lord, you have one eye left 
To see some mischief on him. ! {Dies. ) 

Corn. Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly I 
Where is thy lustre now ? 

Gloster. All dark and comfortless. Where's my son ? . , . 
Began. Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smeU 
His way to Dover. '2 

' Renry VI. 2d part, iv. 2, C, 7. ^ King Lear, iii. 7. 



316 THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK D 

Such are the manner's of that stage. They are unbridled, like those 
of the age, and like ihe poet's imagination. To copy the common 
actions of every-day life, the puerilities and feeblenesses to which the 
greatest continually sink, the transports which degrade them, the 
indecent, harsh, or foul words, the atrocious deeds in which licence 
revels, the brutality and ferocity of primitive nature, is the work of a 
free and unencumbered imagination. To copy this hideousness and 
these excesses with a selection of such familiar, significant, precise de- 
tails, that they reveal nmder every word of every personage the complete 
condition of civilisation, is the work of a concentrated and all-powerful 
imagination. This species of manners and this energy of description 
indicate the same faculty, unique and excessive, which •the style had 
already indicated. 

IV. 

On this common background stands out a population of distinct 
living figures,. illuminated by an intense light, in striking relief. This 
creative power is Shakspeare's great gift, and it communicates an extra- 
ordinary significance to his words. Every word pronounced by one 
of his characters enables us to see, besides the idea which it contains 
and the emotion which prompted it, the aggregate of the qualities i.nd 
the entire character which produced it — the mood, physical attitude, 
bearing, look of the man, all instantaneously, with a clearness and force 
approached by no one. The words which strike our ears are not the 
thousandth part of those we hear within ; they are like sparks thrown 
off at intervals ; the eyes catch rare flashes of flame ; the mind alone 
perceives the vast conflagration of which they are the signs and the 
effect. He gives us two dramas in one : the first strange, convulsive, 
curtailed, visible; the other consistent, immense, invisible: the one 
covers the other so well, that as a rule we do not realise that we are 
perusing words : we hear the roll of those terrible voices, we see con- 
tracted features, glowing eyes, pallid faces ; we see the rages, the 
furious resolutions which mount to the brain with the feverish blood, 
and descend to the sharp-strung nerves. This property i>ossessed '^y 
every phrase to exhibit a world of sentiments and forms, comes fi )ra 
the fact that the phrase is actually caused by a world of emotions and 
images. Shakspeare, when he wrote, felt all that we feel, and much 
besides. He had the prodigious faculty of seeing in a twinkling of the 
eye a complete character, body, mind, past and present, in every detail 
and every depth of his being, with the exact attitude and the expres- 
sion of face, which the situation demanded. A word here and there of 
Hamlet or Othello would need for its explanation three pages of com- 
mentaries ; each of the half -understood thoughts, which the commen- 
tator may have discovered, has left its trace in the turn of the plirase, 
in the nature of the metaphor, in the order of the words ; nowadays, in 
pursuing these traces, we divine the thoughts. These innumerable 



CHAP. IV.l SHAKSPEARE. 3JY 

traces have been impressed in a second, within the compass of a h'ne 
In the next line there are as many, impressed just as quickly, and 
in the same compass. You can gauge the concentration and the 
velocity of the imagination which creates thus. 

These characters are all of the same family. Good or bad, gross 
or delicate, refined or awkward, Shakspeare gives them all the same 
kind of spirit which is his own. He has made of them imaginative 
people, void of will and reason, impassioned machines, vehemently 
hurled one upon another, who were the representation of whatever is 
most natural and most abandoned in human nature. Let us act the 
play to ourselves, and see in all its stages this clanship of figures, this 
prominence of portraits. 

Lowest of all are the stupid folk, babbling or brutish. Imagination 
already exists there, where reason is not yet born ; it exists also here, 
where reason is dead. The idiot and the brute blindly follow the 
phantoms which exist in their benumbed or mechanical brains. No 
poet has understood this mechanism like Shakspeare. His Caliban, for 
instance, a deformed savage, fed on roots, growls like a beast under the 
hand of Prosper©, who has subdued him. He howls continually against 
his master, though he knows that every curse will be paid back with 
* cramps and aches.' He is a chained wolf, trembling and fierce, who tries 
to bite when approached, and who crouches when he sees the lash raised 
above him. He has a foul sensuality, a loud base laugh, the gluttony 
of degraded humanity. He wished to violate Miranda in her sleep. He 
cries for his food, and gorges himself when he gets it. A sailor who 
had landed in the island, Stephano, gives him wine ; he kisses his feet, 
and takes him for a god ; he asks if he has not dropped from heaven, 
and adores him. We find in him rebellious and baffled passions, which 
are eager to be avenged and satiated. Stephano had beaten his comrade. 
Caliban cries, * Beat him enough : after a little time I'll beat him too.' 
He prays Stephano to come with him and murder Prospero in his sleep ; 
he thirsts to lead him there, and sees his master already with his throat 
cu^ and his brains scattered on the earth : 

* Prithee, my king, he quiet. See'st thou here, 
This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter. 
Do that good mischief which ma)'' make this island 
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban, 
For aye thy foot-licker. ' ^ 

Others, like Ajax and Cloten, are more like men, and yet it is pure 
mood that Shakspeare depicts in them, as in Caliban. The clogging 
corporeal machine, the mass of muscles, the thick blood coursing in the 
veins of these fighting brutes, oppress the intelligence, and leave no life 
but for animal passions. Ajax uses his fists, and devours meat ; that ig 

* The Tempest, iv. 1. 



318 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK ii 

his existence ; if he is jealous of Achilles, it is pretty irmch as a bull is 
jealous of his fellow. He permits himself to be restrained and led by 
Ulysses, without looking before him : the grossest flattery decoys him. The 
Greeks have urged him to accept Hectcr's challenge. Behold him puflfed 
up with pride, scorning to answer any one, not knowing what he says or 
does. Thersites cries, * Good-morrow, Ajax;' and he replies, * Thanks, 
Agamemnon.' He has no further thought than to contemplate hia 
enormous frame, and roll majestically his great stupid eyes. When tlie 
day comes, he strikes at Hector as on an anvil. After a good while they 
are separated. * I am not warm yet,' says Ajax, * let us fight again.* ^ 
Cloten is less massive than this phlegmatic ox ; but he is just as idiotic, 
just as vainglorious, just as coarse. The beautiful Imogen, urged by 
his insults and his scullion manners, tells him that his whole body la 
not worth as much as Posthumus' garment. He is stung to the quick, 
repeats the word ten times; he cannot shake off the idea, and runs at it 
again and again with his head down, like an angry ram : 

* Cloten. ** His garment ? " Now, the devil — Imogen. To Dorothy my woman 
hie thee presently — G. ** His garment ? " . . . You have abused me : ** His meanest 
garment ! "... I'll be revenged : ** His meanest garment ! " Well.' ^ 

He gets some of Posthumus' garments, and goes to Milford Haven, ex- 
pecting to meet Imogen there. On his way he mutters thus ; 

• With that suit upon my back, will I ravish her: first kill him, and in hel 
eyes ; there shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt. 
He on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when 
my lust has dined, — which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the clothes that 
she so praised, — to the court I'll knock her back, foot her home again. ' * 

Others, again, are but babblers : for example, Polonius, the grave brain- 
less counsellor ; a groat baby, not yet out of his * swathing clouts ; ' a 
solemn booby, who rains on men a shower of counsels, compliments, 
and maxims ; a sort of court speaking-trumpet, useful in grand cere- 
monies, with the air of a thinker, but fit only to spout words. But 
the most complete of all these characters is that of the nurse in Romeo 
and Juliet, a gossip, loose in her talk, a regular kitchen-oracle, smell in t» 
of the stew-pan and old boots, foolish, impudent, immoral, but other- 
wise a good creature, and affectionate to her child. Mark this dis- 
jointed and never-ending gossip's babble : 

* Nurse. 'Faith I can tell her age unto an hour 

Lady Camdet. She's not fourteen. . . . 

Nurse. Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen. 
Susan and she — God rest all Christian souls! — 
Were of an age : well, Susan is with God ; 

' See Trdilus and Gressida, ii. 3 the jesting manner in which the genera. a 
Irive on this fierce brute. 

' Gumheline, ii. 3. ^Md. iii. 5. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 3|c, 

She was too good for me : but, as I said, 

On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; 

That shall she, marry ; I remember it well. 

*Tis since the earthquake now eleven years ; 

And she was wean'd, — I never shall forget it,— 

Of all the days of the year, upon that day : 

For 1 had then laid wormwood to my dug, 

Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall ; 

My lord and you were then at Mantua : — 

Nay, I do bear a brain: — but, as I said 

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple 

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool. 

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug ! 

Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow. 

To bid me trudge : 

And since that time it is eleven years ; 

For then she could stand alone ; nay, by the rood. 

She could have run and waddled all about ; 

For even the day before, she broke her brow.'* 

Then she tells an indecent anecdote, which she begins over again foui 
times. She is silenced: what then? She has her anecdote in her 
head, and cannot cease repeating it and laughing to herself. Endless 
repetitions are the mind's first step. The vulgar do not pursue the 
straight line of reasoning and of the story ; they repeat their steps, as 
it were merely marking time : struck with an image, they keep it for 
an hour before their eyes, and are never tired of it. If they do ad- 
vance, they turn aside to a hundred chance ideas before they get at 
the phrase required. They let themselves be diverted by all the 
thoughts which come across them. This is what the nurse does ; and 
when she brings Juliet news of her lover, she torments and wearies 
her, less from a wish to tease than from a habit of wandering from the 
point : 

' Nurse, Jesu, what haste ? can you not stay awhile ? 
Do you not see that I am out of breath ? 

Juliet. How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breatii 
Tc say to me that thou art out of breath ? . . , 
Is thy news good, or bad ? answer to that ; 
Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance : 
Let me be satisfied : is't good or bad ? 

N. Well, you have made a simple choice ; you know not Tiow to choose a mim 
Romeo ! no, not he ; though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excel* 
all men's ; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talkea 
on, yet they are past compare : he is not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll warrant 
him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God. What, have yoB 
dined at home ? 

/. No, no : but all this did I know before. 
What says he of our marriage ? what of that ? 

' Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 



320 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

N. liOrd, how my head aches ! what a head have 1 1 
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. 
My back o' t'other side, — 0, my back, my back 1 
Beshrew your heart for sending me about, 
To catch my death with jaunting up and down t 

/. r faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. 
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love ? 

N. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courtecus, and a kind, and 
a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous, — Where is your mother ? ' * 

It is never-ending. Her gabble is worse when she comes to announce 
to Juliet the death of her cousin and the banishment of Romeo. It is 
the shrill cry and chatter of an overgrown asthmatic magpie. She 
laments, confuses the names, spins roundabout sentences, ends by asking 
for aqua-vitce. She curses Romeo, them brings him to Juliet's chamber. 
Next day Juliet is ordered to marry Earl Paris ; Juliet throws herself 
into her nurse's arms, praying for comfort, advice, assistance. The 
other finds the true remedy : Marry Paris, 

* 0, he's a lovely gentleman ! 
Romeo's a dishclout to him : an eagle, madam, 
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye 
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, 
I think you are happy in this second match. 
For it excels your first. ' * 

This cool immorality, these weather-cock arguments, this fashion of 
estimating love like a fishwoman, completes the portrait. 

V. 

The mechanical imagination produces Shakspeare's fool-characters : 
a quick venturesome dazzling, unquiet imagination, produces his men of 
wit. Of wit there are many kinds. One, altogether French, which is 
but reason, a foe to paradox, scorner of folly, a sort of incisive com- 
mon sense, having no occupation but to render truth amusing and 
evident, the most effective weapon with an intelligent and vain people ; 
such was the wit of Voltaire and the drawing-rooms. The other, that 
of improvisators and artists, is a mere inventive transport, paradoxical^ 
unshackled, exuberant, a sort of self- entertainment, a phantasmagoria 
of images, quibbles, strange ideas, dazing and intoxicating, like the 
movement and illumination of a ball. Such is the wit of Mercutio, of 
the clowns, of Beatrice, Rosalind, and Benedick. They laugh, not 
from a sense of the ridiculous, but from the desire to laugh. Yoi| 
must look elsewhere for the campaigns which aggressive reason makes 
against human folly. Here folly is in its full bloom. Our folk think 
of amusement, and nothing more. They are good-humoured ; they let 
their wit ride gaily over the possible and the impossible. They play 

' Romeo and Juliet, \\. 5. ' Ihid. iii. 5 



OHAP IV.] SHAKSPEARE. ij21 

upon words, contort their sense, draw absurd and laughable inferences, 
exchange them alternately, like shuttlecocks, one after another, and 
vie with each other in singularity and invention. They dress all their 
ideas in strange or sparkling metaphors. The taste of the time was for 
masquerades ; their conversation is a masquerade of ideas. They say 
nothing in a simple style; they only seek to heap together subtle things, 
far-fetched, difficult to invent and to understand ; all their expressions 
Bre over-refined, unexpected, extraordinary ; they strain their thought 
and change it into a caricature. * Alas, poor Romeo!' say? Mtrcutio^ 
* he is already dead ; stabbed with a white wench's black eye ; shot 
through the ear with a love-song, the very pin of his heart cleft with 
the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft.'^ Benedick relates a conversation he 
has just held with his mistress : ' O, she misused me past the endurance 
of a block ! an oak, but with one green leaf on it would have answered 
her ; my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her.' ^ These 
gay and perpetual extravagances show the bearing of the interlocutors. 
They do not remain quietly seated in their chairs, like th^ Marquis in 
the Misanthrope ; they wheel about, leap, paint their faces, gesticulate 
boldly their ideas; their wit-rockets end with a song. Young folk, 
soldiers and artists, they let off their fireworks of phrases, and gambol 
round about. ' There was a star danced, and under that was I born.' * 
This expression of Beatrice's aptly describes the kind of poetical, 
sparkling, unreasoning, charming wit, more akin to music than to 
literature, a sort of outspoken and wide-awake dream, not unlike that 
described by Mercutio : 

* 0, then, I see Queen Mah hath been with you. 
She is the fairies' midwife ; and she comes 
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
On the fore-finger of an alderman, 
Drawn with a team of little atomies 
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep ; 
Her waggon -spokes made of long spinners' l^s, 
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, 
The traces of the smallest spider's web, 
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams. 
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film. 
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat. 
Not half so big as a round little worm 
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid ; 
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut. 
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, 
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakerB. 
And in this state she gallops night by night 
Through lovers' bmins, and then they dream of lov»; 
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight. 
O'er lawyers fingersj who straight dream on fees, 

' Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4. * Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 1. ■ Jhid. 

X 



322 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. . « , 
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose. 
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit ; 
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail 
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, 
Then dreams he of another benefice : 
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, 
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, 
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, 
Of healths five-fathom deep ; and then anon 
Dnims in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, 
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two 
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab 
That plats the manes of horses in the night. 
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, 
"Which once imtangled much misfortune bodes. . , . 
This is she' * . . . 

Komeo- interrupts him, or he would never end. Let the reader 30BI« 
pare with tne dialogue of the French theatre this little poem, 

* Child of an idle brain. 
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,* • 

introduced -without incongruity into a conversation of the sixteenth 
century, and he will comprehend the difference between the wit which 
devotes itself to reasoning, or to record a subject for laughter, and that 
imagination which is self-amused with its own act. 

Falstaff has the passions of an animal, and the imagination of a 
man of wit. There is no character which better exemplifies the dash 
and immorality of Shakspeare. Falstaff is a great supporter of dis- 
reputable places, swearer, gamester, brawler, wine-bag, as low as he 
well can be. He has a big belly, bloodshot eyes, bloated face, shaking 
leg ; he spends his life huddled up among the tavern -jugs, or asleep 
on the ground behind the arras ; he only wakes to curse, lie, brag, 
and steal. He is as big a swindler as Panurge, who had sixty-tbree 
ways of making money, ' of which the honestest was by sly theit' 
And what is worse, he is an old man, a knight, a courtier, and well 
bred, Must he not be odious and repulsive? By no means; yoa 
cannot help liking him. At bottom, like his brother Panurge, he is 
* the best fellow in the world.' He has no malice in his composition ; 
no other wish than to laugh and be amused. When insulted, he bawls 
out louder than his attackers, and pays them back with interest in 
coarse words and insults ; but he owes them no grudge for it. The 
next minute he is sitting*down with them in a tavern, drinking iiii?i.r 
health like a brother and comrade. If he has vices, he exposes them 
so frankly that we are obliged to forgive him them. He seems to say 
to us : ^ Well, so I am, what then ? I like drinking : isn't the wine 

' Romeo and Jidut i. 4 ' Ibid. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 325; 

good ? I take to my heels when hard hitting begins : isn't fighting 
a nuisance? I get into debt, and do fools out of their money: isn't 
it nice to have money in your pocket ? I brag : isn't it natural to 
want to bs well thought of?' — * Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, 
in the state of innocency, Adam fell ; and what should poor Jack 
Fa.dtaff do in the days of villany ? Thou seest I have more ^esh 
than another man, and therefore more frailty.' ^ Falstaff is so frankly 
immoral, that he ceases to be so. Conscience ends at a certain point ] 
nature assumes its place, and the man rushes upon what he desires, 
without more thought of being just or unjust than an animal in the 
ntiighbcuring wood. Falstaff, engaged in recruiting, has sold exemp- 
tions to all the rich people, and only enrolled starved and half-naked 
wretches. There's but a shirt and a half in all his company : that does 
not trouble him. Bah! * they'll find linen enough on every hedge.' 
The prince, who has seen them pass muster, says, *I did never see 
such pitiful rascals.' ' Tut, tut,' answers Falstaff, * good enough to 
toss ; food for powder ; they'll fill a pit as well as better ; tush, 
man, mortal men, mortal men.' * if is second excuse is his unfaihng 
&pirit. If ever there was a man who could talk, it is he. Insults 
and oaths, curses, jobations, protests, flow from him as from an open 
barrel. He is never at a loss ; he devises a shift for every difficulty. 
Lies sprout out of him, fructify, increase, beget one another, like 
mushrooms on a rich and rotten bed of earth. He lies still more 
from his imagination and nature than from interest and necessity. It 
is evident from the manner in which he strains his fictions. He saya 
he has fought alone against two men. The next moment it is four. 
Presently we have seven, then eleven, then fourteen. He is stopped 
in time, or he would soon be talking of a whole army. When 
unmasked, he does not lose his temper, and is the first to laugh at 
his boastings. ' Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold. . . . What, shall 
we be merry ? shall we have a play extempore ? ' * He does the 
scolding part of King Henry with so much truth, that one might take 
him for a king, or an actor. This big pot-bellied fellow, a coward, a 
jester, a brawler, a drunkard, a lewd rascal, a pothouse poet, is one 
of Shakspeare's favourites. The reason is, that his manners are those 
of pure nature, and Shakspeare's mind is congenial with his own. 

VL 

Nature is shameless and gross amidst this mass of flesh, heavy with 
wine and fatness. It is delicate in the delicate body of women, but 
as unreasoning and impassioned in Desdemona as in Falstaff. Shak- 
speare's women are charming children, who feel in excess and lovo 
with folly. They have unconstrained manners, little rages, pretty words 
of friendship, coquettish rebelliousness, a graceful volubility, which 

' First Part of Kiig Henry IV, in. 3. ' Ibid. iv. 3. ^ jj^^^^ y\ 4 



324 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

recall the warbling and the prettiness of birds. The heroines of the 
French stage are almost men ; these are women, and in every sense 
of the word. More imprudent than Desdemona a woman could not 
be. She is moved with pity for Cassio, and asks a favour for him 
passionately, recklessly, be the thing just or no, dangerous or no, 
She knows nothing of man's laws, and thinks nothing of them. AU 
that she sees is, that Cassio is unhappy : 

* Be thou assured, good Cassio . . . My lord shall never rest ; 
ril watch him tame and talk him out of patience ; 
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift ; 
I'll intermingle everything he does 
With Cassio's suit.' * 

8he asks her favour : 

* Othello. Not now, sweet Desdemona ; some other time. 

Des. But shall 't be shortly ? 0. The sooner, sweet, for yom, 

Des. Shall *t be to-night at supper ? 0. No, not to-night. 

Des. To-morrow dinner, ^hen ? 0. I shall not dine at home ; 
J meet the captains at the citadel. 

Des. Why, then, to-morrow n"ght ; or Tuesday mom ; 
On Tuesday noon, or night ; on Wednesday morn : 
I prithee, name the time, but let it not 
Exceed three days : in faith, he's penitent.'* 

She is somewhat astonished to see herself refused; she scolds him. 
Othello yields : who would not yield, seeing the reproach in those 
lovely sulking eyes ? O, says she, with a pretty pout : 

' This is not a boon ; 

'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves, 
Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm. 
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit 
To your own person.' ^ 

A moment after, when he prays her to leave him alone for a while, 
mark the innocent gaiety, the ready observance, the playful child's tone: 

* Shall I deny you ? no : farewell, my lord. ... 
Emilia, come : Be as your fancies teach you ; 
Wliate'er you be, I am obedient. ' * 

This vivacity, this petulance, does not prevent shrinking modesty and 

silent timidity: on the contrary, they spring from a common cause, 
extreme sensibility. She, who feels much and deeply, has more reserve 
and more passion than others; she breaks out or is silent; she says 
nothing or everything. Such is this Imogen, 

* So tender of rebukes that words are strokes^ 
And strokes death to her.'*^ 

» Othello, iii. 3. » lUd. T/ftw! 

* Ibid ' Cymbdine, iii. 5. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE 325 

Such is Virgilia, the sweet wife of Coriolanus : her heart is not a 
Roman one ; she is terrified at her husband's victories : when Volumnia 
describes him stamping on the field of battle, and wiping his bloody 
brow with his hand, she grows pale : 

* His bloody brow ! Jupiter, no blood ! . . , 
Heavens bless my lord from feU Aufidius I ' * 

She W9uld forget all that she knows of these dangers ; she dare not 
think of them. When asked if Coriolanus does not generally return 
wounded, she cries, * O, no, no, no.' She shuns this cruel idea, and 
nurses a secret anguish at the bottom of her heart. She will not leave 
the house : ' I'll not over the threshold till my lord return.' ^ She does 
not smile, will hardly admit a visitor ; she would blame herself, as for 
a lack of tenderness, for a moment's forgetfulness or gaiety. When he 
does return, she can only blush and weep. This exalted sensibility 
must needs end in love. They all love without measure, and nearly 
ftll at first sight. At the first look Juliet casts on Borneo, she says to 
thf. nurse : 

* Go, ask his name : if he be married. 

My grave is like to be my wedding bed.'* 

It is the revelation of their destiny. As Shakspeare has made them, 
they cannot but love, and they must love till death. But this first 
look is an ecstasy ; and this sudden approach of love is a transport. 
Miranda seeing Fernando, fancies that she sees * a thing divine.' She 
halts motionless, in the amazement of this sudden vision, at the sound 
of these heavenly harmonies which rise from the depths of her heart. 
She weeps, on seeing him drag the heavy logs ; with her tender white 
hands she would do the work whilst he reposed. Her compassion and 
tenderness carry her away; she is no longer mistress of her words, she 
says what she would not, what her father has forbidden her to disclose, 
what an instant before she would never have confessed. The too full 
heart overflows unwittingly, happy, and ashamed at the current of joy 
and new sensations with which an unknown feeling has flooded her 

* Miranda. I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of. . . . 

Fernando. Wherefore weep you ? 

M. At mine unwortliiuess that dare not offer 
What I desire to give, and much less take 
What I shall die to want. . . . 
I am your wife, if you will marry me ; 
If not, I'll die your maid.' * 

This irresistible invasion of love transforms the whole character. The 
shrinking and tender Desdemona, suddenly, in full senate, before her 
father, renounces her father ; dreams not for an instant of asking his 
pardon, or consoling him. She will leave for Cyprus with Othello, 

> Coriolanm, L 8. ' Jbid. » Jiomeo and Juliet, i. 6. * The Tempest, lii. 1. 



326 THE RENAISSANCE [BOOK U 

through the enemy's fleet and the tempest. E/ery thing vanishes before 
the one and adored image which has taken entire and absolute posses- 
sion of lier full heart. So, extreme evils, bloody resolves, are only the 
natural sequence of such love. Ophelia becomes mad, Juliet commits 
suicide ; no one but looks upon such madness and death as necessary. 
You will not then discover virtue in these souls, for by virtue is im- 
plied a determinate desire to do good, and a rational observance of duty. 
They are only pure through delicacy or love. They recoil from vice af 
a gross thing, not as an immoral thing. What they feel is not respect 
for the marriage vow, but adoration of their husband. ' O sweetest, 
fairest lily ! ' So Cymbeline speaks of one of these frail and lovely 
flowers which cannot be torn from the tree to which they have grown, 
whose least impurity would tarnish their whiteness. When Imogen 
learns that her husband means to kill her as being faithless, she does 
not revolt at the outrage ; she has no pride, but only love. ' False to 
his bed I' She faints at .the thought that she is no longer loved. 
When CordeHa hears her father, an irritable old man, already half 
insane, ask her how she loves him, she cannot make up her mind to say 
aloud the flattering protestations which her sisters have been lavishing. 
She is ashamed to display her tenderness before the world, and to buy 
a dowry by it. He disinherits her, and drives her away ; she holds her 
tongue. And when she afterwards finds him abandoned and mad, she 
goes on her knees before him, with such a touching emotion, she weeps 
over that dear insulted head with so gentle a pity, that you might 
fancy it was the tender accent of a desolate but delighted mother, 
kissing the pale lips of her child : 

* you kind gods, 

Cure this great breach in his abused nature f 

The untuned and jarring senses, 0, wind up 

Of this child-changed father ! . . . 

O my dear father ! Restoration hang 

Thy medicine on my lips ; and let this kiss 

Eepair those violent harms that my two sisters 

Have in thy reverence made ! . . . Was this a face 

To he opposed against the warring winds ? 

. . . Mine enemy's dog. 

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night 

Against my fire. . . . 

How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?* 

If, in fact, Shakspeare comes across a heroic character, worthy of 
Corneille, a Roman, such as the mother of Coriolanus, he will explain 
by passion, what Corneille would have explained by heroism. He will 
depict it violent and eager with the violent feelings of glory. She will 
not be able to refrain herself. She will break out into accents of 
triumph when she sees her son crowned ; into imprecations of vengeance 



King Lear. iv. 7. 



CHAP. IV] BHAKSPEARE. 327 

when she sees him oanished. She will descend to the vulgarities of 
pride and anger ; she will abandon herself to mad efFusicns of joy, to 
dreams of an ambitious fancy,^ and will prove once more that the im- 
passioned imagination of Shakspeare has left its trace in all the creaturei 
whom he has made. 

vn. 

Nothing is easier to such a poet than to create perfect villains. 
Throughout he is handhng the unruly passions which make their 
character, and he never hits upon the moral law which restrains them ; 
but at the same time, and by the same faculty, he changes the inani- 
mate masks, which the conventions of the stage mould on an identical 
pattern, into living and illusory figures. How shall a demon be made 
to look as real as a man ? lago is a soldier of fortune who has roved 
the world from Syria to England, who, nursed in the lowest ranks, 
having had close acquaintance with the horrors of the wars of the 
sixteenth century, had drawn thence the maxims of a Turk and the 
philosophy of a butcher; principles he has none left. ' O my reputa- 
tion, my reputation I ' cries the dishonoured Cassio. * As I ara an honest 
man,' says lago, * I thought you had received some bodily wound ; 
there is more sense in that than in reputation.'^ As for woman's 
virtue, he looks upon it like a man who has kept company with slave- 
dealers. He estimates Desdemona's love as he would estimate a mare's : 
that sort of thing lasts so long — then ... And then he airs an 
experimental theory, with precise details and nasty expressions, like a 
stud doctor. * It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her 
love to the Moor, nor he his to her. . . . These Moors are changeable 
in their wills ; . . . the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, 
shall be to him shortly as bitter as colonquintida. She must change 
for youth : when she is sated with his body, she will find the error 
of her choice.'^ Desdemona, on the shore, trying to forget her care, 
begs him to sing the praises of her sex. For every portrait he finds 
the most insulting insinuations. She insists, and bids him take the case 
of a really perfect woman. He replies : ' She was a wight, if ever such 

• * ye're well met : the hoarded plague o' the gods 
Requite your love ! 

If that I could for weeping, you should hear — 
Nay, and you shall hear some. . . . 

I'll tell thee what ; yet go : 
Kay, but thou shalt stay too : I would my son 
Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him. 
His good sword in his hand. ' — Coriolanus, iv. 2. 
See again, Coriolanus, i. 3, the frank and abandoned triumph of a woman of th* 
people : * I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than now 
in first seeing he had proved himself a man.' 

« Othdlo, ii. 3. ' Ihid. I 8. 



328 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

wight were, ... to sickle fools and chronicle small beer.** He 
also says : * O gentle lady, do not put me to't ; for I am nothing, if 
not critical.' ^ This is the key to his character. He despises man ; to 
him Desdemona is a little wanton wench, Cassio an elegant word-shaper, 
Othello a mad bull, Roderigo an ass to be basted, thumped, made to 
go , He diverts himself by setting these passions at issue ; he laughs 
at it as at a play. When Othello, swooning, shakes in his convulsionsj 
he rejoices at this capital result: *Work on, my medicine, work/ 
Thus credulous fools are caught.' ^ You would take him for one of 
the poisoners of the time, studying the effect of a new potion on a dying 
dog. He only speaks in sarcasms ; he has them ready for every one, 
even for those whom he does not know. When he wakes Brabantio to 
inform him of the elopement of his daughter, he tells him the matter 
in coarse terms, sharpening the sting of the bitter pleasantry, like a 
conscientious executioner, rubbing his hands when he hears the culprit 
groan under the knife. * Thou art a villain !' cries Brabantio. ' You are 
— a senator!' answers lago. But the feature which really completes 
him, and makes him rank with Mephistopheles, is the atrocious truth 
and the cogent reasoning by which he likens his crime to virtue.* 
Cassio, under his advice, goes to see Desdemona, to obtain her inter- 
cession for him ; this visit is to be the ruin of Desdemona and Cassio 
lago, left alone, hums for an instant quietly, then cries: 
* And what's he then that says I play the villain f 

When this advice is free I give and honest, 

Probal to thinking and indeed the course 

To win the Moor again. '^ 

To all these features must be added a diabolical energy,® an inexhaus- 
tible inventiveness in images, caricatures, obscenity, the manners of a 
guard-room, the brutal bearing and tastes of a trooper, habits of dis- 
simulation, coolness and hatred, patience, contracted amid the peril? 
and devices of a military life, and the continuous miseries of long 
degradation and frustrated hope ; you will understand how Shakspeare 
could transform abstract treachery into a concrete form, and how 
lago's atrocious vengeance is only the natural consequence of his 
sharacter, life, and training. 

VIII. 

How much more visible is this impassioned and unfettered genxus 
vf Shakspeare in the great characters which sustain the whole weight 
of the drama ! The startling imagination, the furious velocity of the 
manifold and exuberant ideas, the unruly passion, rushing upon deatfc 

1 Othello, ii. 1. 2 ^g^^ 3 lua, iv. 1.. 

^ See the like cynicism and scepticism in Richard iii. Both begin by slan 
dering human nature, and both are misanthropical of malice prepense. 
^ Othello, ii. 3. 
* yee Ilia conversation with Brabantio, then with Roderigo, Act i. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 32G 

and crime, hallucinations, madness, all the ravages of delirium burst- 
ing through will and reason: such are the forces and ravings which 
engender them. Shall I speak of dazzling Cleopatra, who holds 
Anton}' in the whirlwind of her devices and caprices, who fascinates 
and kills, who scatters to the winds the lives of men as a handful of 
desert-dust, the fatal Eastern sorceress who sports with life and death, 
headstrong, irresistible, child of air and fire, whose life is but a tem- 
pest, whose thought, ever repointed and broken, is like the crackling 
of a lightning flash ? Of Othello, who, beset by the concise picture of 
physical adultery, cries at every word of lago like a man on the rack ; 
who, his nerves hardened by twenty years of war and shipwreck, growa 
mad and swoons for grief, and whose soul, poisoned by jealousy, is dis- 
tracted and disorganised in convulsions and in stupor? Or of old 
King Lear, violent and weak, whose half-unseated reason is gradually 
toppled over under the shocks of incredible treacheries, who presents 
the frightful spectacle of madness, first increasing, then complete, of 
curses, bowlings, superhuman sorrows, into which the transport of the 
first access of fury carries him, and then of peaceful incoherence, chat- 
tering imbecility, into which the shattered man subsides : a marvellous 
creation, the supreme effort of pure imagination, a disease of reason 
which reason could never have conceived?^ Amid so many portraitures 
let us choose two or three to indicate the depth and nature of them 
all. The critic is lost in Shakspeare, as in an immense town ; he will 
describe a couple of monuments, and entreat the reader to imagine 
the city. 

Plutarch's Coriolanus is an austere, coldly haughty patrician, a 
general of the army. In Shakspeare's hands he becomes a coarse 
soldier, a man of the people as to his language and manners, an 
athlete of war, with a voice like a trumpet ; whose eyes by contradic- 
tion are filled with a rush of blood and anger, proud and terrible in 
mood, a lion's soul in the body of a steer. The philosopher Plutarch 
told of him a lofty philosophic action, saying that he had been at pains 
to save his landlord in the sack of Corioli. Shakspeare's Coriolanus 
has indeed the same disposition, for he is really a good fellow ; but 
when Lartius asks him the name of this poor Volscian, in order to 
secure his liberty, he yawns out : 

* By Jupiter ! forgot. 
I am weary ; yea, my memory is tired. 
Have we no wine here ? ' ^ 

He is hot, he has been fighting, he must drink ; he leaves hia 
Volscian in chains, and thinks no more of him. He fights like a 
porter, with shouts and insults, and the cries from that deep chest are 

' See, again, in Timon, and Hotspur more particularly, a perfect example 
ot a vehement and unreasoning imagination. 

^ CuriolanuSy \. 9. 



330 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

heard al)OTe the din of the battle like the sounds from a brazen trumpet 
He has scaled the walls of Corioli, he has butchered till he is gorged 
with slaughter. Instantly he turns to the other army, and arrives red 
wath bbod, * as he were fiay'd.' * Come I too lati ? ' Cominius begins 
to compliment him. * Come I too late ? * he repeats. The battle if 
not yet finished : he embraces Cominius : 

* ! let me clip ye 
In arms as sound as when I woo'd, in heart 
As merry as when our nuptial day was done.** 

For the battle is a real holiday to him. Such senses, such a frame, need 
the outcry, the din of battle, the excitement of death and wounds. This 
haughty and indomitable heart needs the joy of victory and destruction. 
Mark the display of his patrician arrogance and his soldier's bearing, 
when he is offered the tenth of the spoils : 

* I thank you, general ; 
But cannot make my heart consent to take 
A bribe to pay my sword. ' * 

The soldiers cry, Marcius ! Marcius I and the trumpets sound. He get« 
uato a passion ; rates the brawlers : 

* No more, I say ! For that I have not wash'd 
My nose that bled, or foil'd some debile wretch,— 
. . . You shout me forth 
In acclamations hyx>erbolical ; 
As if I loved my little should be dieted 
In praises sauced with lies.' ^ 

They are reduced to loading him with honours: Cominius giv«s him a 
war-horse; decrees him the cognomen of Coriolanus: the people shout 
Caius Marcius Coriolanus I He replies : 

* I will go wash ; 
And when my face is fair, you shall perceive 
Whether 1 blush or no : howbeit, I thank yotL 
I mean to stride your steed. ' * 

This loud voice, loud laughter, blunt acknowledgment of a man who 
can act and shout better than speak, foretell the mode in whicli he will 
treat the plebeians. He loads them with insults ; he cannot find abuse 
enough for the cobblers, tailors, greedy cowards, down on their knees for 
a copper. ' To beg of Hob and Dick !' * Bid them wash their faces and 
keep their teeth clean.* But he must do this, if he would be consul ; 
his friends constrain him. It is then that the passionate soul, incapable 
of self-restraint, such as Shakspeare knew how to paint, breaks forth 
without let. He is there in his candidate's gown, gnashing his teeth, 
and getting up his lesson in this style : 

» Coriolanus. i. 6. * Ibid. i. 9. ' Ibid. * Ibid. 



CEAP. IV .] SHAKSPEARE. 331 

* What must I say ? 
•* I pray, sir " — Plague upon't ! I cannot bring 
My tongue to such a pace : — " Look, sir, my wounda! 
I got them in my country's service, when 
Some certain of you brethren roar'd and ran 
From the noise of our own drums." " 

The tiibuTies have no difficulty in stopping the election of a candidate 
who begs in this fjisLion. They taunt him in full senate, reproach him 
with his speech about the corn. He repeats it, with aggravationg. 
Once roused, neither danger nor prayer restrains him: 

* His heart's his mouth : 
And, being angry, 'does forget that ever 
He heard the name of death.'* 

He rails against the people, the tribunes, street-magistrates, flattereri 
of the plebs. * Come, enough,' says his friend Menenius. * Enough, 
with over-measure,' says Brutus the tribune. He retorts: 

* No, take more : 
"What may be sworn by, both divine and human. 
Seal what I end withal ! ... At once pluck out 
The multitudinous tongue ; let them not lick 
The sweet which is their poison. ' * 

The tribune cries, Treason I and bids seize him. He cries : 

* Hence, old goat ! . . . 
Hence, rotten thing ! or I shall shake thy bones 
Out of thy garments ! ' * 

He strikes him, drives the mob off: he fancies himself amongst 
Volscians. * On fair ground I could beat forty of them I' And when 
his friends hurry him off, he threatens still, and 

* Speak(s) o' the people, 

As if you (he) were a god to punish, not a man 

Of their infirmity. ' * 

Yet he bends before his mother, for he has recognised in her a soul as 
lofty and a courage as intractable as his own. He has submitted from 
his infancy to the ascendency of this pride which he admires. Volumnia 
reminds him : * My praises made thee first a soldier.' Without power 
over himself, continually tost on the fire of his too hot blood, he has 
always been the arm, she the thought. He obeys from involuntary 
Inspect, like a soldier before his general, but with what effort 1 

* Coriolanus. The smiles of knaves 
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up 
The glances of my sight ! a beggar's tongue 
Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees, 

* Coriolanus, ii. 3. * Ibid. iii. 1. ^ /j^^. 4 jii^^ 6 /jf^^j. 



332 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK K 

Who bow'd bnt in my stirrup, bend like his 
That hath received an alms ! — I will not do 't. , . • 

Volumnia. ... Do as thou h'st 

Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me. 
But owe thy pride thyself. Cor. Pray, be content : 
Mother, I am going to the market-place ; 
Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves. 
Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved 
Of all the trades in Kome,' * 

lie goes, ind his friends speak for him. Except a few bitter widcs, ht 
appears to be submissive. Then the tribunes pronounce the accusa- 
tion, and summon him to answer as a traitor : 

* Cor. How ! traitor ! Men. Nay, temperately : your promise. 

Cor. The fires i' the lowest hell fold-in the people 1 
Call me their traitor ! Thou injurious tribune I 
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths. 
In thy hands clutch'd as many millions, in 
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say, 
** Thou liest," unto thee with a voice as free 
As I do pray the gods. ' ^ 

His friends surround him, entreat him : he will not listen ; he foams, 1m 
is like a wounded lion: 

* Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death. 
Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger 
But with a grain a day, 1 would not buy 
Their mercy at the price of one fair word.*' 

The people vote exile, supporting by their shouts the sentence of the 
tribune : 

* Cor. You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hat« 

As reek o' the rotten fens, whose love I prize 

As the dead carcasses of unburied men 

That do corrupt my air, I banish you. . . . Despising 

For you, the city, thus I turn my back : 

There is a world elsewhere. ' * 

Judge of his hatred by these raging words. It goes on increasing bj^ 
the expectation of vengeance. We find him next with the Volscian 
army before Rome. His friends kneel before him, he lets them kniel. 
Old Menenius, who had loved him as a son, only comes now to be 
driven away. * Wife, mother, child, I know not.' * It is himself he 
knows not. For this power of hating in a noble heart is equal with 
the power of loving. He has transports of tenderness as of hating, an<^ 
can contain himself no more in joy than in grief. He runs, spite of 
his resolution, to his wife's arms ; he bends his knee before his mother. 

> Coriolanus, iii. 3. ^ ijji^^ i^^ 3^ 3 ij^id^ 4 Hy^^^ 

• Ihid. V 2. 



<^nAP. I V.J SHAKSPEARE. 333 

He had summoned the Volscian chiefs to make them witnesses of his 
refusals; and before them, he grants all, and weeps. On his leturn to 
Corioli, an iasulting word from Aufidius maddens him, and drives him 
upon the daggers of the Volscians. Vices and virtues, glory and misery, 
greatness and feebleness, the unbridled passion which composes his 
nature, endowed him with all. 

If the life of Coriolanus is the history of a mood, that of Macbeth is 
fhe history of a monomania. The Avitches' prophecy was burif d in his 
neart, instantaneously, like a fixed idea. Gradually this idea corrupts 
the rest, and transforms the man. He is haunted ; he forgets the 
thanes who surround him and * who stay upon his leisure ; ' he already 
sees in the future an indistinct chaos of images of blood : 
... * Why do I yield to that suggestion 
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair 
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs ? . . , 
My tli®nght, whose murder yet is hut fantastical. 
Shakes so my single state of man that function 
Is smother'd in sui-mise, and nothing is 
But what is not. ' ^ 

This is the language of hallucination. Macbeth*s hallucination becomes 
complete when his wife has resolved on the assassination of the king. 
He sees in the air a blood-stained dagger, * in form as palpable, as this 
which now I draw.' His whole brain is filled with grand and terrible 
phantoms, which the mind of a common murderer would never have 
conceived ; the poetry of which indicates a generous heart, enslaved to 
ap> idea of fate, and capable of remorse : 

... * Now o'er the one half world 
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 
The curtain'd sleep ; witchcraft celebrates 
Pale Hecate's offerings, and witlier'd murder, 
Alarum 'd by his sentinel, the wolf^ 
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, 
With Tarquiu's ravishing strides, towards his design 
Moves like a ghost. ... {A bell rings.) 

I go, and it is done ; the hell invites me. 
Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell 
That summons thee to heaven or to helL ' * 

He has done the deed, and returns tottering, haggard, like a drunken 

mall. He is horrified at his bloody hands, ' these hangman's hands.' 
Nothing now can cleanse them. The whole ocean might sweep over 
them, but they would keep the hue of murder. * What hands are 
here? ha, they pluck out mine eyes!' He is disturbed by a w «:d 
which the sleeping chamberlains uttered : 

* One cried, ** God bless us ! " and ** Amen," the other ; 
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands 

« Macbeth, i. 3. « Ibid. ii. 1. 



334 THE RENAISSANCE. "^BOOK II 

Listening their fear, I could not say **^Ameii,** 

Wlien they did say, " God bless us ! " 

. . . But Avherefore could not I pronounce *' Amen T** 

I had most need of blessing, and *' Amen " 

Stuck in my throat.' ^ 

Then comes a strange dream ; a frightful vision of punishment descends 
upon him. 

Above the beating of his heart, the tingling of the blocd which 
6oils in his brain, he had heard them cry ; 

* "Sleep no more! 
Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep, 
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast. ' ^ 

And the voice, like an angel's trumpet, calls him by all his titles: 

* Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
Shall sleep no more ; Macbeth shall sleep no more ! ' * 

This mad idea, incessantly repeated, beats in his brain, with monotonous 
and hard-pressing strokes, like the tongue of a bell. Insanity begins ; 
all the force of his mind is occupied by keeping before him, in spite oi 
himself, the image of the man whom he has murdered in his sleep : 

* To knoAV my deed, 'twere best not know myself. (Knock.) 

Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! ' * 

Thenceforth, in the rare intervals in which the fever of his mind is 
assuaged, he is like a man worn out by a long malady. It is the sad 
prostration of maniacs worn out by their fits of rage: 
* Had I but died an hour before this chance, 
I had lived a blessed time ; for, from this instant 
There's nothing serious in mortality : 
All is but toys : renown and gi-ace is dead ; 
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees 
*" Is left this vault to brag of.' * 

When rest has restored some force to the human machine, the fixed 
idea shakes him again, and drives him onward, like a pitiless horseman, 
who has left his panting horse only for a moment, to leap again into 
the saddle, and spur him over precipices. The more he has done, the 
more he must do ; 

* I am in blood 

Steep'd in so far that, should 1 wade no more. 

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.' ® . . . 

He kills 'n order to preserve the fruit of his murders. The fatal circlet 
of gold attracts him like a magic jewel ; and he beats down, from % 

» Macbeth, il 2. « Ibid. ^ Ibid. ' 

Ibid. » Ibid. ii. 3. • Ibid. in. 4 



:illkP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. ♦JSg 

sort of blind instinct, the heads which he sees between the crown and 
him 

• But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer. 
Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep 
In the affliction of these terrible dreams 
That shake us nightly : better be with the dead, 
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, 
Than on the torture of the n»ind to lie 
In restless ecstacy. Tuncan is in his grave ; 
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 
Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison. 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing. 
Can touch him further. ' * 

^Tacbeth has Banquo murdered, and in the midst of a great feast 
he is informed of the success of his plan. He smiles, and proposes 
Banquo's health. Suddenly, conscience-smitten, he sees the ghost of 
the murdered man ; for this phantom, which Shakspeare summons, is 
not a mere stage-trick : we feel that here the supernatural is unne- 
cessary, and that Macbeth would create it, even if hell would not send 
it. With stiffened muscles, dilated eyes, his mouth half open with 
deadly terror, he sees it shake its bloody head, and cries with that 
hoarse voice which is only to be heard in maniacs' cells : 

* Prithee, see there ! Behold ! look ! lo ! how say you f 
Why, what care I ? If thou canst nod, speak toow 
If charnel-houses and our graves must send 
Those that we bury, back our monuments 
Shall be the maws of kites. . . . 
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time, . • . 
Ay, and since too, murders have been perform 'd 
Too terrible for the ear : the times have been 
That, when the brains were out, the man would die^ 
And there an end ; but now they rise again. 
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, 
And push us from our stools : . . . 
A vaunt ! and quit my sight ! let the earth hide thee f 
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ; 
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
Which thou (lost glare with ! ' ^ 

H"is body trembling like that of an epileptic, his teeth clenched, foaming 
at the mouth, he sinks on the ground, his limbs beat against the floor, 
shaken with convulsive quiverings, whilst a dull sob swells his panting 
breast, and dies in his swollen throat. What joy can remain for a man 
besieged by such visions? The wide dark country, which he surveys 
from his towering castle, is but a field of death, haunted by deadly 
apparitions ; Scotland, which he is depopulating, a cemetery, 

' Afacbeth, iii. 2. ' Ibid, iii, 4. 



836 THE IIENAISSANCE. IBOOK U 

* Where . . . the dead man's knell 
Is there scarce ask'd for who ; and good men's Uvea 
Expire before the flowers in their caps, 
Dying or ere they sicken. ' ^ 

His soul is ' full of scorpions.* He has * supp'd full with horrors,* and 
the faint odour of blood has disgusted him with all else. He goes 
stumbling over the corpses which he has heaped up, with the mcchani. 
cal and desperate smile of a maniac-murderer. Thenceforth death, 
life, all is one to him ; the habit of murder has placed him beyond 
humanity. They tell him that his wife is dead : 

* Mach. She should have died hereafter ; 
There would have been a time for such a word. 
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
To the last syllable of recorded time. 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle f 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. ' ' 

The'fe remains for him the hardening of the heart in crime, the fixetl 
belief in destiny. Hunted down by his enemies, ' bear-like, tied to £ 
stake,* he fights, troubled only by the prediction of the witches, sure 
of being invulnerable so long as the man whom they have pointed 
at, does not appear. His thoughts inhabit a supernatural world, and 
to the last he walks with his eyes fixed on the dream, which has pos- 
sessed hiniy from the first. 

The history of Hamlet, like that of Macbeth, is the story of a moral 
poisoning. Hamlet's is a delicate soul, an impassioned imagination, 
like that of Shakspeare. He has lived hitherto, occupied in noble 
studies, apt in bodily and mental exercises, with a taste for art, loved 
by the noblest father, enamoured of the purest and most charming girl, 
confiding, generous, not yet having perceived, from the height of tha 
throne to which he was born, aught but the beauty, happiness, gran- 
deur of nature and humanity.* On this soul, which charactei and 
training make more sensitive than others, misfortune suddenly falls, 
extreme, overwhelming, of the very kind to destroy all faith and every 
spring of action: with one look he has seen all the vileuess of humanity; 
and this insight is given him in his mother. His mmd is yet intact ; 
but judge from the violence of his style, the crudity of his exact details, 
the terrible tension of the whole nervous machine, whether he has not 
already one foot on the verge of madness : 

' Macbeth, iv. 3. ' V:id. v. 5. ^ Goethe, Wilhelm MeiMer. 



CHAP. IV.j SHAKSPLixRE. 337 

* O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew ! 
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! God ! God ! 
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. 
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
Fie on't ! ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden, 
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in natort 
Possess it merely. That it should come to this ! 
But two months dead : nay, not so much, not two : 
So excellent a king, ... so loving to my mother, 
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth ! 

. . . And yet, within a month, — 
Let me not think on't — Frailty, thy name is woman t — 
A little month, or ere those shoes were old 
With which she follow'd my poor father's body, . . • 
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes. 
She married. 0, most wicked speed, to post 
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets ! 
It is not nor it cannot come to good : 
But break, my heart ; for I must hold my tongue ! ** 

Here already are contortions of thought, earnests of hallucination, 
the symptoms of what is to come after. In the middle of a conversa- 
tion the image of his father rises before his mind. He thinks he sees 
him. How then will it be when the * canonised bones have burst their 
cerements,* * the sepulchre hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,* 
and when the ghost comes in the night, upon a high * platform' of land, 
to hint to him of the tortures of his prison of fire, and to tell him of 
the fratricide, who has driven hira thither ? Hamlet grows faint, but 
grief strengthens him, and he has a cause for living : 

* Hold, hold, my heart ; 
And you my sinews, grow not instant old, 
But bear me stiffly up ! Remember thee ! 
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe. — Remember th?«l 
Yea, from the table of my memory 
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records. 
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past^ . . . 
And thy commandment all alone shall live. . , « 
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! 
My tables, — meet it is I set it down, 
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain 5 
At least I'm sure it may be so in Demnark : 
So, uncle, there you are. ' * {writing. ) 

This convulsive outburst, this fevered writing hand, this phrensy of 



ffamkt, i. 3. 2 /n^^ i 5^ 



338 THE RENAISSANCE [30v)K ll 

intentness, prelude the approach of a monomania. When his friends 
come np, he treats them with the speeches of a child or an idiot. He 
is no longer master of his words ; hollow phrases whirl in his brain, 
and fall from his mouth as in a dream. They call him; he answers by 
imitating the cry of a sportsman whistling to his falcon : * Hillo, ho, ho, 
boy I come, bird, come.' Whilst he is in the act of swearing them to 
secrecy, the ghost below repeats * Swear/ Hamlet cries, with a nervous 
excitement and a fitful gaiety : 

• Ah ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou tliore, truepenny f 
Come on — you hear this fellow in the cellarage, — 
Consent to swear. . . . 

Gliost {he.neath). Swear. 

Ham. Hie et uhique ? then we'll shift our ground. 
Come hither, gentlemen. . . . Swear by my sword. 

Ghost {hmeath). Swear. 

Ham. Well said, old mole ! canst work i' the earth so fast ? 
A worth}^ pioner ! '' * ^ 

Understand that as he says this his teeth chatter, ' pale as his shirt, 
his knees knocking each other.' Intense anguish ends with a burst of 
laughter, which 's nothing else than a spasm. Thenceforth Hamlet 
speaks as though he had a continuous nervous attack. His madness is 
feigned, I admit ; but his mind, as a door whose hinges are twisted, 
swings and bangs to every wind with a mad precipitance and with a 
discordant noise. He has no need to search for the strange ideas, 
apparent incoherencies, exaggerations, the deluge of sarcasms which he 
accumulates. He finds them within him ; he does himself no violence, 
he simply gives himself up to them. When he has the piece played 
which is to unmask his uncle, he raises himself, lounges on the floor, 
would lay his head in Ophelia's lap ; he addresses the actors, and com- 
ments on the piece to the spectators ; his nerves are strung, his excited 
thought is like a waving and crackling flame, and cannot find fuel 
enough in the multitude of objects surrounding it, upon all of which it 
seizes. When the king rises unmasked and troubled, Hamlet sings, and 
says, ' Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers — if the rest of my 
fortunes turn Turk with me — with two Provincial roses on my razed 
shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir ? ' ^ And he laughs 
terribly, for he is resolved on murder. It is clear that this state is a 
disease, and that the man will not survive it. 

In a soul so ardent of thought, and so mighty of feeling, what is left 
but disgust and despair ? We tinge all nature with the colour of our 
thoughts ; we shape the world according to our own ideas ; when our 
soul is sick . we see nothing but sickness in the universe : 

' This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most 
•xcellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging fimament, this majea 

' Hamlet, i. 5. * Ihid. iii. 2. 



CHAP. I V.J SHAKSPEARE. 33^ 

tical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than 
afoul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece cf work is a man! 
how noble in reason. ! how intinite in faculty ! in form and moving how express 
and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a god I 
the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, what is thia 
quintessence of dust ? man delights not me : no, nor woman neither. ' 

Henceforth his thought tarnishes whatever it touches. He rails 
bitterly before '.Ophelia against marriage and love. Beauty 1 Innocence I 
Beauty is but a means of prostituting innocence ; 

* Get thee to a nunnery : why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners ? . . . Wliat 
gh( uld such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven ? We are airant 
knaves, all ; believe none of us. ' ^ 

When he has killed Polonius by accident, he hardly repents it ; it 
is one fool less. He jeers lugubriously : 

• * King. Now Hamlet, where's Polonius f 

Hamlet. At supper. 
K. At supper ! where ? 

H. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten : a certain 
convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. ' ^ 

And he repeats in five or six fashions these gravedigger jests. Hia 
thoughts already inhabit a churchyard: to this hopeless philosophy 
your true man is a corpse. Duties, honours, passions, pleasures, pro- 
jects, science, all this is but a borrowed mask, which death removes, that 
we may see ourselves what we are, an evil-smelling and grinning skull. 
It is this sight he goes to see by Ophelia's grave. He counts the 
skulls which the gravedigger turns out: this was a lawyer's, that a 
courtier's. What salutations, intrigues, pretensions, arrogance! And 
here now is a clown knocking it about with his spade, and playing * at 
loggats with *em.* Caesar and Alexander have turned to clay, and make 
the earth fat ; the masters of the world have served to ' patch a wall.* 
* Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let hei paint an 
inch thick, to this favour she must come ; make her laugh at that.' * 
When one has come to this, there is nothing left but to die. 

This heated imagination, which explains Hamlet's nervous disease and 
his moral poisoning, explains also his conduct. If he hesitates to kill 
his uncle, it is not from horror of blood or from our modern scruples. 
He belongs to the sixteenth century, On board ship he wrote the 
order to behead Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and to do so without 
giving them * shriving-time.' He killed Polonius, he caused Ophelia's 
death, and has no great remorse for it. If for once he spared his uncle, 
it was because he found him praying, and was afraid of sending him to 
heaven. He thought he was killing him, when he killed Polonius, 
What his imagination robs him of, is the coolness and strength to go 
quietly and with premeditation to plunge a sword into a breast. He can 

' ffamlet, ii. 2. ' Ibid. iii. 1. s /j^'^ j^. 3 4 j^jv^ ^ "j"" 



34:U THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

only do the thing on a sudden suggestion ; he must have a moment of 
enthusiasm ; he must think the king is behind the arras, or else, seeing 
that he himself is poisoned, he must find his victim under his foil's 
point. He is not master of his acts ; occasion dictates them ; he can- 
not plan a murder, but must improvise it. A too lively imagination 
exhausts energy, by the accumulation of images and by the fury of 
in ten tn ess which absorbs it. You recognise in him a poet's soul, made 
not to act, but to dream, which is lost in contemplating the phar.toms 
of its creation, which sees the imaginary world too clearly to play a 
part in the real world ; an artist whom evil chance has made a prince, 
whom worse chance has made an avenger of crime, and who, desluied 
by nature for genius, is condemned by fortune to madness and unhappi- 
ness. Hamlet is Shakspeare, and, at the close of this gallery of por- 
traits which have all some features of his own, Shakspeare has painted 
himself in the most striking of all. 

If Racine or Corneille had framed a psychology, they would have 
said, with Descartes : Man is an incorporeal soul, served by organs, 
endowed with reason and will, living in palaces or porticos, made for 
conversation and society, whose harmonious and ideal action is de- 
veloped by discourse and replies, in a world constructed by logic beyond 
the realms of time and space. 

If Shakspeare had framed a psychology, he would have said, with 
Esquirol:^ Man is a nervous machine, governed by a mood, disposed 
to hallucinations, transported by unbridled passions, essentially un- 
reasoning, a mixture of animal and poet, having no rapture but mind, 
no sensibility but virtue, imagination for prompter and guide, and led 
at random, by the most determinate and complex circumstances, to 
pain, crime, madness, and death. 

IX. 

Could such a poet always confine himself to the imitation of nature? 
Will this poetical world whiclr is going on in his brain, never break 
loose from the laws of the world of reality ? Is he nc t powerful 
enough to follow his own ? He is ; and the poetry of Shakspeare 
naturally finds an outlet in the fantastical. This is the highest grade 
of unreasoning and creative imagination. Despising ordinary logic, 
it creates therefrom another ; it unites facts and ideas in a new order, 
apparently absurd, at bottom legitimate; it lays cpen ths Land of 
dreams, and its dreams deceive us like the truth. 

When we enter upon Sbakspeare's comedies, and even rils half- 
dramas,* it is as though we met him on the threshold, like an actor to 

* A French physician (1773-1844), celebrated for his endeavours toimprovt 
the treatment of the insane. — Tii. 

^ Twelfth Night, As you Like it, Tempest, Winter's Tale, etc. • CyTribelii* 
Merchant af Venice, etc. 



CHAP. IV .J SHAKSPEARE. 341 

whom the prologue is committed, to prevent misunderstanding on the 
part of the public, and to tell them : ' Do not take too seriously what 
you are about to hear ; I am joking. My brain, being full of fancies, 
desired to make plays of them, and here they are. Palaces, distant 
landscapes, transparent mists which blot the morning sky with theii 
gray clouds, the red and glorious flames into which the evening sun 
descends, white cloisters in endless vista through the ambient air, 
grottos, cottages, the fantastic pageant of all human passions, the mad 
sport of unlooked-for chances, — this is the medley of forms, colours, 
sentiments, which I shuffle and mingle before me, a many-tinted skein 
of glistening silks, a slender arabesque, whose sinuous curves, crossing 
and confused, bewilder the mind by the whimsical variety of their 
infinite complications. Don't regard it as a picture Don't look for a 
precise composition, harmonious and increasing interest, the skilful 
management of a well-ordered and congruous plot. I have novels 
and romances in my mind which I am cutting up into scenes. Never 
mind the JiniSy I am amusing myself on the road. It is not the end of 
the journey which pleases me, but the journey itself. Is there any 
good in going so straight and quick? Do you only care to know 
whether the poor merchant of Venice will escape Shylock's knife? 
Here are two happy lovers, seated under the palace walls on a calm 
night ; wouldn't you like to listen to the peaceful reverie which rises 
like a perfume from the bottom of their hearts ? 

** How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank I 
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears : soft stilhiess and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st^ 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins ; 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. 

{Enter mtrndaiu,) 
Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn : 
"With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, 
And draw her home with music. 
Jessica. I am never merry when I hear sweet music." ' 

* Have I not the nght, when I see the big laughing face of a clownish 
servant, to stop near him, see him mouth, frolic, gossip, go through 
his bundled pranks and his hundred grimaces, and treat myself to the 
comedy of his spirit and gaiety ? Two fine gentlemen pass by. I 
hear the rolling fire of their metaphors, and I follow their skirmish of 

' Merchant of Venice, v. 1. 



342 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IK 

wit. Here in a corner is the artless arch face of a young wench. 

Do you forbid me to linger by her. to watch her smiles, her sudden 

blushes, the childish pout of her rosy lips, the coquetry of her pretty 

motions ? You are in a great hurry if the prattle of this fresh and 

musical voice can't stop you. Is it no pleasure to view this succession 

of sentiments and figures ? Is your fancy so dull, that you must have 

tlie mighty mechanism of a geometrical plot to shake it ? My sixteenth 

century playgoers were easier to move. A sunbeam that had lost its 

vrSLj on an old wall, a foolish song thrown into the middle of a drama, 

occupied their mind as well as the blackest of catastrophes. After the 

horrible scene in which Shylock brandished his butcher's knife before 

Antonio's bare breast, they saw just as willingly the petty household 

wrangle, and the amusing bit of raillery which ends the piece. Like 

soft moving water, their soul rose and sank in an instant to the level of 

the poet's emotion, and their sentiments readily flowed in the bed he 

had prepared for them. They let him go about on his journey, and 

did not forbid him to make two voyages at once. They allowed several 

plots in one. If but the slightest thread united them, it was sufficient. 

Lorenzo eloped with Jessica, Shylock was frustrated in his revenge, 

Portia's suitors failed in the test imposed upon them ; Portia, disguised 

as a doctor of laws, took from her husband the ring which he had 

promised never to part with ; these three or four comedies, disunited, 

mingled, were shuffled and unfolded together, like an unknotted skein, 

in which threads of a hundred colours are entwined. Together with 

diversity, my spectators allowed improbability. Comedy is a slight 

winged creature, Avhich flutters from dream to dream, whose wings 

you would break if you held it captive in the narrow prison of common 

sense. Do not press its fictions too hard ; do not probe their contents. 

Let them float before your eyes like a charming swift dream. Let the 

fleeting apparition plunge back into the bright misty land from whence 

it came. For an instant it deceived you ; let it suflice. It is sweet 

to leave the world of realities behind you ; the mind can rest amidst 

impossibilities. We are happy when delivered from the rough chains 

of logic, when we wander amongst strange adventures, when we live 

in sheer romance, and know that we are living there. I do not try tc 

deceive you, and make you believe in the world where I take you. 

Ore nciust disbelieve it in order to enjoy it. We must give ourselves 

ap to illusion, and feel that we are giving ourselves up to it. We must 

smile as we listen. We smile in 2'he Winter's Tale, when Ilermione 

descends from her pedestal, and when Leontes discovers his wife in the 

statue, having believed her to be dead. We smile in Cymbeline^ when 

we see the lone cavern in which the young princes have live4 likii 

savage hunters. Improbability deprives emotions of their sting. The 

events interest or touch us without making us suffer. At the very 

moment when sympathy is too lively, we remind ourselves that it i§ 

all a fancy. They become like distant objects, whose distance sol tern 



I 



CHAP IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 343 

their outline, and wraps them in a luminous veil of blue air. Your 
true comedy is an opera. We listen to sentiments without thinking 
too much of plot. We follow the tender or gay melodies without 
reflecting that they interrupt the action. We dream elsewhere on 
hearing music ; here I bid you dream on hearing verse.' 

So the prologue retires, and then the actors come on. 

As you Like it is a caprice.^ Action there is none ; interest barely ; 
likelihood still less. And the whole is charming. Two cousins, princes 
daughters, come to a, forest with a court clown, Celia disguised as a 
shepherdess, Itosalind as a boy. They find here the old duke, Rosalind's 
father, who, driven out of his duchy, lives with his friends like a philo- 
sopher and a hunter. They find amorous shepherds, who with songs 
and prayers pursue intractable shepherdesses. They discover or they 
meet with lovers who become their husbands. Suddenly it is announced 
that the wicked Duke Frederick, who had usurped the crown, has just 
retired to a cloister, and restored the throne to the old exiled duke. 
Every one gets married, every one dances, everything ends with a 
' rustic revelry.' Where is the pleasantness of these puerilities ? First, 
the fact of its being puerile ; the absence of the serious permits repose. 
There are no events, and there is no plot. We peacefully follow the 
easy current of graceful or melancholy emotions, which guides and 
conducts us without wearying. The place adds to the illusion and 
charm. It is an autumn forest, in which the warm rays permeate the 
blushing oak leaves, or the half-stript ashes tremble and smile to the 
feeble breath of evening. The lovers wander by brooks that ' brawl * 
under antique roots. As you listen to them, you see the slim birches, 
whose cloak of lace grows glossy under the slant rays of the sun that 
gilds them, and the thoughts wander down the mossy vistas in which 
their footfall is lost. What better place could be chosen for the comedy 
of sentiment and the play of heart-fancies ? Is not this a fit spot in 
which to listen to love-talk ? Some one has seen Orlando, Rosalind's 
lover, in this glade ; she hears it and blushes. ' Alas the day ! . . . 
What did he, when thou sawest him ? What said he ? Hdw looked 
he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did lie ask for 
me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? and whoa 
shalt thou see him again ? ' ' Then, with a lower voice, somewhat 
hesitating: * Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled?' 
Not yet exhausted : * Do you not know I am a woman ? When I 
think, I must speak. Sweet, say on.'* Question on question, she 
closes the mouth of her friend, who is ready to answer. At every 
word she jests, but agitated, blushing, with a forced gaiety; her bosom 
heaves, and her heart beats. Nevertheless she is calmer when Orlando 

^ In English, a word is wanting to express the French fantaisic^ used by 
M. Taine, in describing this scene : what in music is called a capriccio. Ten- 
nyyon calls the PHncess a medley, but it is ambiguous.— Tr. 

' -4.'? j/on. Like it, iii 2. 



344: THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

comes; bandies words with him; sheltered under her disguise, she makes 
him confess that he loves Rosalind. Then she plagues him, like the 
frolic, the wag, the coquette she is. * Why, how now, Orlando, wheru 
have you been all this Avhile ? You a lover ? ' Orlando repeats his 
love, and she pleases herself by making him repeat it more than once. 
She sparkles with wit, jests, mischievous pranks ; pretty fits of anger, 
feigned sulks, bursts of laughter, deafening babble, engaging caprices. 
' Come, woo me, woo .ne ; for now I am in a holiday humour, and lika 
enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an I were yc\ir 
very very Rosalind ? * And every now and then she repeats with an 
arch smile, * And I am your Rosalind ; am T not your Rosalind ? ' * 
Orlando protests that he would die. Die! Who ever thought of dying 
for love I Leander ? He took one bath too many in the Hellespont ; 
so poets have said he died for love. Troilus? A Greek broke his 
head with a club ; so poets have said he died for love. Come, come, 
Rosalind will be softer. And then she plays at marriage with him, and 
makes Celia pronounce the solemn words. She irritates and torments 
her pretended husband ; tells him all the whims she means to indulge 
in, all the pranks she will play, all the bother he will have to endure. 
The retorts come one after another like fireworks. At every phrase 
we follow the looks of these sparkling eyes, the curves of this laugh- 
ing mouth, the quick movements of this supple figure. It is a bird's 
petulance and volubility. * O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that 
thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love.' Then she 
plays with her cousin Celia, sports with her hair, calls her by every 
woman's name. Antitheses without end, words all a-jumble, quibbles, 
pretty exaggerations, word-racket ; as you listen, you fancy it is the 
warbling of a nightingale. The trill of repeated metaphors, the 
melodious roll of the poetical gamut, the summer-symphony rustling 
under the foliage, change the piece into a veritable opera. The three 
lovers end by chanting a sort of trio. The first throws out a fancy 
the others take it up. Four times this strophe is renewed ; and the 
symmetry of ideas, added to the jingle of the rhymes, makes of a 
dialogue a concerto of love : 

* Phebe. Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. 
Silviu^. It is to be all made of sighs and tears ; 

And so am I for PheLe. 
P. And I for Ganymede 
O. And I for Rosalind. 
B. And I for no woman. . . , 
S. It is to be all made of fantasy. 

All made of passion, and all made of wishes^ 

All adoration, duty, and observance, 

All humbleness, all patience and impatience, 

All purity, all trial, all observance ; 

And so I am for Phebe. 

* As you Like it, iv. 1. 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE. 345 

P. And so am I for Ganymede. 
O. And so am I for Rosalind. 
i?. And so am I for do woman. '* 

The necessity of singing is so urgent, that a minute later songs brealc 
out of themselves. The prose and the conversation end in lyric poetry. 
Wo pass straight on into these odes. We do not find ourselves in a 
new country. We feel the distraction and foolish gaiety as if it were a 
(ioliJuy. We see the graceful couple whom the song brings before us, 
passing in the misty light * o'er the green corn-field,' amid the hum of 
sportive insects, on the finest day of the flowering spring- time. The 
unlikelihood grows natural, and we are not astonished when we see 
Hymen leading the two brides by the hand to give them to their hus- 
bands. 

Whilst the young folks sing, the old folk talk. Their life also is a 
romance, but a sad one. Shakspeare's delicate soul, bruised by the 
shocks of social life, took refuge in contemplations of solitary life. To 
forget the strife and annoyances of the world, he must bury himself in 
a wide silent forest, and 

* Under the shade of melancholy houghs, 

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time. ' ' 

We may look at the bright images which the sun carves on the white 

beech-boles, the shade of trembling leaves flickering on the thick moss, 
the long waves of the summit of the trees; the sharp sting of care is 
blunted ; we sufler no more, simply remembering that we suffered once , 
we feel nothing but a gentle misanthropy, and being renewed, we are 
the better for it. The old duke is happy in his exile. Solitude has 
given him rest, delivered him from flattery, reconciled him to nature. 
He pities the stags which he is obliged to hunt for food : 

* Come, shall we go and kill us venison ? 
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, 
Being native burghers of this desert city. 
Should in their own confines with forked heads 
Have their round haunches gored. ' * 

Nothing sweeter than this mixture of tender compassion, dreamy philo- 
sophy, delicate sadness, poetical complaints, and rustic songs. One of 
the lords sings : 

* Blow, blow, thou winter wind. 
Thou art not so unkind 

As man's ingratitude ; 
Thy tooth is not so keen, 
Because thou art not seen, 

Although thy breath be rude. 



* As you Like it, v. 2. * Ibid. ii. 7. ' Ibio., ii. 1. 



346 '^IlE RENAISSANCE. |BOOK 11 

Heigh-ho ! sing, heigh-ho ! unto the green holly : 
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly : 

Then, heigh-ho, the holly 1 

This life is most jolly.' * 

Amongst these lords is found a soul that suffers more, Jacques the 
melancholy, one of Shakspeare's best-loved characters, a transparent 
mask behind which we perceive the face of the poet. He is sad because 
he is tender ; he feels the contact of things too keenly, and what leaves 
the reb<t indifferent, makes him w^eep.^ He does not scold, he is sad ; 
he does not reason, he is moved ; he has not the combative spirit of a 
reforming moralist ; his soul is sick and weary of life. Impassioned 
imagination leads quickly to disgust. Like opium, it excites and shatters. 
It leads man to the loftiest philosophy, then lets him down to the whims 
of a child. Jacques leaves the others brusquely, and goes to the quiet 
nooks to be alone. He loves his sadness, and would not exchange it 
for joy. Meeting Orlando, he says : 

• Rosalind is your love's name ? 
0. Yes, just. 
J. I do not like her name.' ' 

He has the fancies of a nervous woman. He is scandalised because 
Orlando writes sonnets on the forest trees. He is whimsical, and finds 
subjects of grief and gaiety, where others would see nothing of the 
Kort : 

• A fool, a fool ! I met a fool i' the forest, 

A motley fool ; A miserable world ! 

As I do live by food, I met a fool ; 

"Who laid him down and hask'd him in the sun, 

And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms, 

In good set terms and yet a motley fool. . . . 

noble fool ! A worthy fool ! Motley's the only wear. . . . 

that I were a fool ! 

1 am ambitious for a motley coat.' * 

The next minute he returns to his melancholy dissertations, bright 
pictures whose vivacity explains his character, and betrays Shakspeare, 
hiding under his name ; 

* All the world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players 
They have their exits and their entrances • 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant. 
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. 
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, 

' As you Like it, ii. 7. 

' Compare Jacques with the Alceste of Moliere. It is the contrast betweoi 
a misanthrope through reasoning, and one through imagination. 

^ As you Like it, iii. 2. * Ibid. ii. 7. 



CHAP. IV; SHAKSPEARE. .Si^ 

And shining morning face, creeping like snail 

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover. 

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad 

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier. 

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, 

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 

Seeking the bubble reputation 

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the juaticef 

In fair round belly with good capon lined, 

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut. 

Full of wise saws and modern instances ; 

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifta 

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, 

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, 

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide 

For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice. 

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all. 

That ends this strange eventful history. 

Is second childishness and mere oblivion. 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.** 

As you Like it is a half-dream. Midsummer NighVs Dream Is a 
complete one. 

The scene, buried in the far-off mist of fabulous antiquity, carries us 
back to Theseus, Duke of Athens, who is preparing his palace for his 
marriage with the beautiful queen of the Amazons. The style, loaded 
with contorted images, fills the mind with strange and splendid visions, 
and the airy elf-world divert the comedy into the fairy-land from 
whence it sprung. 

Love is still the theme; of all sentiments, is it not the greatest 
fancy-weaver ? But we have not here for language the charming 
tittle-tattle of Eosalind ; it is glaring, like the season of the year. It 
does not brim over in slight conversations, in supple and skipping 
prose ; it breaks forth into long rhyming odes, dressed in magnificent 
metaphors, sustained by impassioned accents, such as a warm night, 
odorous and star-spangled, inspires in a poet who loves. Lysander and 
Hermia agree to meet : 

* Lys. To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold 
Her silver visage in the watery glass. 
Decking with hquid pearl the bladed grass, 
A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal, 
Through Athens' gates have w 3 devised to steaL 
Her. And in the wood, where often you and I 
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to he. , . • 
There my Lysander and myself shall meet." 

They get lost, and fall asleep, wearied, under the trees. Puck squeezes 
in the youth's eyes the juice of a magic flower, and changes his heart. 

» As^vu Like it, ii. 7 ' Midsummer Night's D'cam, i. 1 



348 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

Pr<;sently, when he awakes, he will become enamoured of the first 
woman he sees. Meanwhile Demetrius, Hermia's rejected lover, wanders 
with Helena, whom he rejects, in the solitary wood. The magic flower 
changes him in turn : he now loves Helena. The lovers flee and pursue 
one another, beneath the lofty trees, in the calm night. We smile at 
their transports, their complaints, their ecstasies, and yet we join in 
them. This passion is a dream, and yet it moves us. It is like those 
Hiry webs which we find at morning on the crest of the hedgerows where 
Ihe dew has spread them, and whose weft sparkles like a jewel-casket. 
Nothing can be more fragile, and nothing more graceful. The poet 
sports with emotions; he mingles, confuses, redoubles, interweaves them; 
he twines and untwines these loves like the mazes of a dance, and we 
see the noble and tender figures pass by the verdant bushes, under the 
radiant eyes of the stars, now wet with tears, now bright with rapture. 
They have the abandonment of true love, not the grossness of sensual 
love. Nothing causes us to fall from the ideal world in which Shak- 
speare conducts us. Dazzled by beauty, they adore it, and the spectacle 
of their happiness, their emotion, and their tenderness, is a kind of 
enchantment. 

Above these two couples flutters and hums the swarm of elves and 
fairies. They also love. Titania, their queen, has a young boy for her 
favourite, son of an Indian king, of whom Oberon, her husband, wishes 
to deprive her. They quarrel, so that the elves creep for fear into the 
acorn cups, in the golden primroses. Oberon, by way of vengeance, 
touches Titania's sleeping eyes with the magic flower, and thus on 
waking the nimblest and most charming of the fairies finds herself 
enamoured of a stupid blockhead with an ass' head. She kneeb before 
him ; she sets on his * hairy temples a coronet of fresh and fragrant 
flowers:' 

* And that same dew, which sometime on the buds 
"Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls. 
Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes. 
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewaiL'* 

She calls round her all her fairy attendants : 

* Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; 
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ; 
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
With purple gi'apes, green figs, and mulheniee f 
The honey -bags steal from the humble-bees. 
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs 
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 
To have my love to bed and to arise ; 

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies 

To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. . • • 

Come, wait upon him ; lead him to my bower. 

* Midsummer NigMi Dream, iv. 1 



CHAP. IV.] SHAKSPEARE 349 

TLe moon, metliinks, looks with a watery eye ; 
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower. 
Lamenting some enforced chastity. 
Tie up my lore's tongue, bring him silently. '* 

It was necessary, for her lave brayed horribly, and to all the offers 

of Titania, replied with a petition for hay. What can be sadder and 
nweeter than this irony of Shakspeare? What raillery against lov^, 
»nd what tenderness for love! The sentiment is divine: its object un- 
woithy. The heart is ravished, the eyes blind. It is a golden butterfly, 
Glittering in the mud ; and Shakspeare, whilst painting its misery, pre- 
serves all its beauty : 

* Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, 
"While I thy amiable cheeks do coy. 

And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, 

And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. . . , 

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. . , , 

So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 

Gently entwist ; the female ivy so 

Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 

0, how I love thee ! how I dote on thee !*■ 

At the return of morning, when 

* The eastern gate, all fiery red, 
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, 
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams,'* 

the enchantment ceases, Titania awakes on her couch of wild thyme 
and drooping violets. She drives the monster away ; her recollections 
of the night are effiiced in a vague twilight : 

* These things seem small and undistinguishabk^ 
Like far-ofl" mountains turned into clouds.' * 

And the fairies 

* Go seek some dew drops here 
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.' * 

Such is Shakspeare's fantasy, a light tissue of bold inventions, of ardent 
passions, melancholy mockery, dazzling poetry, such as one of Titania's 
elves would have made. Nothing could be more like the poet's mind 
than these nimble genii, children of air and flame, whose flights ' com- 
pass the globe ' in a second, who glide over the foam of the waves and 
skip between the atoms of the winds. Ariel flies, an invisible songster, 
wound shipwrecked men to console them, discovers the thoughts of 



' Mldmmmer NighVs I)veo,m, iii. 1. 2 ^5^-^^ j^^ j_ 

« Md. iii. 2. * Ihid. iv. 1. ^ lUd. ii. 1. 



350 THE RENAISSANCE. ^BdOK 11 

traitors, pursues the savage beast Caliban, spreads gorgeous visions befor* 
lovers, and does all in a lightning-flash : 

* Wliere the hee sucks, there suck I : 
In a cowslip's bell I lie. . . . 
Merrily, merrily shall I live now 
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. . , • 
I drink the air before me, and return 
Or ere your pulse twice beat.* * 

Shakspeare glides over things on as swift a wing, by leaps as su Jden^ 
with a touch as delicate. 

What a soul ! what extent of action, and what sovereignty of ac 
unique faculty! what diverse creations, and what persistence of the 
same impress! There they all are reunited, and all marked by the 
same sign, void of will and reason, governed by mood, imagination, or 
pure passion, destitute of the faculties contrary to those of the poet, 
dominated by tlie corporeal type which his painter's eyes have con- 
ceived, endowed by the habits of mind and by the vehement sensibility 
which he finds in himself.^ Go through the groups, and you will only 
discover in them divers forms and divers states of the same power. 
Here, the flock of brutes, dotards, and gossips, made up of a mechanical 
imagination ; further on, the company of men of wit, animated by a gay 
and foolish imagination ; then, the charming swarm of women whom 
their delicate imagination raises so high, and their self-forgetting love 
carries so far ; elsewhere the band of villains, hardened by unbridled 
passions, inspired by the artist's animation ; in the centre the mournfu' 
train of grand characters, whose excited brain is filled with sad or 
criminal visions, and whom an inner destiny urges to murder, madness, 
or death. Ascend one stage, and contemplate the whole scene : the 
aggregate bears the same mark as the details. The drama reproduces 
promiscuously uglinesses, basenesses, horrors, imclean details, profligate 
and ferocious manners, the whole reality of life just as it is, when it is 
unrestrained by decorum, common sense, reason, and duty. Comedy, 
led through a phantasmagoria of pictures, gets lost in the likely and the 
unlikely, with no other check but the caprice of an amused imagination, 
wantonly disjointed, and romantic, an opera without music, a concerto 
ot melancholy and tender sentiments, which bears the mind into the 
supernatural world, and brings before our eyes on its fairy-wings the 
genius which has created it. Look now. Do you not see the poet 
behind the crowd of his creations ? They have heralded his approach ; 
they have all shown somewhat of him. Heady, impetuous, impassioned, 
delicate, his genius is pure imagination, touched more vividly and by 

* Tempest, v. 1 

' There is the same law in the organic and in the moral world. It is wha'. 
Geoff re} Saint-Hilaire calls unity of composition. 



CHAP IV.l SHAKSPEARE. 35 j 

slighter things than ours. Hence his style, blooming with exuberant 
images, loaded with exaggerated metaphors, whose strangeness is like 
incoherence, whose wealth is superabundant, the work of a mind, which 
at the least incitement, produces too much and leaps too far. Hence 
his implied psychology, and his terrible penetration, which instan- 
taneously perceiving all the effects of a situation, and all the details oi' 
a character, concentrates them in every response, and gives his fir^ure a 
relief and a colouring which create illusion. Hence our emotion and 
tenderness. We say to him, as Desdemona to Othello ; * I love thee 
for the battles, sieges, fortunes thou hast passed, and for the distressful 
stroke that thy youth suifered.* 



352 THE RENAISSANCE "BOOK 11 



CHAPTER V. 

The Christian Renaissance, 

I. The vices of the Pagan Renaissance — Decay of the Southern civilisations. 
II. The Eefonnation — Aptitude of the Germanic races, and suitability of Northern 
climates — Albert Durer's bodies and souls — His niartjTdoms and last judg- 
ments — Luther — His conception of justice — Construction of Protestantism 
— Crisis of the conscience — Renovation of heart — Suppression of ceremonies 
—Transformation of the clergy. 

III. The Reformation in England — Tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts — ^Disorders 

of the clergy — Irritation of the people — The interior of a diocese — Persecu- 
tions and convulsions — The translation of the Bible — How biblical events 
and Hebraic sentiments are in accordance with contemporary manners and 
with the English character — The Prayer Book — Moral and manly feeling of 
the prayers and offices — Preaching — Latimer — His education — Character — 
Familiar and persuasive eloquence — Death — The martyrs under Mary — Eng- 
land thenceforth Protestant. 

IV. The Anglicans— Close connection between religion and society — How the 

religious sentiment penetrates literature — How the sentiment of the beauti- 
ful subsists in religion — Hooker — His breadth of mind and the fulness of 
his style — Hales and Chillingworth — Praise of reason and tolerance — Jeremy 
Taylor — His learning, imagination, and poetic feeling. 
V. The Puritans — Opposition of religion and the world — Dogmas — Morality — 

Scruples — Their triumph and enthusiasm — Their work and practical sense. 
VI. Bunyan — His life, spirit, and work — The Prospect of Protestantism iu 
England. 

I. ■ 

* T" WOULD have my reader fully understand,' says Luther in the 

I preface to his complete works, ' that I have been a monk and a 
bigoted Papist, so intoxicated, or rather so swallowed up in papistical 
doctrines, that I was quite ready, if I had been able, to kill or procure 
the death of those who should have rejected obedience to the Pope 
by so much as a syllable. I was not all cold or all ice in the Pope's 
defence, like Eckius and his like, who veritably seemed to me to con- 
stitute themselves his defenders rather for their belly's sake than 
because they looked at the matter seriously. More, to this day they 
seem to mock at him, like Epicureans. I for my part proceeded frankly, 
like a man who has horribly feared the day of judgment, and who yel 



CHAP, v.] THtJ CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 353 

hoped to be saved with a shaking of all his bones.' Again, when he 
saw Rome for the first time, he prostrated himself, saying, * I salute 
thee, holy Rome . . . bathed in the blood of so many martyrs.' 
Imagine, if you may, the effect which the shameless paganism of the 
Italian Renaissance had npon such a mind, so loyal, so Christian. 
The beauty of art, the charm of a refined and sensuous existence, had 
taken no hold upon him ; he judged morals, and he judged them with 
his conscience only. He regarded this southern civilisation with the 
eyes of a man of the north, and understood its vices only, like Ascham, 
who said he had seen * in Venice more libertie to sinne in ix dayea 
than ever I heard tell of in our noble Citie of London in ix yeare.' * 
Like Arnold and Channing in the present day, like all the men of Ger 
nianic^ race and education, he was horrified at this voluptuous life, now 
reckless and now licentious, but always void of moral principles, given 
up to passion, rendered light by irony, shut in by the present, destitute 
of belief in the infinite, with no other worship than that of visible beauty, 
no other object than the search after pleasure, no other religion than 
the terrors of the imagination and the idolatry of the eyes. 

*I would not,' said Luther afterwards, 'for a hundred thousand 
florins have gone without seeing Rome ; I should always have doubted 
whether I was not doing injustice to the Pope.* The crimes of Rome 
are incredible ; no one will credit so great a perversity who has not 
the witness of his eyes, ears, personal knowledge. . . . There reigned 
all the villanies and infamies, all the atrocious crimes, in particular 
blind greed, contempt of God, perjuries, sodomy. . , . We Germans 
swill liquor enough to split us, whilst the Italians are sober. But they 
are the most impious of men ; they make a mock of true religion, they 
scorn the rest of us Christians, because we believe everything in Scrip- 
ture. . , . There is a saying in Italy which they make use of when 
they go to church : " Come and let us conform to the popular error." 
" If we were obliged," they say again, " to believe in every word of 
God, we should be the most wretched of men, and we should never be 
able to have a moment's cheerfulness ; we must put a good face on it, 
and not believe everything." This is what Leo x. did, who, hearing a 
discussion as to the immortality or mortality of the soul, took the latter 
side. " For," said he, " it would be terrible to believe in a future state. 
Conscience is an evil beast, who arms man against himself." . . . The 
Italians are either epicureans or superstitious. The people fear St. 
Anthony and St. Sebastian more than Christ, because of the plagues 
they send. This is why, when they want to prevent the Italians from 
committing a nuisance anywhere, they paint up St. Anthony with his 
fiery lance. Thus do they live in extreme superstition, ignorant of 

* Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (1570), ed. Arber, 1870, first book, jf 831 

* See, in Corinne, Lord Nevil's judgment on tiie Italians. 

* Table Talk, jytssi-^i. 



854 ^HE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

God's worcl, not believing the resurrection of the flesh, nor life ever- 
lasting, and fearing only temporal evils. Their blasphemy also is 
frightful, . . . and the cruelty of their revenge is atrocious. When 
they cannot get rid of their enemies in s^ny other way, they lay ambu?fc 
for them in the churches, so that one man cleft his enemy's head before 
the altar. . , . There are often muraers at funerals on account of in- 
heritances. . , . They celebrate the Carnival with extreme impropriety 
and folly for several weeks, and they have made a custom of various 
sins and extravagances at it, for they are men without conscience, who 
live in open sin, and make light of the marriage tie. . . . We Ger- 
mans, and other simple nations, are like a bare clout ; but the Italians 
are painted and speckled with all sorts of false opinions, and disposed 
still to embrace many worse. . . . Their fasts are more splendid than our 
most sumptuous feasts. They dress extravagantly ; where we spend a 
florin on our clothes, they put down ten florins to have a silk coat. . . . 
When they (the Italians) are chaste, it is sodomy with them. There is 
no society amongst them. No one trusts another ; they do not come 
together freely, like us Germans ; they do not allow strangers to speak 
publicly with their wives : compared with the Germans, they are alto- 
gether men of the cloister.* These hard words are weak compared with 
the facts.^ Treasons, assassinations, tortures, open debauchery, the 
practice of poisoning, the worst and most shameless outrages, are un- 
blushingly and publicly tolerated in the open light of heaven. In 1490, 
the Pope's vicar having forbidden clerics and laics to keep concubines, 
the Pope revoked the decree, ' saying that that was not forbidden, 
because the life of priests and ecclesiastics was such that hardly one 
was to be found who did not keep a concubine, or at least who had 
not a courtesan.' Ceesar Borgia at the capture of Capua * chose forty 
of the most beautiful women, whom he kept for himself; and a pretty 
large number of captives were sold at a low price at Rome.' Under 
Alexander VI., *all ecclesiastics, from the greatest to the least, have 
concubines in the place of wives, and that publicly. If God hinder 
it not,' adds the historian, ' this corruption will pass to the monks and 
religious orders, although, to confess the truth, almost all the monas- 
teries of the town have become bawd-houses, without any one to speak 
against it.' With respect to Alexander vi., who loved his daughter 
Lucretia, the reader may find in Burchard the description of the mar- 
vellous orgies in which he joined with Lucretia and Ceesar, and the 
enumeration of the prizes which he distributed. Let the reader also 
read for himself the story of the bestiality of Pietro Luigi Farnese, the 
Pope's son, how the young and upright Bishop of Fano died from his out- 
rage, and how the Pope, speaking of this crime as ' a youthful levit/,* 

^ See Corpus historicorum medii cBvi, Q. Eccard, vol. ii. : Job. Burchardi, 
high cliamberlain to Alexander VI., Diarium,, p. 2134. Guicc'irdini, DelV U 
toria d' Italia, p. 211 ed. Pantheon Litteraire. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 35f. 

gave him in this secret bull * the fullest absolution from all the paini 
which he might have incurred by human incontinence, in whatever shape 
or with whatever cause.' As to civil security, Bentivoglio caused all the 
Marescotti to be put to death ; Hippolyto d'Este had his brother's eyes 
put out in his presence ; Caesar Borgia killed his brother ; murder i§ 
consonant with their public manners, and excites no wonder. A fisher- 
man was asked why he had not informed the governor of the town that 
he liad seen a body thrown into the water ; * he replied that he had 
Been about a hundred bodies thrown into the water during his lifetime 
in the same place, and that no one had ever troubled about it.' * In 
our town,' says an old historian, * much murder and pillage was done 
by day and night, and hardly a day passed but some one was killed.* 
Caesar Borgia one day killed Peroso, the Pope's favourite, between his 
arms and under his cloak, so that the blood spurted up to the Pope's 
face. He caused his sister's husband to be stabbed and then strangled 
in open daj^^, on the steps of the palace , count, if you can, his assassi- 
nations. Certainly he and his father, by their character, morals, open 
and systematic wickedness, have presented to Europe the two most suc- 
cessful images of the devil. To' sum up in a word, it was on the mode] 
of this society, and for this society, that Machiavelli wrote his Prince. 
The complete development of all the faculties and all the lusts of man, 
the complete destruction of all the restraints and all the shame of man, 
are the two distinguishing marks of this grand and perverse culture. 
To make man a strong being, hedged about with genius, audacity, pre- 
sence of mind, astute policy, dissimulation, patience, and to turn all this 
power to the acquisition of every kind of pleasure, pleasures of the body, 
of luxury, arts, literature, authority ; that is, to form and to set free an 
admirable and formidable animal, very greedy and well armed, — such 
was hii object ; and the effect, after a hundred years, is visible. They 
tore cue another to pieces like beautiful lions and superb panthers. 
In thi3 society, which was turned into a circus, amid so many hatreds, 
and when exhaustion was setting in, the foreigner appeared : all bent 
beneath his lash ; they were caged, and thus they pine away, in dull 
pleasures, with low vices,^ bowing their backs. Despotism, the In- 
quisition, the Cicisbei, dense ignorance, and open knavery, the shame- 
lessness and the smartness of harlequins and rascals, misery and vermin, 
—such is the issue of the Italian Renaissance. Like the old civilisations 
of Greece and Rome,^ like the modern civilisations of Provence and 
Spain, like all southern civilisations, it bears in its bosom an irremedi- 
able vice, a bad and false conception of man. The Germans of the six- 
teenth century, like the Germans of the fourteenth century, have rightly 

1 See, in Casanova's Memoires, the picture of this degradation. See als<i 
Ihe Memorie of Scipione Rossi, on the convents of Tuscany at the close of th€ 
■eighteenth century. 

' From Homer to Constantine, the ancient city was an associaticai of free 
men, whose aim was the conquest and destructiou of other freemen. 



356 THE RENAISSANCE, [BOOK i: 

judged it; witli tlieir simple common sense, with their fundamental 
honesty, they have put their fingers on the secret plague-spot. A 
society cannot be founded only on the pursuit of pleasure and power, 
a society can only be founded on the respect for liberty and justice. 
In order that the great human renovation which in the sixteenth (;en- 
tiiry raised the whole of Europe might be perfected and endure, it wa« 
necessary that, meeting with another race, it might develop anothor 
culture, and that from a more wholesome conception of existence it 
might educe a better form of civilisation. 

IL 

Thus, side by side with the Renaissance, was born the Reformation. 
It also Avas in fact a new birth, one in harmony with the genius of the 
Germanic peoples. The distinction between this genius and othcs ia 
its moral principles. Grosser and heavier, more given to gluttony ,-jii 
drunkenness,^ these nations are at the same time more under the 
influence of conscience, firmer in the observance of their word, more 
disposed to self-denial and sacrifice. Si\ph their ciimate has made them, 
and such they have continued, from Tacitus to Luther, from Knox to 
Gustavus Adolphus and Kant. In the course of time, and beneath 
the incessant action of the ages, the phlegmatic body, puffed out with 
gross food and strong drink, had become rusted, the nerves less ex- 
citable, the muscles less strung, the desires less seconded by action, 
the life more dull and slow, the soul more hardened and indifferent 
to the shocks of the body : mud, rain, snow, profusion of unpleasing 
and gloomy sights, the Avant of lively and delicate excitements of the 
senses, keep man in a militant attitude. Heroes in the barbarous ages, 
workers to-day, they endure weariness now as they courted wounds 
then ; now, as then, nobility of soul appeals to them ; thrown back 
upon the enjoyments of the soul, they find in these a world, the world 
of moral beauty. For them the ideal is displaced ; it is no longer 

* Memoires de la Margrave de Baireuth. See also Misson, Voyage en lialie^ 
1700. Compare the manners of the students at tlie present day. 'The Germane 
are, as you know, wonderful drinkers : no people in the world are more flati ering, 
more ciril, more officious ; hut jet they have terrible customs in the matter ol 
diinking. With them everything is done drinking ; they drink in doing eveiy- 
thing. There was not time during a visit to say three words, before you Vf.re 
astonished to see the collation arrive, or at least a few jugs of wine, accompanied 
by a plate of crusts of bread, dished up with pepper and salt ; a fatal preparotive 
for bad drinkers. You must be acquainted with the laws which are afterwards 
observed, sacred and inviolable laws. You must never drink without drinking tc 
some one's health ; also, after drinking, you must offer the wine to him whose 
liealth you liave drunk. You must never refuse the glass which is offered tc 
you, and you must naturally drain it to its last drop. Reflect a little, I Ix 
Beech you, on these customs, and see how it is possible to cease drinking; ac- 
cordingly, they iiever cease. In Germany it is a perpetual driuking-bout ; U 
drink in Germany is to drink forevHi*.' 



CHIP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. Z61 

amidst forms, made up of force and joy, but it is transferred to 
sentiments, made up of truth, law, attachment to duty, observance of 
order. What matters it if the storm niges and if it snows, if the wind 
blusttTS in the black pine-forests, or on the wan sea- surges where the 
eea-gu'b scream, if a man, stiff and blue with cold, shuttmg himself up 
in hii cottage, have but a dish of sourcrout or a piece of salt beef, 
under his smoky light and beside his fire of turf; another kingdom 
optni to reward him, the kingdom of inward contentment : his wife 
loves him, and is faithful; his children round his hearth spell out 
the old famiiy Bible ; he is the master in his home, the protector, 
the benefactor, honoured by others, honoured by himself; and if so 
be that he needs assistance, he knows that at the first appeal he will 
see his neighbours stand faithfully and bravely by his side. The 
reader need only refer to the portraits of the time, those of Italy and 
Germany ; he will comprehend at a glance the two races and the two 
civilisations, the Renaissance and the Reformation : on one side, a half- 
naked condottiere in Roman costume, a cardinal in his robes, amply 
draped, in a rich arm-chair, carved and adorned with heads of lions, 
leaves, dancing fauns, he himself satirical and voluptuous, with the 
easy and dangerous look of a politician and man of the world, craftily 
poised and on his guard ; on the other side, some honest doctor, a 
theologian, a simple man, with badly combed locks, stiff as a post, 
in his simple gown of coarse black serge, with big books of dogma 
ponderously clasped, a conscientious worker, an exemplary father of 
a family. See now the great artist of the age, a laborious and con- 
scientious workman, a follower of Luther's,^ a true Northman — Albert 
Durer. He also, like Raphael and Titian, has his ideal of man, an 
inexhaustible ideal, whence spring by hundreds living figures and the 
representations of manners, but how national and original I No care 
for expansive and happy beauty : to him nude bodies are but bodies 
undressed : straight shoulders, prominent stomachs, thin legs, feet 
pinched by shoes, his neighbour the carpenter's, or his gossip the 
sausage-seller's. The heads stand out in his etchings, remorselessly 
scraped and scooped away, savage or commonplace, often wrinkled 
by the fatigues of trade, generally sad, anxious, and patient, harshly 
and wretchedly transformed by the necessities of life. Where is the 
vista out of this minute copy of unsavoury truth ? Tc what land will 
the lofty and melancholy imagination betake itself ? The land of 
dreams, strange dreams, swarming with deep thoughts, sad contempla- 
tion Df human destiny, a vague notion of the great enigma, groping 
reileoticn, which in the dimness of the rough woodcuts, amidst obscure 
emblems and fantastic figures, tries to seize upon truth and justice. 
There was no need to search so far ; Durer had grasped them at the 
first effort. If there is any decency in the world, it is in the Madonnas 

' S«e his letters, and the sympathy expressed for Lnthe»* 



358 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

which are constantly springing to life under liis pencil. He was not, 
like Raphael, beginning by making them nude ; the most licentious hand 
would not venture to disturb one stiff fold of their robes ; with infant 
in arms, they think but of him, and will never think beyond him ; 
not only are they innocent, but they are virtuous. The good German 
housewife, for ever shut up, voluntarily and naturally, within her 
domestic duties and contentment, breathes out in all the fundamental 
sincerity, the seriousness, the unassailable loyalty of their attitudes and 
looks. He has done more ; with this peaceful virtue he has painted 
a militant virtue. There at last is the genuine Christ, the man cruci- 
fied, lean and fleshless through his agony, whose blood drops minute b^ 
minute in rarer drops, as the feebler and feebler pulsations give warn- 
ing of the last throe of a dying life. Not here, as in the Italian masters, 
a sight to charm the eyes, a mere flow of drapery, a disposition of 
groups. The heart, the very heart, is wounded by this sight : it is the 
just man oppressed, who is dying because the world hates justice. The 
mighty, the men of the age, are there, indifferent, satirical : a plumed 
knight, a big-bellied burgomaster, who, with hands folded behind his 
back, looks on, kills an hour. But the rest weep ; above the fainting 
women, angels full of anguish catch in their vessels the holy blood as it 
trickles down, and the stars of heaven veil their face not to behold 
so tremendous an outrage. Other outrages will come after ; tortures 
manifold, and the true martyrs beside the true Christ, resigned, silent, 
with the sweet expression of the earliest believers. They are bound to an 
old tree, and the executioner tears them with his iron-pointed lash. A 
bishop with clasped hands is praying where they have stretched him^ 
whilst an auger is being screwed into his eye. Above, amid the inter- 
lacing trees and gnarled roots, a band of men and women climb under 
the lash the breast of a hill, and from the crest they are hurled at the 
lance's point into the abyss ; here and there roll heads, stiffening bodies ; 
and by the side of those who are being decapitated, the swollen corpses, 
impaled, await the croaking ravens. All these sufferings must be under- 
gone for the confession of faith and the establishment of justice. But 
above there is a guardian, an avenger, an all-powerful Judge, whose 
day shall come. This light will shine, and the piercing rays of the last 
Bun already play, like a handful of darts, across the darkness of the age. 
In the summit of heaven appears the angel in his shining robe, lead- 
ing the eager hosts, the flashing swords, the inevitable arrows cf the 
avengers, who are to trample upon and punish the earth ; mankind 
falls down beneath their charge, and now the jaw of the infernal monster 
grinds tlie head of the wicked prelates. This is the popular poem of 
conscience, and from the days of the apostles, man has not had a more 
sublime and complete conception.^ 



* See a .'ollection of Albert Durer's wood-carvings Remark the resemblance o? 
his Apocalyjyse to Luther's familiar Table Talk. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 359 

For conscience, like other things, has its poem ; hy a natural in- 
vasion the all-powerful idea of justice overflows from the soul, covers 
heaven, and enthrones there a new deity. A formidable deity, who is 
scarcely liko the calm intelligence which serves philosophers to explain 
the order of things ; nor to that tolerant deity, a kind of constitutional 
king, whom Voltaire discovered at the end of a chain of argument, 
whom Beranger sings of as of a comrade, and whom he salutes ' sana 
lui demander rien.' It is the just Judge, sinless and stern, who exacts 
of man a strict account of his visible actions and of all his invisible 
feelings, who tolerates no forgetfulness, no dejection, no iailing, before 
whom every approach to weakness or error is an outrage and a treason. 
What is our justice before this strict justice ? People lived at peace in 
the times of ignorance ; at most, when they felt themselves to blame, 
they went for absolution to a priest ; all was ended by their buying a 
kindly indulgence; there was a tariff, as there still is; Tetzel the 
Dominican declares that all sins are blotted out * as soon as the money 
chinks in the box.' Whatever be the crime, there is a quittance ; 
even ' si Dei matrem violavisset^^ he might go home clean and sure of 
heaven. Unfortunately the vendors of pardons did not know that all 
was changed, and that the intellect was become manly, no longer gab 
bling words mechanically like a catechism, but sounding them anxiously 
like a truth. In the universal Renaissance, and in the mighty growth 
of all human ideas, the German idea of duty blooms like the rest. 
Now, when we speak of justice, it is no longer a lifeless phrase which 
we repeat, but a living idea which we produce ; man sees the object 
which it represents, and feels the emotion which summons it up ; he 
no longer receives, but he creates it ; it is his work and his tyrant ; he 
makes it, and submits to it. ' These words Justus and justitia Dei^ says 
Luther, 'were a thunder to my conscience. I shuddered to hear them; 
I told myself, if God is just. He will punish me.'^ For as soon as the 
conscience discovers the idea of the perfect model,^ the least feelings 
appeared to them to be crimes, and man, condemned by his own 
scruples, fell prostrate, and, 'as it were, swallowed up' w ih horror. 
'J, who lived the life of a spotless monk,' says Luther, ' yet j"elt within 
013 the troubled conscience of a sinner, without managing tj assure 
myself as to the satisfaction which I owed to God. . . . Then I said to 
m}iself: Am I then the only one who ought to be sad in my spirit? . . , 

^ Calvin the logician of the Reformation, well explains the dependence of aU 
the Protestaat ideas in his Institutes of the Chi^ktian ReUrjion, i. (1.) Tlie idea 
of the perfect God, the stern Judge. (2.) The alarm of conscience. (3.) The 
impotence and corruption of nature. (4.) The advent of free grace. (6.) The 
rejection of rites and ceremonies. 

* * In the measure in which pride is rooted within us, it always appears to uj 
as though we were just and whole, good and holy ; unless we are convinced by 
manifest arguments of our injustice, uncleanness, folly, and impurity. For we 
are not convinced of it if we ttu^ our eyes to our own persons merely, And 



360 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

Oh, what horrible spectres and figures I used to see !* Thus alarmed, 
conscience believes that the terrible day is at hand. * The end of the 
world is near. . . . Our children will see it ; perchance we ourselves. 
Once in this mood he had terrible dreams for six months at a time. 
Like the Christians of the Apocalypse, he fixes the moment : it will 
come at Easter,, or at the Conversion of Saint Paul. One theologian, 
his friend, thought of giving all his goods to the poor; *but would tl -2-9 
receive it ? * he said. ' To-morrow night we shall be seated in heaven. 
Under such anguish the body gives way. For fourteen days Lulhar 
was in such a condition, that he could neither drink, eat, nor sleept 

* Day and night,' his eyes fixed on a text of Saint Paul, he saw the 
Judge, and His inevitable hands. Such is the tiagedy which is enacted 
in all Protestant souls — the eternal tragedy of the conscience ; and its 
issue is a new religion. 

For nature alone «nd unassisted cannot rise from this abyss by itself. 

* It is so corrupted, that it does not feel the desire for heavenly things. 
. . , There is in it before God nothing but lust.' Good intentions 
cannot spring from it. 'For, terrified by the vision of his sin, man 
could not resolve to do good, troubled and anxious as he is ; on the 
contrary, abased and crushed by the weight of his sin, he falls into 
despair and hatred of God, as it was with Cain, Saul, Judas ;' so that, 
abandoned to himself, he can find nothing within him but the rage and 
the oppression of a despairing wretch or a devil. In vain he might try 
to recover himself by good works : our good deeds are not pure; even 
though pure, they do not wipe out the stain of previous sins, and more- 
over they do not take away the original corruption of the heart : they 
are only boughs and blossoms, the inherited poison is in the sap. Man 
must descend to the heart, underneath literal obedience and the reach 
of law ; from the kingdom of law he must penetrate into that of grace ; 
from exacted righteousness to spontaneous goodness; beneath his 
original nature, which led him to selfishness and earthly things, a 
second nature is developed, leading him to sacrifice and heavenly 
things. Neither my works, nor my justice, nor the works or justice 
of any creature or of all creatures, could work in me this wonderful 
change. One alone can do it, the pure God, the Just Victim, tho 
Saviour, the Redeemer, Jesus, my Christ, by imputing to me His justice, 
by pouring upon me His merits, by drowning my sin under His saci ifice. 

if we do not think also of God, who is the only rule by which we must sbar* 
and complete this judgment. . . . And then that which had a fair appear.' nee zi 
vii'tue will be found to be nothing but weakness. 

*This is the source of that horror and wonder by which the ScriptiireT tell ta 
tlie saints were afflicted and cast down, when and as often as they fdt the presence 
ef God. For we see those who were as it might be far from God, and who ?7fcr6 
confident and went about with a stiff neck, as soon as He displayed His glory to 
them, they were shaken and terrified, so much so that they were overwhelmed, 
h&^ swallowai up in the horror of death> and that they fainted awr y ' 



CHAP. V.l THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 36j 

The world is a * mass of perdition,' ^ predestined to hell. Lord Jesus, 
draw me back, select me from this mass. I have no claim to it ; there 
is nothing in me not abon^iinable ; this very prayer is inspired and 
formed within me by Thee. But I weep, and my breast heaves, and 
my heart is broken. Lord, let me feel myself redeemed, pardoned, Thy 
elect one, Thy faithful one ; give me grace, and give me faith I ' Then,* 
says Luther, ' I felt myself bora anew, and it seemed that I was 
entering the open gates of heaven.* 

What remains to be done after this renovation of the heart? 
Nothing : all religion is in that : the rest must be reduced or sup- 
pressed; it is a personal affair, a secret dialogue between man and 
God, where there are only two things in question, — the very word of 
God as it is transmitted by Scripture, and the emotions of the heart of 
man, as the word of God excites and maintains them.^ Let us do away 
with the rites that appeal to the senses, wherewith men would replace 
this intercourse between the invisible mind and the visible judge, — 
mortifications, fasts, corporeal penance. Lent, vows of chastity and 
poverty, rosaries, indulgences ; rites serve only to smother living piety 
beneath mechanical works. Away with the mediators by which men 
have attempted to impede the direct intercourse between God and man, 
— namely, saints, the Virgin, the Pope, the priest; whosoever adores or 
obeys them is an idolater. Neither saints nor Virgin can convert or save 
us ; God alone by His Christ can convert and save. Neither Pope nor 
priest can fix our faith or forgive our sins ; God alone instructs us by 
His word, and absolves us by His pardon. No more pilgrimages or relics; 
no more traditions or auricular confessions. A new church appears, 
and therewith a new worship ; ministers of religion change their tone, 
the worship of God its form ; the authority of the clergy is diminished, 
and the pomp of services is reduced: they are reduced and diminished 
the more, because the primitive idea of the new theology is more absorb- 
ing ; so much so, that in certain sects they have disappeared altogether. 
The priest descends from the lofty position in which the right of fol - 
giving sins and of regulating faith had raised him over the heads of 
the: laity ; he returns to civil society, marries like the rest, begins to 
be once more an equal, is merely a more learned and pious man tluin 

* Saint Augustine. 

2 Melanchthon, preface to Luther's Worha : * It is clear that the works of 
TLomas, Scotus, and the like, are utterly silent about tlie element of justification 
by faith, and contain many errors concerning the most important questions relat- 
ing to the church. It is clear that the discourses of the monks in their churches 
almost throughout the world were either fables about purgatory and the saints, or 
else some kind of dogma of law or discipline, without a word of the gospel con- 
cerning Christ, or else were vain trifles about distinctions in the matter of fowl, 
about feasts and other human traditions. . . . The gospel is pure, incorruptible^ 
and not diluted with Gentile opinions.' See also Fox, Acts and Monuments, 8 vols., 
ed. Townsend, 1843» ii 42. 



<j62 the renaissance. [BOOK II 

others, their elect and their adviser. The church becomes a temple^ 
empty of images, decorations, ceremonies, sometimes aUogether bare ; a 
simple meeting-house, where, between whitewashed walls, from a plain 
pulpit, a man in a black gown speaks without gesticulations, reads a 
passage from the Bible, begins a hymn, which the congregation takes 
up. There is another place of pra)'er, as little adorned and not less 
venerated, the domestic hearth, where every night the father of the 
faniily, befoje his servants and his children, prays aloud and reads the 
Scriptures. An austere and free religion, purged from sensualism and 
obedience, interior and personal, which, set on foot by the awakening 
of the conscience, could only be established among races in which each 
man found within his nature the persuasion that he alone is responsible 
for his actions, and always bound to the observance of his duty. 

III. 

It must be admitted that the Reformation entered England by a 
side door ; but it is enough that it came in, whatever the manner: for 
great revolutions are not introduced by "court intrigues and official 
sleight of hand, but by social conditions and popular instincts. When 
five millions of men are converted, it is because five millions of men 
wish to be converted. Let us therefore leave on one side the intrigues 
in high places, the scruples and passions of Henry viii.,^ the pliability 
and plausibility of Cranmer, the vacillations and basenesses of the Par- 
liament, the oscillation and tardiness of the Reformation, begun, then 
arrested, then pushed forward, then with one blow violently pushed back, 
then spread over the whole nation, and hedged in by a legal establishment, 
a singular establishment, built up from discordant materials, but yet solid, 
and durable. Every great change has its root in the soul, and we have 
only to look close into this deep soil to discover the national inclina- 
tions and the secular irritations from which Protestantism has issued. 

A hundred and fifty years before, it had been on the point of 
bursting forth ; Wycliff had appeared, the Lollards had sprung up, 
the Bible had been translated ; the Commons had proposed the con- 
fiscation of ecclesiastical property; then, under the pressure of the 
united Church, royalty and aristocracy, the growing Reformation being 
crushed, disappeared underground, only to reappear at long intervals 
by the sufferings of its martyrs. The bishops had received the right oi 
imprisoning without trial laymen suspected of heresy ; they had burned 
Lord Cobham alive ; the kings chose their ministers from the bench ; 
settled in authority and pride, they had made the nobility and people 
bend under tlie secular sword which had been entrusted to them, and 
in their hands the stern network of law, which from the Conquest hau 
compressed the nation in its iron grasp, had become more stringent 



1 See Froude, Hist'>-Tv of Enaland, i.-vi. The conduct ot Henry vui. 1« 

xhvie presented in a ne <» iii'iit. 



CHAP. V.J iHE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 363 

and mon injurious. Venial acts had been construed into crimes, and 
tJie judicial repression, extended to faults as well as to outrages, had 
changed the police into an inquisition. ' " Offences against chastity," 
*' heresy," or " matter sounding thereunto," " witchcraft," " drunken- 
ness," "scandal," "defamation," "impatient words," "broken promises," 
" untruth," " absence from church," " speaking evil of saints," " non 
payment of offerings," complaints against the constitutions of the courts 
themselves;'^ all these transgressions, imputed or suspected, brought 
folk before the ecclesiastical tribunals, at enormous expense, with long 
delays, from great distances, under a captious procedure, resulting 
in heavy fines, strict imprisonments, humiliating abjurations, public 
penances, and the menace, often fulfilled, of torture and the stake 
Judge from a single fact : the Earl of Surrey, a relative of the king, 
was accused before one of these tribunals of having neglected a fast 
Imagine, if you can, the minute and incessant oppressiveness of such a 
code ; to what a point the whole of human hfe, visible actions and 
invisible thoughts, was surrounded and held down by it; how by 
enforced accusations it penetrated to every hearth and into every con- 
science ; with what shamelessness it was transformed into a vehicle 
for extortions ; what secret anger it excited in these townsfolk, these 
peasants, obliged sometimes to travel sixty miles and back, to leave in 
r*>e or other of the numberless talons of the law^ a part of their savings, 
sometimes their whole substance and that of their children. A man 
begins to think when he is thus down-trodden; he asks himself quietly 
if it is really by divine dispensation that mitred thieves thus practise 
tyranny and pillage; he looks more closely into their lives; he wants to 
know if they themselves practise the regularity which they impose on 
others ; and on a sudden he learns strange things. Cardinal Wolsey 
writes to the Pope, that ' both the secular and regular priests were in 
the habit of committing atrocious crimes, for which, if not in orders, they 
would have been promptly executed;^ and the laity were scandalbed 
to see such persons not only not degraded, but escaping with complete 
impunity,' A priest convicted of incest with the prioress of Kilboum 
was simply condemned to carry a cross in a procession, and to pay three 
shillings and fourpence ; at which rate, I fancy, he would renew the 
practice. In the preceding reign (Henry vii.) the gentlemen and farmeri 
of Carnarvonshire had laid a complaint accusing the clergy of systemati- 
cally seducing their wives and daughters. Thei e were brothels in London 
for the especial use of priests. As to the abuse of the confessional, read 
in the original the familiarities to which it opened the door.* The 



* Froude, i. 191. Petition of Commons. This public and authentic prot^t 
shows up all the details of clerical organisation and oppression. 

* Froude, i. 26 ; ii. 192. ^ In May 1528. Froude, 1. 194. 

* Hak, Criminal Causes. Suppression qf the Moruisterieg, Camden Soc. Pub' 
UcHtions. Froude, I 194-201. 



364 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK H 

bishops jrave livings to their children whilst they were still young. The 
holy Father Prior of Maiden Bradley hath but six children, and but 
one daughter married yet of the goods of the monastery ; trusting 
shortly to marry the rest. The monks used to drink after supper 
till ten or twelve next morning, and come to matins drunk. 'They 
played cards or dice. Some came to service in the aftornoci \s, and only 
then for fear of corporal punishments. The royal visitors fcund coii« 
cubines in the secret apartments of the abbots. At the nunnery of 
Sion, the confessors seduced the nuns and absolved them at the iamo 
time. There were convents, Burnet tells us, where all the recluses 
were found pregnant. About * two-thirds' of the English monks lived 
in such sort, that 'when their enormities were first read in the Parlia- 
ment House, there was nothing but "Down with them!"'^ What a 
spectacle for a nation in whom reason and conscience were awakening I 
Long before the great outburst, the public indignation muttered 
ominously, and was accumulating for the revolt ; priests were yelled 
at in the streets or * thrown into the kennel;' women would not 're- 
ceive the sacrament from hands which they thought polluted.'* When 
the apparitor of the ecclesiastical courts came to serve a process, he 
was driven away with insults. ' Go thy way, thou stynkyng knave, ye 
are but knaves and brybours everych one of you.' A mercer broke an 
apparitor's head with his yard. * A waiter at the sign of the Cock' 
said ' that the sight of a priest did make him sick, and that he would 
go sixty miles to indict a priest.' Bishop Fitz-James wrote to Wolsey, 
that the juries in London were ' so maliciously set in favorem hcereticoi 
prai'itatis, that they will cast and condemn any clerk, though he were 
as innocent as Abel.' ^ Wolsey himself spoke to the Pope of the 
' dangerous spirit' which was spread abroad among the people, and he 
foresaw a Reformation. When Henry viii. laid the axe to the tree, 
and slowly, Avith mistrust, struck a blow, then a second lopping off the 
branches, there were a thousand, nay, a hundred thousand hearts which 
approved of it, and would themselves have struck the trunk. 

Consider the internal state of a diocese, that of Lincoln for instatce,* 
at this period, about 1521, and judge by this example of the mannei 
in which the ecclesiastical machinery works throughout the whole oi 
England, multiplying martyrs, hatreds, and conversions. Bishop 
Longland summons the relatives of the accused, brothers, women, and 
children, and administers the oath; as they have already been prose- 
cuted and have abjured, they must make oath, or they are relapsed, 
»nd the fagots await them. Then they denounce their kinsman and 

' Latimer's Sermons. 

3 They called them * Jiorsyn prestes,' ' horson* or ' whorson knaves.* Hale 
p. 99 •, quoted by Froude, i. 199. 
3 Froude, i. 101 (1514). 
^ Fox, Acts and Monuments, iv. 231. 



^HAP. V J THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 3»]5 

themselves. One has tanght the other in English the Epistle of Saint 
James. This man, having forgotten several words of the Pater and 
Credo in Latin, can only repeat them in English. A woman turned 
her face from the cross which was carried about on Easter morning 
Several at church, especially at the moment of the elevation, would not 
say their prayers, and remained seated ' duinb as beasts.' Three men, 
including a carpenter, passed a night together reading a bock ef the 
Scriptures. A pregnant woman went to mass not fasting. A brazier 
denied the Real Presence. A brickmaker kept the Apocalypse in his 
possession. A thresher said, as he pointed to his work, that he was 
going to make God come out of his straw. Others spoke lightly of 
pilgrimage, or of the Pope, or of relics, or of confession. And then 
fifty of them were condemned the same year to abjure, to promise to 
denounce each other, and to do penance all their lives, on pain of being 
burnt as relapsed heretics. They were shut up in different 'monas- 
teries;' there they were to be maintained by alms, and to work for their 
support ; they were to appear with a fagot on their shoulders at market, 
and in the procession on Sunday, then in a general procession, then at 
the punishment of a heretic ; ' they were to fast on bread and ale only 
every Friday during their life, and every Even of Corpus Christy on 
bread and water, and carry a visible mark on their cheek.' Beyond 
that, six were burnt alive, and the children of one, John Scrivener, 
were obliged themselves to set fire to their father's wood pile. Do you 
think that a man, burnt or shut up, was altogether done with ? He is 
silenced, I admit, or he is hidden ; but long memories and bitter re- 
sentments endure under a forced silence. People saw^ their companion, 
relation, brother, bound by an iron chain, with clasped hands, praying 
amid the smoke, whilst the flame blackened his skin and destroyed his 
flesh. Such sights are not forgotten ; the last words uttered on the 
fagot, the last appeals to God and Christ, remain in their hearts all- 
powerful and ineffaceable. They carry them about with them, and 
silently ponder ovel them in the fields, at their labour, when they think 
themselves alone; and then, darkly, passionately, their brains work. 
For, beyond this universal sympathy Avhich gathers mankind about the 
oppressetl, there is the working of the religious sentiment. The crisis 
of conscience has begun which is natural to this race ; they meditate on 
salvation, they are alarmed at their condition: terrified at the judgments 
of God, they ask themselves whether, living under imposed obedience 
and ceremonies, they do not become culpable, and merit damnation. 
Can this terror be smothered by prisons and torture ? Fear against fear, 
the only question is, which is the strongest ? They will soon know it : 
for the peculiarity of these inward anxieties is that they grow beneath 

* See, passim, the prints of Fox. All the details which follow are from bio • 
grapMes. See those of Cromwell, by Carlyle, of Fox the Quaker, of Bunyan, and 
the trials reported at length by Fox. 



366 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

constraint and oppression ; as a welling spring which we Tainly try to 
STamp out under stones, they bubble and leap up and swell, until their 
excessive accumulation bursts out, disjointing or splitting the regular 
masonry under Avhich men endeavoured to bury them. In the solitude 
of the fields, or during the long winter nights, men dream ; soon they 
fear, and become gloomy. On Sunday at church, obliged to crosg 
themselves, to kneel before the cross, to receive the host, they shudder, 
and think it a mortal sin. They cease to talk to their friends, remain 
for hours with bowed heads, sorrowful ; at night their wives hear them 
sigh ; unable to sleep, they rise from their beds. Picture such a wan 
figure, full of anguish, nourishing under his sternness and coolness a 
secret ardour : he is still to be found in England in the poor shabby 
dissenter, who, Bible in hand, stands up suddenly to preach at a street 
corner ; in those long-faced men who, after the service, not having had 
enough of the prayers, sing a hymn out in the street. The sombre 
imagination has started, like a woman in labour, and its conception 
swells day by day, tearing him who contains it. Through the long 
muddy winter, the complaint of the wind sighing among the ill-fitting 
ratters, the melancholy of the sky, continually flooded with rain or 
covered with clouds, add to the gloom of the lugubrious dream. 
Thenceforth man has made up his mind ; he will be saved at all costs. 
At the peril of his life, he obtains one of the books which teach the 
way of salvation, Wycliff's Wicket Gate, The Obedience of a Christian, or 
sometimes Luther's Revelation of Antichrist, but above all some portion 
of the word of God, which Tyndale had just translated. One hid his 
books in a hollow tree ; another learned by heart an epistle or a gospel, 
80 as to be able to ponder it to himself even in the presence of his 
accusers. When sure of his friend, he speaks with him in private ; and 
peasant talking to peasant, labourer to labourer — you know what the 
effect would be. It was the yeomen's sons, as Latimer said, who more 
than all others maintained the faith of Christ in England ;^ and it was 
with the yeomen's sons that Cromwell afterwards reaped his Puritan 
victories. When such words are whispered through a nation, all 
official voices clamour in vain : the nation has found its poem, it sto|ia 
its ears to the troublesome would-be distractors, and presently sings it 
out with a full voice and from a full heart. 

But the contagion had even reached the men in oflfice, and Henry 
VIII. at last permitted the English Bible to be published.^ England had 
her book. Every one, says Strype, who could buy this book either 
read it assiduously, or had it read to him by others, and many well 
advanced in years learned to read with the same object. On Sunday 
the poor folk gathered at the bottom of the churches to hear it read. 



' Froude, ii. 33 : 'The bishops said in 1529, *' In the crime of heresy, thanked 
be Gcd, there hath no notable person fallen in our time." ' 

* \ii 1536. Strype's Memorials, appendix. Froude, iii. ch, 12. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 367 

Maldon, a yonng man, afterwards related that he had clab^ed hig 

savings with an apprentice to buy a New Testament, and that .01 fear 
of his fathf»r, they had hidden it in their straw mattress. In vain 
the king in his proclamation had ordered people not to rest too much 
upon their own sense, ideas, or opinions ; not to reason publicly about 
it in the public taverns and alehouses, but to have recourse to learned 
and authoriised men ; the seed sprouted, and they chose rather to take 
God's word in the matter than men's. Maldon declared to his mother 
that he would not kneel to the crucifix any longer, and his father in a 
rage beat him severely, and was ready to hang him. The jireface itself 
invited men to independent study, saying that * the Bishop of Rome 
has studied long to keep the Bible from the people, and specially from 
princes, lest they should find out his tricks and his falsehoods ; . . . 
knowing well enough, that if the clear sun of God's word came over 
tb-». heat of the day, it would drive away the foul mist of his devilish 
doctrines.*^ Even on the admission, then, of official voices, they had 
there the pure and the whole truth, not merely speculative but moral 
truth, without which we cannot live worthily or be saved. Tyndale 
the translator says: 

' The right waye (yea and the onely waye) to understand the Scripture unto 
salvation, is that we ernestlye and above all thynge serclie for the profession of our 
baptisme or covenauntes made betwene God and us. As for an example. Christe 
say th, Mat. v. , Happy are the mercyfull, for they shall obtayue mercye. Lo, hert 
God hath made a covenaunt wyth us, to be mercyfull unto us, yf we wyll be mercy- 
full one to another. ' 

What an expression I and with what ardour men pricked by the 
ceaseless reproaches of a scrupulous conscience, and the presentiment 
of the dark future, would lavish on these pages the whole attention of 
eyfts and heart ! 

I have before me one of these old square folios,* in black letter, in 
which the pages, worn by horny fingers, have been patched together, in 
^hich an old engraving figures forth to the poor folk the deeds and 
menaces of the God of Israel, in which the preface and table of contents 
pDint out tc simple people the moral which is to be drawn from each 
tragic history, and the application which is to be made :)f each venerr.ble 
precept. Hence have sprung much of the English language, and half 
of the English manners ; to this day the country is biblical ; ^ it was 
these big books which had transformed Shakspeare s England. To 
understand this great change, try to picture these yeomen, these shop- 
keepers, who in the evening placed this Bible on their table, and bare- 
headed, with veneration, heard or read one of its chapters. Think that 
they have no other books, that theirs was a virgin mind, that every 



* Coverdale. Froude, iii. 81. • 1.549. Tyndah's transl? J'on, 

• An expression of Stendhal's ; it was his general impression- 



308 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK Tl 

impression would make a furrow, that the monotony of mechanical 
existence rendered them entirely open to new emotions, that they 
opened this book not for amusement, but to discover in it their doom 
of life and death ; in brief, that the sombre and impassioned imagina- 
tion of the race raised them to the level of the grandeurs and terrors 
which were to pass before their eyes. Tyndale, the translator, wrote 
with such sentiments, condemned, hunted, in concealment, his spiiit 
full of the idea of a speedy death, and of the great God for whom at 
last he mounted the funeral pyre ; and the spectators who had seen 
the remorse of Macbeth^ and the murders of Shakspeare can listen to 
the despair of David, and the massacres accumulated under Judges and 
Kings. The short Hebrew verse-style took hold upon them by itn 
uncultivated severity. They have no need, like the French, to have 
the ideas developed, explained in fine clear language, to be modified 
and bound together.^ The serious and pulsating tone shakes them at 
once ; they understand it with the imagination and the heart ; they are 
not, like Frenchmen, enslaved to logical regularity ; and the old text, 
80 confused, so lofty and terrible, can retain in their language its Avild- 
ness and its majesty. More than any people in Europe, by their innate 
concentration and rigidity, they realise the Semitic conception of the 
solitary and almighty God ; a strange conception, which we, with all 
our critical methods, have hardly reconstructed at the present day. 
For the Jew, for the powerful minds who wrote the Pentateuch,* for 
the prophets and authors of the Psalms, life as we conceive it, was 
secluded from living things, plants, animals, firmament, sensible objects, 
to be carried and concentrated entirely in the one Being of Avhom they 
are the work and the puppets. Earth is the footstool of this great God, 
heaven is His garment. He is in the world, amongst His creatures, as 
an Oriental king in his tent, amidst his arms and his carpets. If you 
enter this tent, all vanishes before the idea of the master ; you see but 
him; nothing has an individual and independent existence: these arms 
are but made for his hands, these carpets for his foot; you imagine 
them only as spread for him and trodden by him. The awe-inspiring 
fiice and the menacing voice of the irresistible lord appear behind his 
instruments. So far, the Jew, nature, and men are nothing of them- 
selves ; they are for the service of God : they have no other reason for 
existence; no other use: they vanish before the vast and Solitary 
Being who, spread wide and set high as a mountain before human 
thought, occupies and covers in Himself the whole horizon. Vainly 
we attempt, we seed of the Aryan race, to figure this devouring God ; 

* The time of which M. Taine speaks, and the translation of Tyndale, precede 
by at least fifty years the appearance of Macbeth (1606). Shakspeare's audie act 
read the present authorised translation. — Tr. 

* See Leinaistre de Sacy's translation, so slightly biblical. , 

3 See Ewald, GeschicJUe des Folks Israel, his apostrophe to the third writer d 
the Pentateuch, Erhabener Gei«t, etc. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCJ5 369 

we always leave some beauty, some interest, some part of free existence 
to nature ; we but half attain to the Creator, with difficulty, after a 
chain of reasoning, like Voltaire and Kant ; more readily we make Him 
into an architect ; we naturally believe in natural laws ; we know that 
the order of the world is fixed ; we do not crush things and their 
relations under the feet of an arbitrary sovereignty; we do not grasp 
the sublime sentiment of Job, who sees the world trembling and svval- 
L-wed up at the touch of the strong hand; we cannot endure the 
intense emotion or repeat the marvellous accent of the Psalms, in which, 
amid the silence of beings reduced to atoms, nothing remains but the 
heart of man speaking to the eternal Lord. These, in the anguish of a 
troubled conscience, and the oblivion of sensible nature, renew it in part. 
If the strong and fierce cheer of the Arab, which breaks forth like the blast 
of a trumpet at the sight of the rising sun and of the naked solitudes,* 
if the mentiil trances, the short visions of a luminous and grand landscape, 
if the Semitic colouring are wanting, at least the seriousness and sim- 
plicity have remained; and the Hebraic God brought into the modern 
conscience, is no less a sovereign in this narrow precinct than in the 
deserts and mountains from which He sprang. His image is reduced, 
but His authority is entire ; if He is less poetical, He is more moral. 
Men read with awe and trembling the history of His works, the tables 
of His law, the archives of His vengeance, the proclamation of His 
promises and menaces : they are filled with them. Never has a people 
been seen so deeply imbued by a foreign book, has let it penetrate 
so far into its manners and writings, its imagination and language. 
Thenceforth they have found their King, and will follow Him ; no word, 
lay or ecclesiastic, shall prevail over His word ; they have submitted 
their conduct to Him, they will give body and life for Him; and if need 
be, a day will come when, out of fidelity to Him, they will overthrow 
the State. 

It is not enough to hear this King, they must answer Him ; and 
religion is not complete until the prayer of the people is added to the 
revelation of God. In 1548, at last, England received her Prayer-book^ 
from the hands of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, Bernard Ochin, Melanch- 
tli3u; the chief and most ardent reformers of Europe were invited to 
compose a body of doctrines conformable to Scripture, and to express a 
body of sentiments conformable to the true Christian life, — an admir- 
abls book, in which the full spirit of the Reformation breathes out, 
where, beside the moving tenderness of the gospel, and the manly 
Bccents of the Bible, throb the profound emotion, the grave eloquence, 
the noble-mindedness, the restrained enthusiasm of the heroic and 



* See Ps. civ. in Luther's admirable translation and in the English translation. 

^ The first Primer of note was in 1545; Froude, v. 141. The Prayer-book 
underwent several changes in 1552, oth«rs under Elizabeth, and a few, last' \, at 
the Eestoration. 

2 A 



370 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

poetic souls who had re-discovered Christianity, and had passed near 
the fire of martyrdom. 

* Ahnighty and most merciful Father ; We have erred, and strayed from Thj 
ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of oui 
own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those 
things which we ought to have done ; And we have done those things which ^ t 
ought not to have done ; And there is no health in us. But Thou, Lord, haT« 
mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare Thou them, God, which confess Iheil 
faults. Restore Thou them that are penitent ; According to Thy promises declared 
unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord. And grant, most merciful Father, for 
His sake ; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life. ' 

* Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and 
dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent ; Create and make in us new and 
contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our 
wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and 
forgiveness.' 

The same idea of sin, repentance, and moral renovation continually 
recurs: the master-thought is always that of the heart humbled before 
invisible justice, and only imploring His grace in order to obtain His 
amendment. Such a state of mind ennobles man, and introduces a sort 
of impassioned gravity in all the important actions of his life. "We 
must hear the liturgy of the deathbed, of baptism, of marriage; the 
latter first : 

* Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God'i 
ordinance, in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, 
honour, and keep her in sickness and in health ; and, forsaking all other, keep 
thee only unto her, so long as ye both shaU live ? ' 

These are genuine words of loyalty and conscience. No mystic 
languor, here or elsewhere. This religion is not made for women who 
dream, yearn, and sigh, but for men who examine themselves, act, and 
have confidence, confidence in some one more just than themselves. 
When a man is sick, and his flesh is weak, the priest comes to him. and 



* Dearly beloved, know this, that Almighty God is the Lord of life and death, 
and of all things to them pertaining, as youth, strength, health, age, weakness, 
and sickness. Wherefore, whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly, that 
it is God's visitation. And for what cause soever this sickness is sent unto you • 
whether it be to try your patience for the example of others, ... or else it be 
sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatsoever doth offend the eyes of your 
heavenly Father ; know you certainly, that if you truly repent you of your sins, 
and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God's mercy, . . . submitting your- 
self wholly unto His will, it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the 
right way that leadeth unto everlasting life. * 

A great mysterious sentiment, a sort of sublime epic, void of images, 
shows darkly amid these probings of the conscience ; I mean a glimpse 



CHAP v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 371 

of the divine regulation and of the invisible world, the only existences, 

the only realities, in spite of bodily appearances and of the brute chance, 
which seems to jumble all things together. Man sees this beyond at 
distant intervals, and lifts himself from his mire, as though he had sud- 
denly breathed a pure and strengthening atmosphere. Sudh are the 
effects of public prayer restored to^the people; for this had been takea 
from the Latin and rendered into the vulgar tongue : there is a revolu- 
tion in (he word. Doubtless routine, here as with the ancient missaJ, 
will insensibly do its sad work: by repeating the same words, man wiU 
often do nothing but repeat words ; his Jips will move whilst his heart 
remains sluggish. But in great anguish, in the dumb agitations of a 
restless and hollow spirit, at the funerals of his relatives, the strong 
wcrds of the book will find him in a mood to feel : for they are living,^ 
and do not stay in the ears like dead Language: they enter the soul; 
and as soon as the soul is moved and worked upon, they take root 
there. If you go and hear them in England itself, and if you listen 
to the deep and pulsating accent with which they are pronounced, you 
will see that they constitute there a national poem, always understood 
and always efficacious. On Sunday, in the silence of business and 
pleasure, between the bare walls of the village church, where no image, 
no ex-voto, no accessory worship, comes to distract the eyes, the seats 
are full ; the powerful Hebraic verses knock like the strokes of a 
battering-ram at the door of every soul ; then the liturgy unfolds its 
imposing supplications ; and at intervals the song of the congregation, 
combined with the organ, comes to sustain the people's devotion. There 
is nothing graver and more simple than public singing; no scales, no 
elaborate melody : it is not calculated for the gratification of the ear, 
and yet it is free from the sickly sadness, from the gloomy monotony 
which the middle-age has left in our chanting; neither monkish nor 
pagan, it rolls like a manly yet sweet melody, neither contrasting with 
nor obscuring the words which accompany it : these words are psalms 
translated into verse, yet lofty ; diluted, but not embellished. All is in 
agreement — place, music, text, ceremony — to set every man, personally 
and without a mediator, in presence of a just God, and to form a moral 
J><y:try which shall sustain and develop the moral sense.^ 

* *To make use of words in a foreign language, merely with a sentiment cl 
devo'aon, the mind taking no fruit, could he neither pleasing to God, nor beneficial 
to man. The party that understood not the pith or effectualness of the talk that 
he made with God, might he as a harp or pipe, having a sound, but not under. 
Btanding the noise that itself had made ; a Christian man was more than &ii 
instrument ; and he had therefore provided a determinate form of supplication 
In the English tongue, that his subjects might be ahle to piay like reasonable 
beings in their own language.'— i/eWer of Henry viii. to Craiimer, Fronde, 
iv. 486. 

2 Bishop John Fisher's Funeral Oration of the Countess of Richmond (ed. 1711) 
shows to what practices this religion succeeded. The Countess was the muiLer ol 



872 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

One detail is stil! needed to complete this manly religion — human 
reason. The minister ascends the pulpit and speaks : he speaks coldly, 
I admit, with literary comments and over-long demonstrations ; but 
solidly, seriously, like a man who desires to convince, and that by 
worthy means, who addresses only the reason, and discourses only of 
justice. With Latimer and his contemporaries, preaching, like re- 
ligion, changes its object and character; like religion, it becomes 
[opular and moral, and appropriate to those who hear it, to recall them 
to their duties. Few men have deserved better of their fellows, in life 
and word, than he. He was a genuine Englishman, conscientious, 
courageous, a man of common sense and good upright practice, sprung 
from the labouring and independent class, with whom were the heart 
and thews of the nation. His father, a brave yeoman, had a farm of 
about four pounds a year, on which he employed half a dozen men, with 
thirty cov/s which his wife milked, himself a good soldier of the king, 

Heniy vii., and translated the Myri'oure of Golde, and The Forthe Bohe of the 
Folloivlnge Jesus Chryst : — 

* As for fastynge, for age, and feebleness, albeit she were not boimd, yet those 
days that by the Church were appointed, she kept them diligently and seriously, 
and in especial the holy Lent, throughout that she restrained lier appetite till one 
meal of fish on the day ; besides her other peculiar fasts of devotion, as St. Anthony, 
St. Mary Magdalene, St. Catharine, with other ; and throughout all the year the 
Friday and Saturday she full truly observed. As to hard clothes wearing, she had 
her shirts and girdles of hair, which, when she was in health, every week she failed 
not certain days to wear, sometime the one, sometime the other, that full often hei 
skin, as I heard say, was pierced therewith. 

* In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after five 
of the clock, she began certain devotions, and so after them, with one of her 
gentlewomen, the matins of our Lady ; which kept her to then, she came into her 
closet, where then with her chaplain she said also matins of the day ; and after 
that, daily heard four or five masses upon her knees ; so continuing in her prayers 
and devotions unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day was ten of the 
clocks, and upon the fasting day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go her 
stations to three altars daily ; daily her dirges and commendations she would say, 
and her even songs before supper, both of the day and of our Lady, beside many 
otner prayers and psalters of David throughout the year ; and at night before sh* 
v^ent to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of 
an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneel- 
ing was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her back pain 
and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily, when she was in health, she failed not 
to say the crown of our Lady, which, after the manner of Rome, containeth sixty 
an\l three aves, and at every ave, to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had 
divers books in French, wherewith she would occupy herself when she was \»eaTy 
of prayer. "Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into English. 
Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here before have heard 
her confession, which be divers and many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly 
eveiy third day. Can also record the same those that were present at any time 
when she was houshylde, which was full nigh a dozen times every year, ywh&i 
fioo(?s of tears there issued forth of her eyes 1 ' 



CHAP. V.J THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE, 373 

keeping equipment for himself and his horse so as to join t>ie f.rmy it 
need were, training his son to use the bow, making him buckle on his 
breastplate, and finding a few nobles at the bottom of his purse wh^ire- 
with to send him to school, and thence to the university.-^ Little Latimer 
studied eagerly, took his degrees, and continued long a good Catholic, 
or, as he says, ' in darckense and in the shadow of death.' At about 
thirty, having often heard Bilney the martyr, and having, moreover, 
studied the world and thought for himself, he, as he tells us, * began 
from that time forward to smell the word of God, and to forsooke the 
Schoolc Doctours, and such fooleries ;' presently to preach, and forthwith 
to pass for a seditious man, very troublesome to the men in authority, 
wliO were indifferent to justice. For this was in the first place the 
salient feature of his eloquence : he spoke to people of their duties, in 
exact terms. One day, when he preached before the university, the 
Bishop of Ely came, curious to hear him. Immediately he changed his 
subject, and drew the portrait of a perfect prelate, a portrait which did 
not tally well with the bishop's character ; and he was denounced for 
the act. When he was made chaplain of Henry viii., awe-inspiring as 
the king was, little as he was himself, he dared to write to him freely 
to bid him stop the persecution which was set on foot, and to prevent 
the interdiction of the Bible ; verily he risked his life. He had done 
it before, he did it again ; like Tyndale, Knox, all the leaders of the 
Keformation, he lived in almost ceaseless expectation of death, and in 
contemplation of the stake. Sick, liable to racking headaches, stomach- 
aches, pleurisy, stone, he wrought a vast work, travelling, writing, 
preaching, delivering at the age of sixty-seven two sermons every 
Sunday, and generally rising at two in the morning, winter and summer, 
to study. Nothing can be simpler or more effective than his eloquence ; 4 
and the reason is, that he never speaks for the sake of speaking, but of 
doing work. His sermons, amongst others those which he preached 
before the young king Edward vi., are not, like those of Massillon before 
Louis XV., hung in the air, in the calm region of philosophical ampli- 
fications : Latimer wishes to correct and he attacks actual vices, vices 
which he has seen, which every one can point at with the finger ; he 
tco points them out, calls things by their name, and people too, telling 
facts and details, like a brave heart ; and^sparing nobody, sets himself 
without hesitation to denounce and reform iniquity. Universal as 
his morality is, ancient as is his text, he applies it to the time, to his 
audience, at times to the judges who are there 'in velvet cotes,' who 
■will not hear the poor, who give but a dog's hearing to such a 
woman in a twelvemonth, and who leave another poor woman in the 
Fleet, refusing to accept bail;^ at times to the king's ofiicers, whose 

* See note 4, p. ?8. 

* Latimer's Seven Sermons before Edward Ti., ed. Edward Arber, 1869. Sec- 
ond sermon, pp. 73 and 74. 



374 THE KEXAISSANCE. [BOOR li 

thefts he enumerates, M^hom he sets between hell and restitution, and 
of whom he obtains, nay extorts, pound for pound, the stolen money.* 
Ever from abstract iniquity he proceeds to special abuse; for it ia 
abuse Avliich cries out and demands, not a discourser, but a champijn. 
With him, theology holds but a secondary place ; before all, practice : 
the true offence against God in his eyes is a bad deed ; the true service-^ 
the suppression of bad deeds. And see by Avhat paths he reaches this 
No great word, no show of style, no exhibition of dialectics. lie le*^ 
lates his life, the lives of others, giving dates, numbers, places',' hii 
abounds in anecdotes, little actual circumstances, fit to enter the ima- 
gination and arouse the recollections of each hearer. He is familiar, a1 
times humorous, and always so precise, so impressed with real events 
and particularities of English life, that we might glean from his ser- 
mons an almost complete description of the manners of his age and 
country. To reprove the great, who appropriate common lands by their 
enclosures, he details the needs of the peasant, without the least care for 
conventional proprieties ; he is not working now for conventionalities, 
but to produce convictions : — 

* A plough-land must have sheep ; yea, they must hare sheep to dung their 
ground for bearing of com ; for if they have no sheep to help to fat the ground, 
they shall have but hare corn and thin. They must have swine for their food, to 
make their veneries or bacon of : their bacon is their venison, for they shall now 
have Jiangum tuum, if they get any other venison ; so that bacon is their necessary 
meat to feed on, which the}'' may not lack. They must have other cattle : as horsea 
to draAV their plough, and for carriage of things to the markets ; and kine for their 
milk and cheese, Avhich they must live upon and pay their rents. These cattle 
must have pasture, which pasture if they lack, the rest must needs fail them : 
and pastui'e they cannot have, if the land be taken in, and inclosed from them. ' * 

Another time, to put his hearers on guard against hasty judgments, 
he relates that, having entered the gaol at Cambridge to exhort the 
prisoners, he found a woman accused of having killed her infant, who 
would make no confession : — 

* Which denying gave us occasion to search for the matter, and so we did, And 
at the length we found that her husband loved her not ; and therefore he sought 
means to make her out of the way. The matter was thus : ' a child of hers hai 
been sick by the space of a year^^nd so decayed as it were in a consumption. A* 
the length it died in harvest-time. She went to her neighbours and other frienda 
to desii-e their help, to prepare the child to the burial ; but there was nobody at 
home : every man was in tbe field. The woman, in an heaviness and ti-ouble of 
spirit, went, and being herself alone, prepared the child to the burial. Her husband 
coming home, not having great love towards her, accused her of the murder ; and so 
she was taken and brought to Cambridge. But as far forth as I could learn through 
earnest inquisition, 1 thought in my conscience the woman was not guilty, all the 

' Latimer's Sermons' Fifth sermon, ed. Arber, p. 147. 
» Latimer's Sermons, ed. Corrie, 1844, 2 vols., Last Sermon preaihcd befo*-* 
BJdward vj., i. 249. 



CHAP, V.j THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 375 

circiirnstanoes well considered. Immediately after this I was called to preach heforp 
the king, whi^h was my first sermon that I made before his majestyj and it Aras 
done at V/indsor ; when his majesty, after the sennon was done, did mo£t familiarly 
talk with me in a gallery. Kow, when 1 saw my time, I kneeled down before 
his majssty, opening the whole matter ; and afterwards most humbly desired hit 
!najt-sty to pardon that woman. For I thought in my conscience she was not 
guilty ; else I would not for all the world sue for a murderer. The king most 
griciously heard my humble request, insomuch that I had a pardon ready for her 
»t izy return homeward. In the mean season that same woman was delivered of 
& f hxld in the tower at Cambridge, whose godfather I was, and Mistress Cheke was 
gvjJmother. But all that time 1 hid my pardon, and told her nothing of it, only 
exhorting her to confess the truth. At the length the time came when she looked 
to suffei * I came, as I was wont to do, to instruct her ; she made great moan to 
me, and most earnestly required me that I would find the means that she might be 
purified before her suifering ; for she thought she should have been damned, if she 
should sufier without purification. ... So we travailed with this woman till we 
brought her to a good trade ; and at the length shewed her the king's pardon, and 
let her go. 

* This tale I told you by this occasion, that though some women be very un- 
natural, and forget their children, yet when we hear anybody so report, we should 
not be too hasty in believing the tale, but rather suspend our judgments till we 
know the truth. ' ^ 

When a man preaches thus, he is believed : we are sure that he is 
not reciting a lesson ; we feel that he has seen, that he draws his moral 
not from books, but from facts ; that his counsels come from the solid 
basis whence everything ought to come, — I mean from manifold and 
persona! experience. Many a time I have listened to popular orators, 
who address the pocket, and prove their talent by the money they have 
collected : it is thus that they hold forth, with circumstantial, recent, 
proximate examples, with conversational turns of language, setting 
aside great arguments and line language. Imagine the ascendency of 
the Scriptures enlarged upon in such words ; to what strata of the 
people it could descend, what a hold it had upon sailors, workmen, 
domestics I Consider, again, how the authority of these words is doubled 
by the courage, independence, integrity, unassailable and recognised 
virtue of him Avho utters them. He spoke the truth to the king, un- 
masked robbers, incurred all kind of hate, resigned his see rather than 
sign anything against his conscience ; and at eighty years, under Mary, 
refusing to retract, after two years of prison and waiting — and what 
waiting ! — he was led to the stake. His companion, Ridley, slept the 
sight before as calmly, we are told, as ever he did in his life ; and when 
ready to be chained to the post, said aloud, * O heavenly Father, I give 
Thee most hearty thanks, for that Thou hast called me to be a professor 
of Thee, even unto death.' Latimer in his turn, when they brought 
the lighted faggots, cried, * Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and 
play the man : we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in 

' Latimer's Sermons, ed. Corrie, Fi.riit Sermon on the Lord'? Prayer, i. 335 



576 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

England, as I tmst sliall never be put out.' He chen bathed his hands 
in the flames, and resigning his soul to God, expired. 

He had judged rightly : it is by this supreme proof that a creed 
proves its power and gains its adherents; martyrdoms are a sort ot 
propaganda as well as a witness, and make converts whilst they make 
martyrs. All the writings of the time, and all the commentaries which 
leay be added to them, are weak beside actions which, one after the 
other, shone forth at that time from doctors and from people, down to 
the most simple and ignorant. In three years, under Mary, nearly three 
hundred persons, men, women, old and young, some all but children, 
let themselves be burned alive rather than abjure. The all-powerful 
idea of God, and of the fidelity due to Him, made them strong against 
all the revulsions of nature, and all the trembling of the flesh. * No 
one will be crowned,' said one of them, * but they who fight like men ; 
and he who endures to the end shall be saved.' Doctor Rogers suffered 
first, in presence of his wife and ten children, one at the breast. He 
had not been told beforehand, and was sleeping soundly. The wife of 
the keeper of Newgate woke him, and told him that he must burn that 
day. * Then,' said he, * I need not truss my points.' In the midst of 
the flames he did not seem to suffer. ' His children stood by consoling 
him, in such a way that he looked as if they were conducting him to a 
merry marriage.' ^ A young man of nineteen, William Hunter, ap- 
prenticed to a silk-weaver, was exhorted by his parents to persevere to 
the end : — 

* In the mean time William's father and mother came to him, and desired 
heartily of God that he might continue to the end in that good way which he had 
begun : and his mother said to him, that she was glad that ever she was so happy 
to bear such a child, which could find in his heart to lose his hfe for Christ's 
name's sake. 

'Then William said to his mother, "For my little pain which I shall suffer, 
which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised me, mother (said he), a crown of 
joy : may you not be glad of that, mother ? " With that his mother kneeled down 
on her knees, saying, *' I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end ; yea, I 
think thee as well-bestowed as any child that ever I bare." . . . 

* Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped over the parlour 
groundsel, and went forward cheerfully ; the sheriff's servant taking him by one 
arm, and I his brother by another. And thus going in the way, he met with his 
father according to his dream, and he spake to his son weeping, and saying, ** God 
be with thee, son William ;" and William said, "God be with you, good father, 
and be of good comfort ; for I hope we shall meet again, when we shall be merry. ' 
His father said, *'I hope so, William;" and so departed. So William went te 
the place where the stake stood, even according to his dream, where all things 
were very miready. Then William took a wet broom-faggot, and kneeled down 

^ Noailles, the French (and Catholic) Ambassador. Pict. Hist. ii. 523. John Fox, 
History of the Acts and Monuments oftlie Church, ed. Townsend, 1843, 8 vols., vi 
612, says : * His wife and children, being eleven in number, and ten able to go, and 
One sucking on her breast, met him by the way as he went towards Smi thfield. ' — T i. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 377 

theieon, and read the fifty-first Psalm, till he came to these words, *• The sacrific* 
of God is a contrite spirit ; a contrite and a broken heart, God, thou wilt not 



\ 



' Then said the sheriff, ** Here is a letter from the queen. If thou wilt recant 
thou shalt live ; if not, thou shalt be burned." ** No," quoth "William, " I will 
not recant, God willing. " Then William rose and went to the stake, and stood 
upright to it. Then came one Richard Ponde, a bailiff, and made fast the chain 
about William. 

* Then said master Brown, " Here is not wood enough to burn a leg of him." 
Then said WiUiam, ** Good people ! pray for me ; and make speed and despatch 
quickly : and pray for me while you see me alive, good people ! and I will pray for 
you likewise." "Now?" quoth master Brown, ** pray for thee I I will pray no 
more for thee, than I will pray for a dog." ... 

* Then was there a gentleman which said, " I pray God have mercy upon his 
souL" The people said, "Amen, Amen." 

'Immediately fire was made. Then William cast his psalter right into hia 
brother's hand, who said, ** William ! think on the holy passion of Christ, and be 
not afraid of death." And William answered, ** 1 am not afraid." Then lift he 
up his hands to heaven, and said, "Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit ; " and, 
casting down his head again into the smothering smoke, he yielded up his life for 
the truth, sealing it with his blood to the praise of God. ' * 

When a passion is able thus to tame the natural affections, it is able 
also to tame bodily pain ; all the ferocity of the time laboured in vain 
against convictions. Thomas Tomkins, a weaver of Shoreditch, being 
asked by Bonner if he could stand the fire well, bade him try it. ' Bonner 
took Tomkins by the fingers, and held his hand directly over the flame,' 
to terrify him. But ' he never shrank, till the veins shrank and the 
sinews burst, and the water (blood) did spirt in Mr. Harpsfield's face.'* 

* In the isle of Guernsey, a woman with child being ordered to the fire, 
was delivered in the flames, and the infant being taken from her, was 
ordered by the magistrates to be thrown back into the fire.' * Bishop 
Hooper was burned three times over in a small fire of green wood. 
There was too little wood, and the wind turned aside the smoke. He 
cried out, *■ For God's love, good people, let me have more fire.* His 
legs and thighs were roasted ; one of his hands fell off before he ex- 
pired ; he endured thus three-quarters of an hour ; before him in a 
box was his pardon, on condition that he would retract. Against long 
sufferings in poisonous prisons, against everything which might unnerve 
or seduce, these men were invincible: five died of hunger at Canterbury; 
thsy were in irons night and day, with no covering but their clothes, 
on rotten straw ; yet there was an understanding amongst them, that the 

* cross of persecution ' was a blessing from God, *an inestimable jewel, 
a sovereign antidote, well-approved, to cure love of self and earthly 
affection.' Before such examples the people were shaken. A woman 
wrote to Bishop Bonner, that there was not a child but called him 

* Fox, History of the Acts, etc., vi. 727. * Ihid. vi. 71». 

* Neal History of the Puritans^ ed. Toulmin, 5 vola., 1793, i. 96. 



378 THE RENAISSANCE. * [BOOK 11 

Bcnner the hangman, and knew on his fingers, as well as he knew 
his Pater, the exact number of those he had burned at the stake, or 
suflered to die of hunger in prison these nine months. * You have lost 
the hearts of twenty thousand persons who were inveterate Papists a 
year ago.* The spectators encouraged the martyrs, and cried out to 
them that their cause was just. The Catholic envoy Kenard wrote to 
Charles v. that it was said that several had desired to take their place 
at the stake, by the side of those who were being burned. In vain the 
queen had forbidden, on pain of death, all marks of approbation. * We 
know that they are men of God,' criod one of the spectators ; ' that is 
why we cannot help saying, God strengthen them ' And all the people 
answered, ' Amen, Amen.' What wonder if, at the coming of Elizabeth, 
England cast in her lot with Protestantism ? The threats of the Armada 
urged her further in advance ; and the Reformation became national 
under the pressure of foreign hostility, as it had become popular through 
the triumph of its martyrs. 

IV. 

Two distinct branches receive the common sap, — one above, the 
other beneath : one respected, flourishing, shooting forth in the open 
air ; the other despised, half buried in the ground, trodden under foot 
by those who would crush it : both living, the Anglican as well as 
the Puritan, the one in spite of the effort made to destroy it, the othei 
in spite of the care taken to develop it. 

The court has its religion, like the country — a sincere and winning 
religion. Amid the pagan poesies which up to the Revolution always 
had the ear of the world, we find gradually piercing through and rising 
higher the grave and grand idea which sent its roots to the depth of 
the public mind. Many poets, Drayton, Davies, Cowley, Giles Fletcher, 
Quarles, Crashaw, wrote sacred histories, pious or moral verses, noble 
stanzas on death and the immortality of the soul, on the frailty of 
things human, and on the supreme providence in which alone man 
finds the support of his weakness and the consolation of his sufferings. 
In the greatest prose writers. Bacon, Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, 
Ralaigh, we see the fruits of veneration, a settled belief in the ob5<:'are 
beyond ; in short, faith and prayer. Several prayers written by Bacon 
are amongst the finest known ; and the courtier Raleigh, whilst writing 
of the fall of empires, and how the barbarous nations had destroyed 
t.his grand and magnificent Roman Empire, ended his book with the 
ideas and tone of a Bossuet.^ Picture Saint Paul's in London, and the 



* * eloquent, just, and mightie Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast 
persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom all tlie world hath 
flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised : thou ha.st drawn« 
together all the fane stretched greatnesse, all the pride, cnieltie, and ambition ol 
man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hie jarel. ' 



,.EAP V.J THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 379 

fashionable people who used to meet there ; the gentlemer* who noisily 
made the rowels of their spurs resound on entering, looked around 
and carried on conversation during service, who swore by God's eyes, 
God's eyelids, who amongst the columns and chapels showed off their be- 
ritboned shoes, their chains, scarves, satin doublets, velvet cloaks, their 
braggadocio manners and stage attitudes. All this was very free, very 
loose, very far from our modern decency. But pass over youthful bluster; 
take man in his great moments, in prison, in danger, or indeed wheu 
old a^r arrives, when he has come to judge of life ; take him, above all, 
in the country, on his estate far from any town, in the church of the 
village where he is lord ; or again, when he is alone in the evening, at 
his table, listening to the prayer ofi!ifed up by his chaplain, having no 
books but some great folio of dramas, well dog's-eared by his pages, and 
his Prayer-book and Bible ; you may then understand how the new re- 
ligion tightens its hold on these imaginative and serious minds. It does 
not shock them by a narrow rigour; it does not fetter the flight of their 
mind; it does not attempt to extinguish the buoyant flame of their 
fancy ; it does not proscribe the beautiful : it preserves more than any 
reformed church the noble pomp of the ancient worship, and rolls 
under the domes of its cathedrals, the rich modulations, the majestic 
harmonies of its grave, organ-led music. It is its characteristic not to 
be in opposition to the world, but, on the other hand, to draw it nearer 
to itself, by bringing itself nearer to it. By its secular condition as well 
as by its external worship, it is embraced by and it embraces it: its head 
is the Queen, it is a part of the Constitution, it sends its dignitaries to 
the House of Lords ; it suffers its priests to marry ; its benefices are in 
the nomination of the great families ; its chief members are the younger 
sons of these same families : by all these channels it imbibes the spirit 
of the age. In its hands, too, reformation cannot become hostile to 
science, poetry, the large ideas of the Renaissance. Nay, in the nobles 
of Elizabeth and James i., as in the cavaliers of Charles i., it tolerates 
artistic tastes, philosophical curiosity, the fashions of society, and the 
sentiment of the beautiful. The alliance is so strong, that, under Crom- 
well, the ecclssiastics in a mass were dismissed for their king^s sake, 
and tne cavaliers died wholesale for the Church. The two societies 
mutually touch and are confounded together. If several poets are 
pious, several ecclesiastics are poetical, — Bishop Hall, Bishop Corbet, 
Withei a rector, and the preacher Donne. If several laymen rise to re- 
ligious contemplations, several theologians. Hooker, John Hales, Taylor, 
Chillingworth, set philosophy and reason by the side of dogma. Ac- 
coidingl}'' we find a new literature arising, elevated and original, 
eloquent and measured, armed at once against the Puritans, who 
sacrifice freedom of intellect to the tyranny of the letter, and against 
the Catholics, who sacrifice independence of criticism to the tyranny 
of tradition ; opposed equally to the servility of literal interpretation 
ftnd the servility of a prescribed interpretation. In front of all appears 



380 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK H 

the learned and excellent Hooker, one of the sweetest and most con- 
ciliatory of men, the most solid and persuasive of logicians, a com- 
prehensive mind, who in every question remote from the principles * 
introduces into controversy general conceptions, and the knowledge 
of human nature ; ^ beyond this, a methodical writer, correct and 
always ample, worthy of being regarded not only as one of the fathers 
of the English Church, but as one of the founders of English prose. 
With a sustained gravity and simplicity, he shows the Puritans that 
the laws of nature, reason, and society, like the law of Scripture, 
are of divine institution, that all are equally worthy of respect and 
obedience, that we must not sacrifice the inner word, by which God 
reaches our intellect, to the outer word, by which God reaches our 
Stjnses ; that thus the civil constitution of the Church, and the visible 
ordinance of ceremonies, may be conformable to the will of God, even 
when they are not justified by a clear text of Scripture ; and that 
the authority of the magistrates, as well as the reason of man, does not 
exceed its rights in establishing certain uniformities and disciplines on 
which Scripture is silent, in order that reason may decide : — 

1 Hooker's Works, ed. Keble, 1836, 3 vols., The Ecclesiastical Polity. 

« Ibid. i. book i. 249, 258, 312 :— 

' That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderat« 
the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measm-e, of working, 
the same we term a Law. . . . 

'Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether though it 
were but for awhile, the observation of her own laws ; if those principal and 
mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, 
should lose the qualities which now they have ; if the frame of that heavenly arch 
erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should 
forget their wonted motions, ... if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now 
as a giant doth run his unwearied com'se, should as it were through a languish- 
ing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself: . . . what would become of 
man himself, whom these things now do all serve? Sse we not plainly that 
obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world ? . . . 

* Between men and beasts there is no possibility fjf sociable communion, becaaM 
the weU-spring of that communion is a natural del -.ght which man hath to trans' 
fuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself especially 
those things whesrein the excellency of his kind doth most consist. The chiefest 
instrument of human communion therefore is speech, because thereby we impart 
mutually one to another the conceits of our reasonable understanding. And for 
that cause seeing beasts are not hereof capable, forasmuch as •^ith them we can 
use no such conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures on 
earth to whom nature hath denied sense, yet lower than to be <ociable companions 
of man to whom nature hath given reason ; it is of Adanr sa:d, that amongst the 
beasts "he found not for himself any meet companion." Civil society doth more 
content the nature of man than any private kind of solitary living, because in 
society this good of mutual participation is so much larger than otherwise. Here- 
with notwithstanding we are not satisfied, but we covet (if it might be) tl 
havp. a kind of society and fellowship even with all m?.ikind.' 



OHAP. v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 38 ' 

* For if the natural strength of man's wit may by experience and stiiily attain 
unto such ripeness in the knowledge of things human, that men in this respect 
may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment ; what reason have we to 
ttink but that even in matters divine, the like wits furnished with necessary helps, 
exercised in Scripture with like diligence, and assisted with the gi-ace of Almighty 
God, may grow unto so much perfection of knowledge, that men shall have just 
cause, when anything pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the mora 
willingly to incline their minds towards that which the sentence of so grave, wise, 
and learned in 'that faculty shall judge most sound. ' ^ 

This 'natural light* therefore must not be despised, but rather 
nourished so as to augment the other,^ as we put torch to torch ; 
above all, nourished that we may live in harmony with each other. 

* Far more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these strifes) 
to labour under the same yoke, as men that look for the same eternal reward ol 
their labours, to be conjoined with you in bands of indissoluble love and amity, to 
live as if our persons being many, our souls were but one, rather than in such dis- 
membered sort to spend our few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of 
wearisome conten'.ions. ' 

In fact, it is in such amity that the greatest theologians conclude : 
they quit an oppressive practice to grasp a liberal spirit. If by its 
political structure the English Church is persecuting, by its doctrinal 
structure it is tolerant; it needs the reason of the laity too much to 
refuse it liberty ; it lives in a world too cultivated and thoughtful to 
proscribe thought and culture. John Hales, its most eminent doctor, 
declared several times that he would renounce the Church of England 
to-morrow, if she insisted on the doctrine that other Christians would 
be damned; and that men believe other people to be damned only when 
they desire them to be so.^ It was Le again, a theologian, a prebendary, 
who advises men to trust to themselves alone in religious matters; to 
leave nothing for authority, or antiquity, or the majority ; to use their 
own reason in believing, as they use 'their own legs in walking;' to act 
and be men in mind as well as in the rest ; and to regard as cowardly 
and impious the borrowing of doctrine and sloth of thought. So 
ChillingAvorth, a notably militant and loyal mind, the most exact, the 
most penetrating, and the most convincing of controversialists, first 
Protestant, then Catholic, then Protestant again and for ever, has tho 
courage to say that these great changes, wrought in himself and by 
himself, through study and research, are, of all his actions, those which 
satisfy him most. He maintains that reason applied to Scripture alone 
ought to persuade men ; that authority has no claim in it ; • that 

* Ecc. Pol. i. book ii. ch, vii. 4, p. 405. 

* See the Dialogues of Galileo. The same idea which is persecuted by the church 
at Rome is at the same time defended by the church in England. See also Ecc, 
Pol i. bookiii. 461-481. 

* Clarendon's witness. See the same doctrines in Jeremy Taylor, Liberty 
9/ Prophemjivg, 1647. 



382 THE RENAISSANCE.. [BOOK H 

nothing is more against religion than to force religion;' that the great 
principle of the Eeformation is liberty of conscience ; and that if the 
doctrines of the different Protestant sects are not absolutely true, at 
least they are free from all impiety and from all error damnable in 
itself, or destructive of salvation. Thus is developed a new school o{ 
polemics, a theology, a solid and rational apologetics, rigorous in iti 
arguments, capable of expansion, confirmed by science, and wliich, 
authorizing independence of personal judgment at the same time with 
the intervention of the natural reason, leaves religion in amity with 
the world and the establishments of the past. 

A writer of genius appears amongst these, a prose-poet, gifted with 
inuigination like Spenser and Shakspeare, — Jeremy Taylor, who, from 
the bent of his mind ns well as from circumstances, was destined to pre- 
sent the alliance of the Renaissance with the Reformation, and to carry 
into the pulpit the ornate style of the court. A preacher at St. Paul's, 
appreciated and admired by men of fashion * for his youthful and fresh 
beauty and his graceful bearing,' as also for his splendid diction; 
patronised and promoted by Archbishop Laud, he wrote for the king a 
defence of episcopacy ; became chaplain to the king's army ; was taken, 
ruined, twice imprisoned by the Parliamentarians ; married a natural 
daughter of Charl^'? I. ; then, after the Restoration, was loaded with 
honours ; became bishop, member of the Privy Council, and chancellor 
of the Irish university : in every passage of his life, fortunate or other- 
wise, private or public, we see that he is an Anglican, a royalist, im- 
bued with the spirit of the cavaliers and courtiers, not with their 
vices. On the contrary, there was never a better or more upright man, 
more zealous in his duties, more tolerant by principle ; so that, preserv- 
ing a Christian gravity and purity, he received from the Renaissance 
only its rich imagination, its classical erudition, and its liberal spirit. 
But he had these gifts entire, as they existed in the most brilliant and 
orio-inal of the men of the world, in Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Bacon, 
Sir Thomas Browne, with the graces, splendours, refinements which 
are characteristic of these sensitive and creative geniuses, and yet with 
the redundancies, singularities, incongruities inevitable in an age when 
excess of transport prevented the soundness of taste. Like all these 
wi iters, like Montaigne, he was imbued with the classic antiquity; in 
the pulpit he quotes Greek and Latin anecdotes, passages from Seneca, 
verses of Lucretius and Euripides, and this side by side with texts 
from the Bible, from the Gospels and the Fathers. Cant was not yet 
in vogue ; the two great sources of teaching. Christian and Pagan, ran 
side by side ; they were collected in the same vessel, without imagining 
that the wisdom of reason and nature could mar the wisdom of faith 
and revelation. Fancy these strange sermons, in which the two eiudi- 
tions, Hellenic and Evangelic, flow togetlier with their texts, and each 
text in its own language ; in which, to jjiove that fathers are often un- 
fortunate in their children, the author brii.gs forward one after the other, 



dHAP. VJ THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 3S8 

Chabrias, Germanicns, Marcus Aureliiis, Hortensius, Quintiis Fabius 
Maximus, Scipio Africanus, Moses and Samuel ; where in t,he form of 
comparisons and illustrations is heaped up the spoil of histories and 
authorities on botany, astronomy, zoology, which the cyclopgodias an J 
scientific fancies at that time spread before the mind. Taylor will 
rolate to you the history of the bears of Pannonia, which, when wounded, 
will press the iron deeper home ; or of the apples of Sodom, whicli are 
beautiful to the gaze, but full within of rottenness and worms ; and 
many others of the same kind. For it was a characteristic of men of 
this age and school, not to possess a mind swept, levelled, regulated, 
laid out in straight paths, like our seventeenth century writers, and 
like the gardens at Versailles, but full, and crowded with circum- 
stantial facts, complete dramatic scenes, little coloured pictures, pell- 
mell and badly dusted ; so that, lost in confusion and dust, the modern 
spectator cries out at their pedantry and coarseness. Metaphors 
multiply one above the other, jumbled, blocking each other's path, as 
in Shakspeare. We think to follow one, and a second begins, then a 
third cutting into the second, and so on, flower after flower, firework 
after firework, so that the brightness becomes misty with sparks, and 
the sight ends in a haze. On the other hand, and just by virtue of 
this same turn of mind, Taylor imagines objects, not vaguely and 
feebly, by some indistinct general conception, but precisely, entire, as 
they are, with their sensible colour, their proper form, the multitude 
of true and particular details which distinguish them in their species. 
He is not acquainted with them by hearsay; he has seen them. Better, 
he sees them now, and makes them to be seen. Read this piece, and 
say if it does not seem to have been copied from a hospital, or from the 
field of battle : — 

* And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths, or the pressures 
tf diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach almost starved with cold 
and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or 
t fired musket, and his hunger slacked by a greater pain and a huge fear ? This 
man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens lumhiis atque solis, pale and 
feint, weary and watchful ; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, 
'And shivers from his hones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent 
rent to its own dimensions ; and all this for a man whom he never saw, or, if he 
did, was not noted by him ; but one that shall condemn him to the gallows if he 
runs away from all this misery. ' ^ 

This is the advantage of a full imagination over ordinary reason. 
It produces in a mass twenty or thirty ideas, and as many images, 
exhaustjig the subject which the other only outlines and sketches. 
There are a thousand circumstances and shades in every event ; and 
they are all grasped in living words like these : — 

* For so have I seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom :)f a 

' Jeremy Taylor's Works, ed. Eden, 1840, 10 vols., Holy Dying, ch. ill. «ee 
1, § 3, p. 315. 



384: THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

bank, and intencmte the stubborn pavementv till it hath made it fit for the impres- 
sion of a child's foot ; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty 
morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away 
the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens ; but 
then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable 
mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped Avith the antidotes of a hearty 
prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels ol 
a single sermon ; but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath 
not in it so mucli philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endrire it, 
they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils ; they destroy the soul by their a^aode, 
who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.'* 

All extremes meet in that imaginaticn. The cavaliers who heard 
him, found, as in Ford, Beaumont, and Fletcher, the crude copy of the 
most coarse and unclean truth, and the light music of the most grace- 
ful and airy fancies ; the smell and horr. rs of a dissecting room,^ and 
all on a sudden the freshness and cheerfulness of a smiling dawn ; the 
hateful detail of a leprosy, iis white spots, its inner rottenness; and 
then this lovely picture of a lark, rising amid the early perfumes of 
the fields : — 

* For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, 
singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds ; but 
the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his 
motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the 
tempest, than it could recover by the vibration and frequent weighing of his wings, 
till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the stoim was 
over ; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had 
learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, 
about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man.' * 

And he continues with the charm, sometimes with the very words, 
of Shakspeare. In the preacher, as well as in the poet, as well as in all 
the cavaliers and all the artists of the time, the imagination is so full, that 
it reaches the real, even to its filth, and the ideal as far as its heaven. 

How could true religious sentiment thus accommodate itself to such 
a frank and worldly gait? This, however, is what it has done; and more 

the latter has generated the former. With Taylor, as well as with the 

others, a free poetry leads to profound faith. If this alliance astonishei 
us to-day, it is because in this respect people have grown pedantic. We 
take the precise man for a religious man. We are content to see him 
stiff in his black coat, choked in a white cravat, with a prayer-book in 
his hand. We confound piety with decency, propriety, permanent and 
perfect regularity. We proscribe to a man of faith all candid speech, 
all bold gesture, all fire and dash in word or act ; we :ire shocked by 
Lutber'jj rude words, the bursts of laughter which shook his mighty 

^ Sermon xvi., Of Growth in Sin. 

2 ' We have already opened up this dunghill covered with snow which wai 
indeed on the outside white as the spots of leprosy.' 

3 Golden Orove Sermons : V. ' The Return of Prayers.' 



OHAP. V.l THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 385 

paunch, his worlcaday rajes, his plain and free speaking, the auda- 
cious familiarity with which he treats Christ and the Deity.-^ We do 
r.ot remember that these freedoms and this recklessness are simply 
signs of entire belief, that warm and immoderate conviction is too sure 
of itself to be tied down to an irreproachable style, that primitive 
religion consists not of punctilios, but of emotions. It is a poem, the 
greatest of all, a poem believed in ; this is why these men found it on 
the borders of their poesy : the way of looking at the world, adopted 
by Shakspeare and all the tragic poets, led to it ; another step, and 
Jacques, Hamlet, would be there. That vast obscurity, that black un- 
explored ocean, ' the unknown country,' which they saw on the verge 
of our sad life, who knows whether it is not bounded by another shore ? 
The troubled notion of the shadowy beyond is national, and this is why 
the national renaissance at this time became Christian. When Taylor 
speaks of death, he only takes up and works out a thought which 
Shakspeare had already sketched : — 

* All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light 
and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every con- 
tingency to every man, and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sernion, and 
calls us to look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth, and digs a 
grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise 
again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity.' 

For beside this final death, which swallows us whole, there are partial 
deaths which devour us piece by piece : — 

* Every revolution which the sim makes about the world, divides between life 
and death ; and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow ; and we 
are dead to all those months which we have already lived, and we shall never live 
them over again : and still God makes little periods of our age. First we change 
our world, when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we 
sleep and enter into the image of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all 
the changes of the world : and if our mothers or our nurses die, or a wild boar 
destroy our vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but during that state 
are as disinterest as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the 
bowels of the earth. At the end of seven years our teeth fall and die before us, 
r epTf^senting a formal prologue to the tragedy ; and still every seven years it is 
odds but we shall finish the last scene : and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes 
onr body in pieces, weakening some parts and loosing others, we taste the grave 
an 1 the solemnities of our own funerals, first in those parts that ministered to vice, 
an i next in them that served for ornament, and in a short time even they that 
served for necessity become useless, and entangled like the wheels of a broken clock. 
Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and 
of a person entered very far into the regions and possession of death : and we have 

^ Luther's Table Talk, ed. Hazlitt, No. 187, p. 30: When Jesus Christ was born, 
ne doubtless cried and wept like other children, and his mother tended him as othei 
mothers tend their children. As he grew up he was submissive to his parents, and 
waited on them, and carried his supposed father's dinner to him ; and wlieu h.^ 
came back, Mary no donht often said, ' My dear ittl^ Jesus, where liast thm 

^°'^'^' 2 6 



386 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK'n 

many more of the same signification ; gi'ay hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling 
ioints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled sldn, short memory, decayed appetile. 
Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all 
night, wlien we lay in his lap, and slept in his outer chambers. The very spirits 
of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh, ai.d every meal is a lescue 
f»om one death, and lays up for another ; and while we think a thought, we die ; 
»nd the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity : we form our W( rds 
\ith the breath of our nostrils, we have the less to live upon for every word we 
«peak.' ' 

Beyond all these destructions, other destructions are at woik; chance 
mows us down as well as nature, and we are the prey of accident as of 

necessity : — 

' Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the in- 
struments of acting it : and God by all the variety of His providence makes U8 
see death everywhere, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the 
fancies, and the expectation of every single person. ^ . . . And how many teeming 
mothers have rejoiced over their swelling wombs, and pleased themselves in becom- 
ing the channels of blessing to a family, and the midwife hath quickly bound 
their hea^ls and feet, and carried them forth to burial ?^ . . . You can go no whithej 
but you tread upon a dead man's bones. ' * 

Thus these powerful words roll on, sublime as an organ motett f 
this universal crushing out of human vanities has the funeral grandeui 
of a tragedy; piety in this instance proceeds from eloquence, and geniua 
leads to faith. All the poAvers and all the tenderness of the soul are 
moved. It is not a cold rigorist who speaks ; it is a man, a moved 
man, with senses and a heart, who has become a Christian not by 
mortification, but by the development of his whole being : — 

* Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair cheeks and full eyes 
ol childhood, from the vigoroirsness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and- 
twenty, to the hollo wn ess and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a 
three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very 
strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, 
and at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven as a lamb's 
fleece ; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled 
its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline 
t') softness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it bowed the head, and broke its 
stalk, and at night having lost some of its leaves and all it3 beauty, it fell into the 
poiiion of weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and 
every woman, the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour, 
and our beauty so changed, that our acquaintance quickly knew us not ; and that 
change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our f jars and weak 
discoursings, that they who six hours ago tended upon us either with charitable or 
ambitious services, cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where th« 
body lies stripped of its life and honour. I have read of a fair young German 
gentleman who living often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity ol 
his friends' desire by giving way that after a few days' burial they might send a 

' Holy Dying, ed Eden, ch. 1. sec. i. p. 267. 

» lUd. mi. 3 Ihid. 268. ■• lUd 269. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 387 

painter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it draw the image of his death imto 
the life : they did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and backbone 
fall of serpents ; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors. So does 
the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you as me ; and then what 
servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave ? what friends to visit us ? 
what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected 
upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepera 
for our funeral ? '^ 

Brought hither, like Hamlet to the burying-ground, amid the skiilU 
which he recognises, and under the oppression of the death which he 
touches, man needs but a slight eiFort to see a new wo^^d arise in his 
heart. He seeks the remedy of his sadness in the idea of eternal jus- 
tice, and implores it with a breadth of words which makes the prayer a 
hymn in prose, as beautiful as a work of art : — 

* Eternal God, Almighty Father of men and angels, by whose care and provi- 
dence I am preserved and blessed, comforted and assisted, I humbly beg of Thee 
tc pardon the sins and follies of this day, the weakness of my services, and the 
strengths of my passions, the rashness of my words, and the vanity and evil of 
my actions. just and dear God, how long shall 1 confess my sins, and pray 
against them, and yet fall under them ? let it be so no more ; let me never 
return to the follies of which I am ashamed, which bring sorrow and death, and 
Thy displeasure, worse than death. Give me a command over my inclinations and 
a perfect hatred of sin, and a love to Thee above all the desires of this world. Be 
pleased to bless and preserve me this night from all sin and all violence of d'hance, 
and the malice of the spirits of darkness : watch over me in my sleep ; and whether 
I sleep or wake, let me be Thy servant. Be Thou first and last in all my thoughts, 
and the guide and continual assistance of all my actions. Preserve my body, 
pardon the sin of ray soul, and sanctify my spirit. Let me always live holily and 
soberly ; and when I die, receive my soul into Thy hands,' ^ 



This was, however, but an imperfect Reformation, and the ofHcial 
religion was too closely bound up with the world to undertake to cleanse 
it thoroughly : if it repressed the excesses of vice, it did not attack its 
source ; and the paganism of the Renaissance, following its bent, already 
under James i. issued in the corruption, orgie, mincing, and drunken 
habit3, appetising and gross sensuality,^ which subsequently under the 
Restoration stank like a sewer in the sun. But underneath the estab- 
lished Protestantism was propagated the interdicted Protestantism : the 
yeomen were settling their faith like the gentJemen, and already the 
Puritans made headway under the Anglicans. 

* Holy Dying, ch. i. sec. ii. p. 270. ' The Golden Grove. 

* See in Thierry and Theodoret, by Beaumont and Fletcher, the characters of 
Baivder, Protalyce, and Brunhalt. In The Custom of the Country, by the same 
authors, several scenes represent the inside of an infamous house, — a frequent thmg, 
ny tho way, in the dramas of that time ; but here the boarders in the house ar-s 
«aaen. See also Rule a Wife and have a Wife, by the same authors. 



388 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOCK I! 

No cnltnre here, no philosopliy, no sentiment of Tiarmonioiis and 
pagan beauty. Conscience only spoke, and its restlessness had become 
a terror. The son of the shopkeeper, of the farmer, who read the Bible 
in the barn or the counting-house, amid the barrels or the wool-bags^ 
did not take matters as the fine cavalier bred up in the old mythology, 
and refined by an elegant Italian education. They took them tragically, 
sternly examined themselves, pricked their hearts with their scruples, 
filled their imaginations with the vengeance of God and the terrors of 
the Bible. A gloomy epic, terrible and grand as the Edcla, was ft r- 
menting in their m>elancholy imaginations. They steeped themselves 
in texts of Sfint Paul, in the tliundering menaces of the prophets ; 
they burdened their minds with the pitiless doctrines of Calvin ; they 
admitted that the majority of men were predestined to eternal dam- 
nation : ^ many believed that this multitude were criminal before their 
birth ; that God willed, foresaw, provided for their ruin ; that He de- 
signed their punisliment from all eternity ; that He created them simply 
to give them up to it.^ Nothing but grace can save the wretched crea- 
ture, free grace, God's sheer favour, which He only gives to a few, and 
which He grants not to the struggles and works of men, but after the 
arbitrary choice of His single and absolute will. We are ' children of 
wrath,' plague-stricken, and condemned from our birth ; and wherever 
we look in all the expanse of heaven, we find but thunderbolts to deafen 
and destroy us. Fancy, if you can, the efi*ects of such an idea on the 
solitary and morose spirits, such as this race and climate generates. 
Some would fancy themselves damned, and went groaning about the 
streets ; others never slept. They were beside themselves, always 
imagining that they felt the hand of God or the claw of the devil 
upon them. An extraordinary power, immense means of action, were 
suddenly opened up in the soul, and there was no barrier in the moral 
life, and no establishment in civil society which their efforts could not 
upset. 

At once, private life was transformed. How should ordinary senti- 
ments, natural and every-day notions of happiness and pleasure, sub- 
sist before such a conception ? Suppose men condemned to death, not 
ordinary death, but the rack, torture, an infinitely horrible and infinitely 
extended torment, waiting for their sentence, and yet kucwing that 
they had one chance in a thousand, in a hundred thousand, of pard )n ; 
could they still go on amusing themselves, taking an interest in the 
business or pleasure of the time? The azure heaven shines not fai 
them, the sun warms them not, the beauty and sweetness of things have 
no attraction for them ; they have lost the wont of laughter ; they fasten 
inwardly, pale and silent, on their anguish and their expectation ; they 
have but one thought : * Will the judge pardon me ? ' They anxiously 

• Calviu quoted by Haag, ii. 210, Histoire des Dogr.es Chretiens. 
' These were the Snpralax>sariaiis. 



cTHAP. v.] * THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 38S 

probe the involnntary motions of their heart, which alone can reply, 
and the inner revelation, which alone can render them certain of pardon 
or ruin. They think that any other condition of mind is anholy, that 
recklessness and joy are monstrous, that every worldly distraction of 
hiterest is an act of godlessness, and that the true mark of a Christian is 
a terror at the very idea of salvation. Thenceforth rigour and rigidity 
Qiark their manners. The Puritan condemns the stage, the assemblies, 
the world's pomps and gatherings, the court's gallantry and elegance, 
the poetical and symbolical festivals of the country, the May-days, the 
merry feasts, bell-ringings, all the outlets by which sensual or instinc- 
tive nature had essayed to relieve itself. He gives them up, abandons 
recreations and ornaments, crops his hair, wears a simple sombre-hued 
coat, speaks through his nose, walks stiffly, with his eyes in the air, ab- 
sorbed, indifferent to visible things. The external and natural man is 
abolished ; only the inner and spiritual man survives ; there remains of 
the soul only the ideas of God and conscience, — a conscience alarmed 
and diseased, but strict in every duty, attentive to the least require- 
ments, disdaining the equivocations of worldly morality, inexhaustible 
in patience, courage, sacrifice, enthroning purity on the domestic hearth, 
truth in the tribunal, probity in the counting-house, labour in the 
workshop, above all, a fixed determination to bear all and do all rather 
than fail in the least injunction of moral justice and Bible-law. The 
stoical energy, a fundamental honesty of the race, were aroused at the 
appeal of an enthusiastic imagination; and these unbending character- 
istics were displayed in their entirety in conjunction with abnegation 
and virtue. 

Another step, and this great movement passed from within to with- 
out, from individual manners to public institutions. Observe these 
people in their reading of the Bible, they apply to themselves the com- 
mands imposed on the Jews, and the prologues urge them to it. At the 
outset of their Bibles the translator^ set a table of the principal words in 
Scripture, each with its definition and texts to support it. They read 
and weigh these words: ^Abomination before God are Idoles, Images. 
Before whom the people do bow them selfes.' Is this precept observed? 
No doubt the images are taken away, but the queen has still a crucifix 
in her chapel, and is it not a remnant of idolatry to kneel down before 
the sacrament? ^ Ahrogacion^ that is to abolyshe, or to make of none 
effecte : And so the lawe of the commandementes whiche was in the 
decrees and ceremonies, is abolished. The sacrifices, festes, meates, 
and al outwarde ceremonies are abrogated, and all the order of priest- 
hode is abrogated.' Is this so, and how does it happen that the bishops 
itill take upon themselves the right of prescribing faith, worship, and 
of tyrannising over Christian cocfciences? And have they not pre - 

* The Byhle, nowe lately with greate industry and Diligece recognized (by 
Edm. Becke), Lend., by John Daye and William Seres, 1549, with Tyndale'f 
Prologues. 



390 ,THE RENAISSANCE. * [BOOK II 

served in the organ-music, in the surplice of the priests, in the sign of 
the cross, in a hundred other practices, all these visible rites which God 
has declared profane? ^Abuses. The abuses that be in the church 
ought to be corrected by the prynces. The ministers ought to preaclie 
against abuses. Any maner of mere tradicions of man are abuses.' 

What, meanwhile, is their prince doing, and why does he leave abuses 
in the church ? The Christian must rise and protest ; we must purge 
the church from the pagan crust with which tradition has covered it.* 
Such are the ideas conceived by these uncultivated minds. Fancy the 
simple folk, more capable by their simplicity of a sturdy faith, these 
freeholders, these big traders, who have sat on juries, voted at elections, 
deliberated, discussed in ^i^'mmon private and public business, used to 
examine the law, the adducing of precedents, all the detail of juridical 
and legal procedure ; bringing their lawyer's and pleader's training to 
bear upon the interpretation of Scripture, who, having once formed a 
conviction, employ for it the cold passion, the intractable obstinacy, the 
heroic sternness of the English character. Their precise and combative 
minds take the business in hand. Every one holds himself bound to be 
ready, strong, and well prepared, to answer all such as shall demand 
a reason of his faith. Each one has his difficulty and conscientious 
scruple^ about some portion of the liturgy or the official hierarchy ; 
about the dignities of canons and archdeacons, or certain passages of 
the funeral service ; about the sacramental bread or the reading of 
the apocryphal books in church ; about plurality of benefices or the 
ecclesiastical square cap. They each oppose some point, all together 
the episcopacy and the retention of Eomish ceremonies.^ Then they 
are imprisoned, fined, pilloried ; they have their ears cut off ; their 
ministers are dismissed, hunted out, prosecuted.* The law declares 
that any one above the age of sixteen who for the space of a month 
shall refuse to attend the established worship, shall be imprisoned until 
such time as he shall submit ; and if he does not submit at the end of 
three months, he shall be banished the kingdom ; and if he returns, put 
to death. They submit, and show as much firmness in suffering as 
scruple in belief; for a tittle, on the reception of the communion sitting 
rather than kneeling, or standing rather than sitting, they give up tlu-'ir 

^ Examination of Mr Axton : * I can't consent to wear the surplice, it is again si 
in J 3cii«c:ence ; I trust, by the help of God, I shall never put on that sleeve, whi'ih 
is a mark of the beast.' — Examination of Mr White, *a substantial citizen ol 
London' (1572), accused of not going to the parish church : *Tlie whole Scriptures 
are for destroying idolatry, and everything that belongs to it.' — 'Where is the 
place where these are forbidden ? ' — 'In Deuteronomy and other places ; . . . and 
God by Isaiah commandeth not to pollute ourselves with the garments of the image. ' 

2 One expression continually occurs : ' Tenderness of conscience' — 'a squeamish 
ftomach ' — ' our weaker brethren.' 

' The separation of the Anglicans and dissenters may be dated from 15G4. 

< 1593. 



o-HAP. v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. ;-^<}l 

livings, their property, their liberty, their country. One Dr. Leighton 
was imprisoned fifteen weeks in a dog's kennel, without f.re, roof, bed. 
and in irons: his hair and skin fell off; he was set in the pillory during 
the November frosts, then whipt, and branded on the forehead ; his ears 
were cut off, his nose slit ; he was shut up eight years in the Fleet, and 
thence cast into the common prison. Many went cheerfully to the stake 
Religion with them was a covenant, that is, a treaty made with God, 
wliich must be kept before all, as a written engagement, to the €tter, 
to the last syllable. An admirable and deplorable stiffness of an cver- 
scrupulous conscience, which made cavillers at the same time with 
believers, which was to make tyrants after it had made martyrs. 

Between the two, it made fighting men. They became wonderfully 
enriched and increased in the course of eighty years, as is always the 
case with men who labour, live honestly, and pass their lives uprightly, 
sustained by a powerful source of action from within. Thenceforth 
they are able to resist, and they do resist when driven to extremities ; 
tliey choose to have recourse to arms rather than be driven back to 
idolatry and sin. The Long Parliament assembles, defeats the king, 
purges religion ; the dam is broken, the Independents are hurled above 
the Presbyterians, the fanatics above the merely fervid ; irresistible and 
overwhelming faith, enthusiasm, grow into a torrent, swallow up, or at 
least disturb the strongest minds, politicians, lawyers, captains. The 
Commons occupy a day in every week in deliberating on the progress 
of religion. As soon as they touch upon doctrines they become furious. 
A poor man, Paul Best, being accused of denying the Trinity, they de- 
mand the passing of a decree to punish him wdth death ; James Nayler 
having imagined that he was God, the Commons devote themselves to a 
trial of eleven days, with a Hebraic animosity and ferocity : ' I think 
him worse than possessed with the devil. Our God is here supplanted. 
My ears trembled, my heart shuddered, on hearing this report. I will 
speak no more. Let us all stop our ears and stone him.' ^ Before the 
House, publicly, the men in authority had ecstasies. After the ex- 
pulsion of the Presbyterians the preacher Hugh Peters started up in 
the middle of a sermon, and cried out : * Now I have it by Revelation, 
now I shall tell you. This army must root up Monarchy, not only here, 
but in France and other kingdoms round about ; this is to bring you 
out of Egypt: this Army is that corner-stone cut out of the Mountaine, 
which must dash the powers of the earth to pieces. But it is objected, the 
way we walk in is without president (sic) ; what think you of the Virgin 
Mary? was there ever \ny president before, that a Woman should con- 
ceive a Child without the company of a Man ? This is an Age to make 
examples and presidents in.' ^ Cromwell found prophecies, counsels in 
the Bible for the present time, positive justifications of his policy. * He 

* Burton's Parliamentary/ Diary, ed. by Rutt, 1828, 4 voks., i. 54. 

* Walker's History of Independency, 1(348, part ii. p. 49. 



392 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IT 

looked upon the Design of the Lord in this day to be the freeing of His 
People from every Burden, and that was now accomplishing what wat 
prophesied in the 110th Psalm; from the Consideration of wHch he 
was often encournged to attend the effecting those Ends, speiidirg at 
least an hour in the Exposition of that Psalm.' * Granted that lie was 
a schemer, ambitious before everything, yet he was truly fanatical and 
sincere. His doctor related that he had been very melancholy for yean 
at a time, with strange hallucinations, and the frequent fancy that he 
was at death's door. Two years before the Eevolution he wrote to his 
cousin: 'Truly no poor creature hath more cause tc put himself foith 
in the cause of his God than I. . . . The Loid accept me in His Son, and 
give me to walk in the light, — and give us to walk in the light, as He 
is the light! . . . blessed be His Name for shining upon so dark a heart 
as mine ! ' * Certainly he must have dreamed of becoming a saint as 
well as a king, and aspired to salvation as well as to a throne. At the 
moment when he was proceeding to Ireland, and was about to massacre 
the Catholics there, he wrote to his daughter-in-law a letter of advice 
which Baxter or Taylor might willingly have subscribed. In the midst 
of pressing affairs, in 1651, he thus exhorted his wife: *My dearest, I 
could not satisfy myself to omit this post, although I have not much to 
write. ... It joys me to hear thy soul prospereth : the Lord increase 
His favours to thee more and more. The great good thy soul can wish 
is. That the Lord lift upon thee the light of His countenance, which is 
better than life. The Lord bless all thy good counsel and example to 
all those about thee, and hear all thy prayers, and accept thee always." 
Dying, he asked whether grace once received could be lost, and was 
reassured to learn that it could not, being, as he said, certain that he 
had once been in a state of grace. He died with this prayer : ' Lord, 
though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in Covenant with 
Thee through grace. And I may, I will, come to Thee, for Thy People. 



^ This passage may serve as an example of the difficulties and perplexities ta 
which a translator of any History of Literature must always be exposed, and this 
without any fault of the original author. Ab uno discs omnes. M. Taino saya 
that Cromwell found justification for his policy in Psalm cxiii., which, on loo>ii)g 
out, I found to he * an exhortation to praise God for His excellency and fc r Hii 
mercy,' — a psalm by which Cromwell's conduct could nowise be justified. I opened 
then Carlyle's Cromwell's Letters, etc., and found, in vol. ii. part vi. p. 157, the 
same fact stated, but Psalm ex. mentioned and given, — a far more likely psalm to 
have iiJluenced Cromwell. Carlyle .refers to Luilow, i. 319, Taine to Guizot, 
Portraits Politiques, p. 63, and to Carlyle. In looking in Guizot's volume, 5th 
ed., 1862, I find that this writer also mentions Psalm cxiii ; but on referring 
finally to the Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, printed at Vivay {dc) in the Canton 
of Bern, 1698, I found, in voL 1. p. 319, the sentence, as given above ; tiasrefoif 
Carlyle was in the right. — Tr. 

5 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches ed. Carlyle, 1866, 3 vols., i. 79. 

' Idem, ii. 278. 



CHAP, v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 393 

Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do 
them some good, and Thee service. . . . Lord, however Thou do dispose 
of me, continue and go on to do good for them . . . and go on . . . with 
tlie work of reformation ; and make the JSTame of Christ glorious in the 
world.' ^ Underneath this practical, prudent, worldly spirit, there was 
an English element of anxious and powerful imagination,' capable of 
engendering an impassioned Calvinism and mystic fears. The same 
contrasts were jumbled together and reconciled in the other Inde- 
pendents. In 1648, after unsuccessful tactics, they were in danger 
between the king and the Parliament ; then they assembled for several 
days together at Windsor to confess themselves to God, and seek His 
assistance ; and they discovered that all their evils came from the con- 
ferences they had had the weakness to propose to the king. 'And in 
this path the Lord led us,' said Adjutant Allen, * not only to see our 
sin, but also our duty; and this so unanimously set with weight upon 
each heart that none was able hardly to speak a word to each other 
for bitter weeping, partly in the sense and shame of our iniquities ; of 
our unbelief, base fear of men, and carnal consultations (as the fruit 
thereof) with our own wisdoms, and not with the Word of the Lord.' * 
Then they resolved to bring the king to judgment and death, and did as 
they had resolved. 

Around them, fanaticism and folly gained ground. Independents, 
Millenarians, Antinomlans, Anabaptists, Libertines, Faniilists, Quakers, 
Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectionists, Socinians, Arians, anti-Trinitarians, 
anti-Scripturalists, Sceptics ; the list of sects is interminable. Women, 
troopers, suddenly got up into the pulpit and preached. The strangest 
ceremonies took place in public. In 1644, says Dr. Featly, the Ana- 
baptists rebaptized a hundred men and women together at twilight, in 
streams, in branches of the Thames and elsewhere, plunging them in 
the water over head and ears. One Oates, in the county of Essex, 
was brought before a jury for the murder of Anne Martin, who died 
a few days after her baptism of a cold which had seized her. George 
Fox the Quaker spoke with God, and witnessed with a loud voice, in 
the streets and market-places, against the sins of the age. William 
Simpson, one of his disciples, * was moved of the Lord to go, at several 
times, for three years, naked and barefoot before them, as a sign unto 
them, in the markets, courts, towns, cities, to priests' houses, and to 
great men's houses, telling them, so shall they all be stripped naked, 
as he ;was stri^^ped naked. And sometimes he was moved to put on 



^ GromiceWs Letters^ ed. Carlyle, iii.*373. 

' See his speeches. The style is disjointed, obscure, impassioned, marvel- 
lous, like that of a man who is not master of his wits, and who yet eeea 
straight by a sort of intuition. 

8 CromweWs Letters, i. 265. 



39tl: THE RENAlSSAlSCii.. [BOOK LI 

hair sackcloth, and to besmear his face, and to tell them, so would the 
Lord besmear all their religion as he was besmeared.^ 

* A female came into Whitehall Chapel stark naked, in the midst 
of public worship, the Lord Protector himself being present. A Quakei 
came to the door of the Parliament House with a drawn sword, and 
■wounded several who were present, saying that he was inspired by 
the Holy Spirit to kill every man that sat in the house.' The Fiflh 
Alonarchy men believed that Christ was about to descend to reign io 
person upon earth for a thousand years, with the saints for His ministers. 
The Ranters looked upon furious vociferations and contortions as the 
principal signs of faith. The Seekers thought that religious truth 
could only be seized in a sort of mystical fog, with doubt and fear. 
The Muggletonians decided that ' John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton 
were the two last prophets and messengers of God ; ' they declared the 
Quakers possessed of the devil, exorcised him, and prciphesied that 
William Penn would be damned. I have before mentioned James 
Nayler, an old quartermaster of General Lambert, adored as a god 
by his followers. Several women led his horse, others cast before him 
their kerchiefs and scarves, singing, Holy, holy. Lord God. They called 
nim ' lovely among ten thousand, the only Son of God, the prophet of 
the Most High, King of Israel, the eternal Son of Justice, the Prince 
of Peace, Jesus, him in whom the hope of Israel rests.' One of them, 
Dorcas Erbury, declared that she had lain dead for two whole days in 
her prison in Exeter Gaol, and that Nayler had restored her to life by 
laying his hands upon her. Sarah Blackbury finding him a prisoner^ 
took him by the hand and said, ' Rise up my love, my dove, my fairest 
one: why stayest thou among the pots?' Then she kissed his hand 
and fell down before him. When he was put in the pillory, some of 
his disciples began to sing, weep, smite their breasts ; others kissed 
his hands, rested on his bosom, and kissed his wounds.^ Bedlam broken 
loose could not have surpassed them. 

Underneath these disorderly bubbles at the surface, the wise and 
deep strata of the nation had settled, and the new faith was doing its 
work with them, — a practical and positive, a political and moral work. 
Whilst the German Reformation, after the German wont, resulted Id 
great volumes and a scholastic system, the English Reformation, after 
the English wont, resulted in action and establishments. ' How the 
Church of Christ shall be governed ; ' that was the great question 
which was discussed among the sects. The House of Commons asked 
the assembly of theologians: If the classical, provincial, and local 
assemblies were jure diviuo, and instituted by (he will and appointment 

' A JourncU of the Life, etc., of that Ancient, Eminent, and Faithful 8er 
tant of Jesus Christ, George Fox, 6th edit., 1836. 

2 Burton's Parliamentary Diary, i. 46-173. Neal, History of the Puriicmi 
iii., Suppit. 



CHAP. V.J THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE 395 

of Jesus Christ? If they were all so? If only some were so, and 
which ? If appeals carried by the elders of a congregation to pro- 
vincial, departmental, and national assemblies were jure divino, and 
accoiding to the will and appointment of Jesus Christ ? If some only 
werejwre divinof Which? If the power of the assemblies in such ap- 
pealo was jure divino, and by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ? 
and a hundred other questions of the same kind. Parliament declared 
t}m% according to Scripture, the dignities of priest and bishop were 
equal ; it regulated ordinations, convocations, excommunications, juris- 
dictions, elections ; spent half its time and exerted all its power in 
establishing the Presbyterian Church.^ So, with the Independents, 
fervour engendered courage and discipline. ' Cromwell's regiment oi 
horse were most of them freeholders' sons, who engaged in the war 
upon principles of conscience ; and that being well armed within, by 
the satisfaction of their consciences, and without with good iron arms, 
they would as one man stand firmly and charge desperately.'* This 
army, in which inspired corporals preached to lukewarm colonels, 
acted with the solidity and precision of a Russian regiment : it was a 
duty, a duty to God, to fire straight and march in good order ; and a 
perfect Christian made a perfect soldier. There was no separation 
here between theory and practice, between private and public life, 
between the spiritual and the temporal. They wished to apply Scrip- 
^ture to * establish the kingdom of heaven iipon earth,' to institute not 
only a Christian church, but a Christian society, to change the law 
into a guardian of morals, to exact piety and virtue ; and for a while 
they succeeded in it. ' Though the discipline of the church was at an 
end, there was nevertheless an uncommon epirit of devotion among 
people in the parliament quarters ; the Lord's day was observed with 
remarkable strictness, the churches being crouded with numerous and 
attentive hearers three or four times in the day ; the officers of the 
peace patroled the streets, and shut up all publick houses ; there was 
no travelling on the road, or walking in the fields, except in cases 
of absolute necessity. Religious exercises were set up in private 
families, as reading the Scriptures, family prayer, repeating sermons, 
and singing of psalms, which was so universal, that you might walk 
through the city of London on the evening of the Lord's day, without 
seeing an idle person, or hearing anything but the voice of prayer or 
praise from churches and private houses.' ^ People would rise before 
the day, and walk a great distance to be able to hear the word of God. 
' There were no gaming-houses, or houses of pleasure ; no profane 

* See Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, ii. 418^50. 

* Wliitelocke's Memorials, i. G8. 

* Neal, 11. 553. Compare with the French Revolution. Wxien the BastUe wai 
demolished, they wrote on the ruins these words : ' Ici Ton danse.' From this 
contrast we see the difference between the two doctrines and the two nations. 



396 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK il 

swearing, dmnkemiess, or any kind of debauchery.** ITie Parlia 
mentary soldiers came in great numbers to listen to sermons, spoke ol 
religion, prayed and sang psalms together, when on duty. In 1644 
Parliament forbade the sale of commodities on Sunday, and ordained 
* that no person shall travel, or carry a burden, or do any worldly 
labour, upon penalty of 10s. for the traveller, and 5s. for every 
burden. That no person shall on the Lord's day use, or be present 
at, any wrestling, shooting, fowling, ringing of bells for pleasure, 
markets, wakes, church-ales, dancing games or sports whatsoever, 
upon penalty of 5s. to every one above fourteen years of age. And 
if children are found offending in the premises, their parents or 
guardians to forfeit 12d. for every offence. If the several fines above 
mentioned cannot be levied, the offending party shall be set in the 
stocks for the space of three hours.' When the Independents were in 
power, the severity was still more harsh. The officers in the army, 
having convicted one of their quartermasters of blasphemy, con- 
demned him to have his tongue bored with a red hot iron, his sword 
broken over his head, and himself to be dismissed from the army. 
During Cromwell's expedition in Ireland, we read that no blasphemy 
was heard in the camp; the soldiers spent their leisure hours in reading 
the Bible, singing psalms, and holding religious controversies. In 
1650 the punishments inflicted on Sabbath-breakers were redoubled. 
Stern laws were passed against betting, gallantry was reckoned ^ 
crime; the theatres were destroyed, the spectators fined, the actors 
whipt at the cart's tail; adultery punished with death: in order to 
reach crime more surely, they persecuted pleasure. But if they were 
austere against others, they were so against themselves, and practised 
the virtues they exacted. After the Restoration, two thousand 
ministers, rather than conform to the new liturgy, resigned their 
cures, though they and their families had to die of hunger. Many 
of them, says Baxter, thinking that they were not justified in quitting 
their ministry after being set apart for it by ordination, preached to 
such as would hear them in the fields and in certain houses, until they 
were seized and thrown into prisons, where a great number of them 
perished. Cromwell's fifty thousand veterans, suddenly disbanded 
and without resources, did not bring a single recruit to the vagabonds 
and bandits. * The Royalists themjelves confessed that, in every 
department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered 
beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, 
that none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or 
a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in 
all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers.' ^ Purified by persecution 
and ennobled by patience, they ended by winning the tolerance of 

* Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, ii. 555. 

* Macaiilay, Hist, of England ed. I^ady Trevelyan. i. 121. 



niAP. V.J THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 397 

the law and the respect of the public, and raised the nativ>nal morality, 
as they had saved the national liberty. But others, exiles in America, 
pushed to an extremity this great religious and stoical spirit, with its 
^veaknesses and its power, with its vice? and its virtues. Their de- 
termination, intensified by a fervent faith, employed in political and 
practical piirsuits, invented the science of emigration, made exile 
tolerable, drove back the Indians, fertilised the desert, raised a rigid 
morahty into a civil law, founded and armed a church, and on tho 
Bible as a basis built up a new state.^ 

That was not a conception of life from which a genuine literature 
might be expected to issue. The idea of the beautiful is wanting, and 
what is a literature without it ? The natural expression of the heart's 
emotions is proscribed, and what is a literature without it? They 
abolished as impious the free stage and the rich poesy which the Re- 
naissance had brought them. They rejected as profane the ornate 
style and ample eloquence which had been established around them by 
the imitation of antiquity and of Italy. They mistrusted reason, and 
were incapable of philosophy. They ignored the divine languor of 
Jeremy Taylor, and the touching tenderness of the gospel. Their 
character exhibits only manliness, their conduct austerity, their mind 
preciseness. We find amongst them only excited theologians, minute 
controversialists, energetic men of action, limited and patient minds, 
engrossed in positive proofs and practical labours, void of general ideas 
and refined tastes, resting upon texts, dry and obstinate reasoners, who 
twisted the Scripture in order to extract from it a form of government 
or a table of dogma. What could be narrower or more repulsive than 
these pursuits and wrangles ? A pamphlet of the time petitions for 
liberty of conscience, and .draws its arguments (1) from the parable of 
the wheat and the tares which grow together till the harvest ; (2) from 
this maxim of the Apostles, Let every man be thoroughly persuaded in 
his own mind ; (3) from this text, Whatsoever is not of faith is sin ; 
(4) from this divine rule of our Saviour, Do to others what you would 
tliey should do unto you. Later, when the furious Commons desired to 
pass judgment on James Nayler, the trial became entangled in an end- 
less juridical and theological discussion, some declaring that the crime 
committed was idolatry, others seduction, all emptying out before ths 
House their armoury of commentaries and texts.^ Seldom is a gene- 

* A certain John Denis was publicly whipt for having sung a profane song. 
Mathias, a girl, having given some roasted chestnuts to Jeremiah Boosy, and told 
him ironically that they would put him into Paradise, was ordered to ask pardon 
three times in church, and to be three days on bread and water in prison 1660- 
1670 ; rscords of Massachusetts. 

2 'Upon the common sense of Scripture,' said Major-general Dishrowe, *there are 
few hut do commit blasphemy, as our Saviour puts it in Mark: "sins, blasphemies ; 
if so, then none without blasphemy." It was charged upon David and li;li"8 
pon, "thou hast blasphemed, or caused others to blaspheme."' — Builon'i 



398 "HE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

ration foimd more mutilated in all the faculties which produce con- 
templation and ornament, more limited in the faculties Arhich nourish 
discussion and morality. Like a beautiful insect which has become 
transformed and has lost its wings, so we see the poetic genera*>ion (,i 
Elizabeth disappear, leaving in its place but a sluggish caterpillar, a 
stubborn and useful spinner, armed with industrious feet and formidable 
jaws, spending its existence in eating into old leaves and devouring ill 
enemies. They are without style ; they speak like busiriess men ; at 
most, here and there, a pamphlet of Prynne possesses a little vigour. 
Their histories, like May's for mstance, are Hat and heavy. Theif 
memoirs, even those of Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson, are long, weari» 
some, mere statements, destitute of personal feelings, void of enthusiasm 
or entertaining matter ; * they seem to ignore themselves, and are en- 
grossed by the general prospects of their cause.' ^ Good works of piety, 
solid and convincing sermons ; sincere, edifying, exact, methodical books, 
like those of Baxter, Barclay, Calamy, John Owen ; personal narratives, 
like that of Baxter, like Fox's journal, Bunyan's lit^e, a large collection 
of documents and arguments, conscientiously arranged, — this is all they 
offer: the Puritan destroys the artist, stiffens the man, fetters the 
writer ; and leaves of artist, man, Avriter, only a sort of abstract being, 
the slave of a watchword. If a Milton springs up amongst them, it is 
because by his wide curiosity, his travels, his comprehensive education, 
above all by his youth saturated in the great poetry of the preceding age, 
and by his independence of spirit, loftily adhered to even against the 
sectarians, Milton passes beyond sectarianism. Strictly speaking, they 
could but have one poet, an involuntary poet, a madman, a martyr, a hero, 
and a victim of grace ; a genuine preacher, who attains the beautiful by 
accident, whilst pursuing the useful on principle ; a poor tinker, whoj 
employing images so as to be understood by mechanics, sailors, servant- 
girls, attained, without pretending to it, eloquence and high art. 

VI. 

After the Bible, the book most widely read in England is the 
Pilgrim^s Progress, by John Bunyan. The reason is, that the basis 
of Protestantism is the doctrine of salvation by grace, and that n« 
writer has equalled Bunyan in making this doctrine understcod. 

To treat well of supernatural impressions, one must have been sub- 
ject tD them. Bunyan had that kind of imagination which produces 
nhem. Powerful as that of an artist, but more vehement, this imagina- 
tion worked in the man without his co-operation, and besieged him with 
visions which he had neither willed nor foreseen. From that moment 
there was in him as it were a second self, dominating the first, grand 
and terrible, whose apparitions were sudden, its motions unknown, 
whiftK redoubled or crushed his faculties, prostrated or transported hioi, 

• Guizot, Portraits Politiqves, 5th ed., 1862 



CHAP. V.| THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 3()y 

bathed him in the sweat of anguish, ravished him with trances of joy, 
and which by its force, strangeness, independence, impressed upon him 
the presence and the action of a foreign and superior master. Bunyaa 
hke Saint Theresa, was from infancy 'greatly troubled with the thoughts 
of the fearful torments of hell-fire,' sad in the midst of pleasures, be- 
lieving himself damned, and so despairing, that he wished he was a 
di'ivil, ' supposing they were only tormentors ; that if it must needs be 
that I went thither, I might be rather a tormentor, than be tormented 
myself.' * There already was the assault of exact and bodily images 
Under their influence reflexion ceased, and the man was suddenly 
spurred into action. The first movement carried him with closed eyes, 
as down a steep slope, into mad resolutions. One day, ' being in the 
field, with my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the 
highway : so I, having a stick, struck her over the back ; and having 
stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her 
sting out with my fingers, by which act, had not God been merciful to 
me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end.' * 
In his first approaches to conversion he was extreme in his emotions, 
and penetrated to the heart by the sight of physical objects, 'adoring' 
priest, service, altar, vestment. ' This conceit grew so strong upon my 
spirit, that had I but seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched 
in his life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and 
knit unto him ; yea, I thought, for the love I did bear unto them (sup- 
posing they were the ministers of God), I could have laid down at their 
feet, and have been trampled upon by them ; their name, their garb, 
and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.'^ Already his ideas clung 
to him with that irresistible hold which constitutes monomania ; no 
matter how absurd they were, they ruled him, not by their truth, but 
by their presence. The thought of an impossible danger terrified him 
as much as the sight of an imminent peril. As a man hung over an 
abyss by a sound rope, he forgot that the rope was sound, and vertigo 
seized upon him. After the fashion of English villagers, he loved bell- 
ringing: when he became a Puritan, he considered the amusement 
profane, and gave it up ; yet, impelled by his desire, he would go into 
the belfry and watch the ringers. ' But quickly after, I began to think, 
'* How if one of the bells should fall ? " Then I chose to stand under 
a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking 
h*2re I might stand sure : but then I thought again, should the bell fall 
with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then rebounding upon me, 
might kill me for all this beam. This made me strind in the steeple- 
door ; and now, thought I, I am safe enough, for if a bell should then 
fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved not- 
withstanding. So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would 
not go any farther than the steeple-door ; but then it came into my 

'• Orace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, § 7. « jj^cL. § 12 « Tbid. % 17 



400 THE RENAISSANCE ^BOOK 1! 

head "Ilowif tlie seeple itself should fall?** Ani this thought (it 
may, for aught I know, when I stood and looked on) did continually so 
shake my mind, that I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, 
but v/a3 forced to flee, for fear the steeple should fall upon my head.'* 
Frequently the mere conception of a sin became for him a temptation 
so involuntary and so strong, that he felt upon him the sharp claw ol 
the devil. The fixed idea swelled in his head like a painful absceffa,> 
full of sensitiveness and of his life's blood. ' Now no sin would serva 
but that : if it were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then 
I have been as if my mouth would have spoken that word whether I 
would or no ; and in so strong a measure was the temptation upon me, 
that often I have been ready to clap my hands under my chin, to hold 
my mouth from opening ; at other times, to leap with my head down- 
ward into some muckhill hole, to keep my mouth from speaking'* 
Later, in the middle of a sermon which he was preaching, he was 
assailed by blasphemous thoughts : the Avord came to his lips, and all 
his power of resistance was barely able to restrain the muscle excited 
by the tyrannous brain. 

Once the minister of the parish was preaching against the sin oi 
dancing, oaths, and games, when he was struck Avith the idea that the 
sermon was for him, and returned home full of trouble. But he ate ; 
his stomach being charged, discharged his brain, and his remorse was 
dispersed. Like a true child, entirely absorbed by the emotion of the 
moment, he was transported, jumped out, and ran to the sports. He 
had thrown his ball, and was about to begin again, when a voice 
from heaven suddenly pierced his soul. * " Wilt thou leave thy sins 
and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell ? " At this I was put 
to an exceeding maze ; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I 
looked up to heaven, and was as if I had Avith the eyes of my under- 
standing, seen the Lord Jesus look doAvn upon me, as being very hotly 
displeased Avith me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some 
grievous punishment for these and other ungodly practices.' * Suddenly 
reflecting that his sins were very great, and that he Avould certainly be 
damned Avhatever he did, he resolved to enjoy himself in the meantime, 
and to sin as much as he could in his life. He took up his ball again, 
recommenced the game with ardour, and swore louder and oftener 
than ever. A month afterAvards, being reproA'^ed by a Avcman, * I wai 
silenced, and put to secret shame, and that too, as I thought, before 
the God of heaven : wherefore, while I stood there, hanging doAvn my 
head, I Arished that I might be a little child again, and that my father 
might learn me to speak Avithout this Avicked way of SAvearing ; for, 
thought I, I am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain to think of a 
reformation, for that could never be. But how it came to pass I knoAV 
not, 1 did from this time forward so leave my swearing, that it Avas a 

' Grace Abounding, %% 83. 34. « lUd. § 103. » IMd § 33. 



CHAP. V.J THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 401 

great wonder to myself to observe it; and whereas before T kr.ew not 
how to speak unless I put an oath before, and another behind, to make 
my words have authority, now I could without it speak better, and 
with more pleasantness, than ever I could before.' ^ These sudden 
alternations, these vehement resolutions, this unlooked-for renewing of 
heart, are the products of an involuntary and impassioned imagination, 
which by its hallucinations, its mastery, its fixed ideas, its mad ideas, 
preps res the way for a poet, and announces one inspired. 

In him circumstances develop character ; his kind of life develops 
liis kind of mind. He was born in the lowest and most despised rank, 
a tinker's son, himself a wandering tinker, with a wife as poor as him- 
self, so that they had not a spoon or a dish between them. He had 
been taught in childhood to read and write, but he had since * almost 
wholly lost what he had learned.* Education draws out and disciplines 
a man ; fills him with varied and rational ideas ; prevents him from 
sinking into monomania or being excited by transport; gives him de- 
terminate thoughts instead of eccentric fancies, pliable opinions for fixed 
convictions ; replaces impetuous images by calm reasonings, sudden 
resolves by the results of reflection ; furnishes us with the wisdom and 
ideas of others ; gives us conscience and self-command. Suppress this 
reason and this discipline, and consider the poor working man at his 
work ; his head works while his hands work, not ably, Avith methods 
acquired from any logic he might have mustered, but with dark emo- 
tions, beneath a disorderly flow of confused images. Morning and even- 
ing, the hammer which he uses in his trade, drives in with its deafening 
sounds the same thought perpetually returning and self-communing. 
A troubled, obstinate vision floats before him in the brightness of the 
hammered and quivering metal. In the red furnace where the iron is 
bubbling, in the clang of the hammered brass, in the black corners where 
the damp shadow creeps, he sees the flame and darkness of hell, and 
the rattling of eternal chains. Next day he sees the same imago, the 
day after, the whole week, month, year. His brow wrinkles, his eyes 
grow sad, and his wife hears him groan in the night-time. She remem- 
bers that she has two volumes in an old bag. The Plain Man's Pathway 
to Heaven and The Practice of Piety ; she spells them out to console him ; 
and the impressive thoughtfulness, already sublime, made more so by 
the slowness with which it is read, sinks like an oracle into his sub- 
dued faith. The braziers of the devils — the golden harps of heaven — 
the bleeding Christ on the cross, — each of these deep-rooted ideas sprouts 
poisonously or wholesomely in his diseased brain, spreads, pushes oun 
and springs higher with a ramification of fresh visions, so crowded, tha<- 
in his encumbered mind he has no further place nor air for mjre con- 
ceptions. Will he rest when he sets forth in the winter on his tramp ? 
During his long solitary wanderings, over wild heaths, in cursed and 

' Grace Jbouiiding, %% 37 and 28. 
2 c 



iU2 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

haunted boj?s, always abandoned to his own thoughts, the inevitable 

idea pursues hirn. These neglected roads where he sticks in the mud, 
these sluggish rivers which he crosses on the cranky ferry-boat, these 
threatening whispers of the woods at night, where in perilous places the 
livid moon shadows out ambushed forms, — all that he sees and hears falU 
into an involuntary poem around the one absorbing idea ; thus it changes 
into a vast body of sensible legends, and multiplies its power as it mul- 
tiplies its details. Having become a dissenter, Bunyan is shut up for 
twelve years, having no other amusement but the Book of Martyrs and 
the Bible, in one of those infectious prisons where the Puritans rotted 
under the Restoration. There he is, still alone, thrown back upon him- 
self by tbi monotony of his dungeon, besieged by the terrors of the Old 
Testament, by the vengeful outpourings or denunciations of the prophets, 
by the thunder-striking words of Paul, by the spectacle of trances and of 
martyrs, face to face with God, now in despair, now consoled, troubled 
with involuntary images and unlooked-for emotions, seeing alternately 
devil and angels, the actor and the witness of an internal drama whose 
vicissitudes he is able to relate. He writes them : it is his book. You 
see now the condition of this inflamed brain. Poor in ideas, full of 
images, given up to a fixed and single thought, plunged into this 
thought by his mechanical pursuit, by his prison and his readings, by 
his knowledge and his ignorance, circumstances, like nature, make him 
a visionary and an artist, furnish him with supernatural impressions 
and sensible images, teaching him the history of grace and the means 
of expressing it. 

The PilgrMs Progress is a manual of devotion for the use of simple 
folk, whilst it is an allegorical poem of grace. In it we hear a man of 
the people speaking to the people, who would render intelligible to all 
the terrible doctrine of damnation and salvation.^ According to Bunyan, 

1 This is an abstract of the events : — From highest heaven a voice has pro- 
claimed vengeance against the City of Destruction, where lives a sinner of the 
name of Christian. Terrified, he rises up amid the jeers of his neighbours, and 
departs, for fear of being devoured by the fire which is to consume the criminals. A 
helpful man. Evangelist, shows him the right road. A treacherous man, Worldhj- 
wise, tries to turn him aside. His companion, Pliable, who had followed him a4 
first, gets stuck in the Slough of Despond, and leaves him. He advances bravely 
across the dirty water and the slippery mud, and reaches the Strait Gate, where a wiK« 
Interpreter instructs him by visible shows, and points out the way te the Heavenlj 
City. He passes before a cross, and the heavy burden of sins, which he carried on 
his back, is loosened and falls off. He painfully climbs the steep hill of Difficulty^ 
and reaches a great castle, where Watchful, the guardian, gives him in charge t« 
his good daughters Piety and Prudence, who warn him and arm him against the 
monsters of hell. He finds his road barred by one of these demons, Apollyon^ 
who bids him abjure obedience to the heavenly King. After a long fight he slays 
him. Yet the way gi'ows narrow, the shades fall thicker, sulphurous flames rise 
along the road : it is the valley of the Shadow of Death. He passes it, and arrivea 
at the town of Vanity, a vast fair of business, deceits, and shows, which he walkf 



*;nAP. v.] THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 4G3 

we are * children of wrath/ condemned from our birth, guilty by nature, 
justly predestined to destruction. Under this formidable thought the 
heart gives way. The unhappy man relates how he trembled in all his 
limbs, and in his fits it seemed to him as though the bones of his chest 
would break. ' One day,' he tells us, * I walked to a neighbouring town, 
and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep pause 
about the most fearful state my sin had brought me to ; and after long 
musing, I lifted up my head, but methought I saw, as if the sun that 
8hineii> in the heavens did grudge to give light ; and as if the very 
Btonesi in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves 
agains*; me. O how happy now was every creature over I w^as ! For 
they stood fast, and kept their station, but I was gone and lost.' ^ The 
devils gathered together against the repentant sinner ; they choked his 
sight, besieged him with phantoms, yelled at his side to drag him down 
their precipices ; and the black valley into which the pilgrim plunges, 
almost matches by the horror of its sight the anguish of the terrors by 
which he is assailed : — 

* I saw then in my Dream, so far as-this Valley reached, there was on the right 
hand a very deep Ditch ; that Ditch is it into which the blind have led the blind 
in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold on the left 
hand, there was a very dangerous Quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he 
ctkn find no bottom for his foot to stand on. . . . 

* The path-way was here also exceeding narrow, and therefore good Christian 
was the more put to it ; for when he sought in the dark to shun the ditch on the 
one hand, he was ready to tip over into the mire on the other ; also when he sought 
to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the 
ditch. Thus he went on, and I heard him here sigh bitterly ; for, besides the dangers 
mentioned above, the path-way was here so dark, that ofttimes, when he lift up 
his foot to set forward, he knew not where, or upon what he should set it next. 

'About the midst of this Valley, I perceived the mouth of Hell to be, and it 
»tood also hard by the wayside. Now thought Christian, what shall I do ? And 
ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks 
and hideous noises, . . . that he was forced to put up his Sword, and betake himself 
to another weapon, called All-prayer. So he cried in my hearing : **0 Lord I 
beseech thee deliver my soul." Thus he went on a great while, yet still thft flames 
t?ould be reaching towards him : Also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and 
fro, so that sometimes he thought he should be torn in pieces, or trodden down 
like mire in the Streets.' ^ 

by with low^ed eyes, not wishing to take part in its festivities or falsehoods. The 
people of the place beat him, tlirow him into prison, condemn him as a traitor and 
rebel, burn his companion Faithful. Escaped from their hands, he falls into those 
of Giant Despair, who beats him, leaves him in a poisonous dungeon without food, 
and giving him daggers and cords, advises him to rid himself from so many mis- 
rortunes. At last he reaches the Delectable Mountains, whence he sees the holj 
city. To enter it he has only to cross a deep river, where there is no foothold, 
where the water dims the sight, and which is called the river of Death 

' Bunyan's Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, § 187. 

« Pilgrim's Progress, Cambridge, 1862, First Part, p 64. 



i04, THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

Against this angiiisli, neither his good deeds, nor his prayers, nor 
his justice, nor all the justice and all the prayers of all other men, could 
defend him. Grace alone justifies. God must impute to him the purity 
of Christ, and save him by a free choice. What is more full of passion 
than the scene in which, under the name of his poor pilgrim, he relates 
his own doubts, his conversion, his joy, and the sudden change of hi? 
heart? 

* Then the water stood in mine eyes, and I asked further, But Lord, may such 
a gieat sinner as I am be indeed accepted of thee, and he saved by thee ? And 1 
heard him say. And him that cometh to me I Avill in no -wise cast out. . . , And 
now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears, and mine affections running 
crer with love to the Name, People, and Ways of Jesus Christ. . . . 

'It made me see that all the World, notwithstanding all the righteou.sness 
thereof, is in a state of condemnation. It made me see that God the Father, though 
he he" just, can justly justify the coming sinner. It made me greatly ashamed of 
the vileness of my former life, and confounded me with the sense of mine own 
ignorance ; for there never came thought into my heart before now, that shewed 
me so the beauty of Jesus Christ. It made me love a holy life, and long to do 
something for the Honour and Glory of the Name of the Lord Jesus ; yea, I 
thought that had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it 
•11 for the sake of the Lord Jesus.' * 

Such an emotion does not weigh literary calculations. Allegory, 
the most artificial kind, is natural to Bunyan. If he employs it here, 
it is because he does so throughout ; if he employs it throughout, it is 
from necessity, not choice. As children, countrymen, and all unculti- 
vated minds, he transforms arguments into parables; he only grasps 
truth when it is made simple by images ; abstract terms elude him ; he 
must touch forms and contemplate colours. Dry general truths are a 
sort of algebra, acquired by the mind slowly and after much trouble, 
against our primitive inclination, which is to observe detailed events and 
sensible objects ; man being incapable of contemplating pure formulas 
until he is transformed by ten years' reading and reflection. We 
understand at once the term purification of heart ; Bunyan understandi 
it fully only, after translating it by this fable : — 

' Then the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a verj 
large Pailour that was full of dust, because never swept ; the which after he had 
reviewed a little while, the Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now when he 
began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had 
almost therewith been choaked. Then said the Interpreter to a Damsel that stood 
by. Bring hither the Water, and sprinkle the Eoom ; the which when she kid 
dene, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure. 

•Then said Christian, What means this ? 

* The Interpreter answered, This parlour is the heart of a man that was never 
sanctified by the sweet Grace of the Gospel : the dust is his Original Sin, and 
Inward Corruptions, that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweef 

' PiUjrims Progress, First Part, p 100. 



CHAP V.l THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 4.<^< 

at first, is the Law ; but she that brought water, and did sprinkle it, i« the 

Gospel. Now, whereas thou sawest that so soon as the first began to sweep, the 
dust did so fly about that the Room by him could not be cleansed, but that thou 
wsust almost choaked therewith ; this is to shew thee, that the Law, instead ol 
cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and 
increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give 
power to subdue. 

* Again, as thou sawest the Damsel sprinkle the room with AVater, upon which 
[t was cleansed with pleasure ; this is to shew theS; that when the Gospel comes 
in the sweet and precious influences thereof to the heart, then I sa}"-, even a.g 
thou snwest the Damsel lay the dust by sprinkling the floor with Water, sc is sin 
runquished and subdued, and the soul made clean, through the faith of it, and 
consequently fit for the King of Glory to inhabit. ' ^ 

These repetitions, embarrassed phrases, familiar comparisons, tbis frank 
style, whose awkwardness recalls the childish periods of Herodotus, and 
whose light-heartedness recalls tales for children, prove that if his wori 
is allegorical, it is so in order that it may be intelligible, and that 
Bunyan is a poet because he is a child. ^ 

Again, under his simplicity you will find power, and in his puerility 
the vision. These allegories are hallucinations as clear, complete, and 
sound as ordinary perceptions. No one but Spenser is so lucid. Ima- 
ginary objects rise of themselves within him. He has no trouble in 
calling them up or forming them. They agree in all their details with 
all the details of the precept which they represent, as a pliant veil fits 
the body which it covers. He distinguishes and arranges all the parts 
of the landscape — here the river, on the right the castle, a flag on its 
left turret, the setting sun three feet lower, an oval cloud in the front 
part of the sky — with the preciseness of a carpenter. We fancy in read- 
ing him that we are looking at the old maps of the time, in which the 
striking features of the angular cities are marked on the copperplate 
by a tool as certain as a pair of compasses.^ Dialogues fit w from bin 
pen as in a dream. He does not seem to be thinking ; we should even 

1 Pilgrim's Progress, First Part, p. 26. 

' Here is another of his allegories, almost spiritual^ so just and sitvijJe it la. 
See Pilgrim' s Progress, First Part, p. 68: Now I saw in my Dream, that at the tnd 
ft! this Valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of Pilgrims 
tiut had gone this way formerly ; and while I was musing what should be the 
Wsxson, I espied a little before me a Cave, where two Giants, Pope and Pagan, dwtlt 
ir old time ; by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, ashes, etc, 
lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place Christian went without 
much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered ; but I have learnt since, that Pagati 
has been dead many a day ; and as for the other, though he be yet alive, he is by 
reasoTi of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his youngei 
days, grown so crazy, and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than 
sit in his Cave's mouth, grinning at Pilgrims as they gc by, tmd biting hi» 
nails, because he cannot come at them. 

- Foi in.staAce Hollar's work, Cities of Germnny 



^00 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK It 

«ay that he was net himself there. Events and speeches seem to gro>? 
and dispose themsolves within him, independently of his v/ill. Nothings 
as a rule, is colder than the characters in an allegory ; his are living. 
Looking upon these details, so small and familiar, illusion gains upon 
us. Giant Despair, a simple abstraction, becomes as real in his hands 
as an English gaoler or farmer. He is heard talking by night in bed 
with his wife Diffidence, who gives him good advice, because here, as 
in othei households, the strong and brutal animal is the least cunning 
of the two : — 

* Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning he should (take 
the two prisoners and) heat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth 
him a grievoiis Crab-tree Cudgel, and goes down into the Dungeon to them, and 
there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they gave him never 
a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and heats them fearfully, in such 
sort, that they were not able to help themselves, or to turn them upon the floor. ' * 

This stick, chosen with a forester's experience, this instinct of rating 
first and storming to get oneself into trim for knocking down, are traits 
which attest the sincerity of the narrator, and succeed in persuading the 
reader. Bunyan has the freedom, the tone, the ease, and the clearness 
of Homer ; he is as close to Homer as an Anabaptist tinker could be to 
an heroic singer, a creator of j;^ods. 

I err ; he is nearer. Before the sentiment of the sublime, in- 
equalities are levelled. The depth of emotion raises peasant and poet 
to the same eminence; and here also, allegory stands the peasant m 
stead. It alone, in the absence of ecstasy, can paint heaven ; for it 
does not pretend to paint it : expressing it by a figure, it declares it 
invisible, as a glowing sun at which we cannot look full, and whose 
image we observe in a mirror or a stream. The ineffable world thus 
retains all its mystery ; warned by the allegory, we imagine splendours 
beyond all which it presents to us ; we feel behind the beauties which 
are opened to us, the infinite which is concealed ; and the ideal city, 
vanishing as soon as it appears, ceases to resemble the big Whitehall 
imagined for Jehovah by Milton. Read the arrival of the pilgrims in 
the celestial land. Saint Theresa has nothing more beautiful : — 

* '\'"'»a, here they heard continually the singing of Birds, and saw every day the 
Flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the Turtle in the land. In 
this Country the Sun shineth night and day. . . . Here they were within sight of 
the Git J they were going to, also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof ; 
for in this land the Shining Ones commonly walked, because it was upon the bor- 
ders of Heaven. . . . Here they heard voices from out of the City, luud voices, 
saying, *' Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold thy salvation cometh, behold 
his reward is with him ! " Here all the inhabitants of the Coimtry called them 
"The holy People, The redeemed of the Lord, Sought out, etc." 

* Now as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts mon 



' Pilgrim's Progress, First Part, p. 126, 



CHAP. V.| THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 4,07 

remote from the Kingdom to which they were bound ; and drawing near to the 
City, they had yet a more perfect view thereof. It was builded of Pearls and 
Precious Stones, also the Street thereof was paved with Gold ; so that Ly reason cl 
thu natural glory of the City, and the reflection of the Sun-heams upon it, Christian 
vn th desire fell sick ; Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease. Where- 
fore here they lay by it a while, crying out because of their pangs, **If you set 
my Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." ^ . . . 

* They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the founds- 
iion upon w-iiich the City was framed was higher than the Clouds. They therefore 
«rent up through the Regions of the Air, sweetly talking as they went, being com- 
forted, because they safely got over the River, and had such glorious Companions 
to attend them. 

* The talk that they had with the Shining Ones was about the glory of the plact, 
who told them that the beauty and glory of it was inexpressible. There, said 
tliey, is the Mount Sion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of 
Angels, and the Spirits of just men made perfect. You are going now, said they, 
to the Paradise of God, ^wherein you shall see the Tree of Life, and eat of the never- 
fading fruits thereof ; and when you come there, you shall have white Robes given 
you, and your walk and talk shall be every day with the King, even all the days 
of Eternity. 2 

* There came out also at this time to meet them, several of the King's Trum- 
peters, cloathed in white and shining Raiment, who with melodious noises and loud, 
made even the Heavens to echo with their sound. These Trumpeters saluted 
Christian and his fellow with ten thousand vvel comes from the World, and tliia 
they did with shouting and sound of Trumpet. 

* This done, they compassed them round on every side ; some went before, 
some behind, and some on the right hand, some on the left (as 't were to guard 
them tiirough the upper Regions), continually sounding as they went with melo- 
dious noise, in notes on high ; so that the very sight was to them that could behold 
it, as if Heaven itself was come down to meet them. . . . 

* And now were these two men as 't were in Heaven before they came at it, 
being swallowed up with the sight of Angels, and with hearing of their melodious 
notes. Here also they had the City itself in view, and they thought they heard 
all the Bells therein ring to welcome them thereto. But above all, the warm and 
joyful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling there, with such company, 
and that for ever and ever. Oh, by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy l>s 
expressed ! ' ^ . . . 

* Now I saw in my Dream that these two men went in at the Gate ; and lo. as 
they entered, they were transfigured, and they had Raiment put on that shone l>kc 
Gold. There was also that met them with Harps and Crowns, and gave tlif;m to 
them, the Harps to praise withal, and the Crowns in token of honour. Then I 
heard in my Dream that all the Bells in the City rang again for joy, and that it 
was said unto them, ** Enter ye into the joy of your Lord." I also heard the men 
themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying, "Blessing, Honour, Glory, 
and Power, be to him that sitteth upon the Throne, and to the Lamb for ever and 
ever." 

* Now, just as the Gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, 
and behold, the City shone like the Sun ; the Streets also were paved witJi Cfold, 

' PilgHm's Progress, First Part, p. 174. » Ihid. p. 179. 

» MA. t> 183, 



<t08 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II, 

and in them walked many men, with Crowns on their heads, Palms in their hania. 

and golden Harps to sing praises withal. 

'There were also of them that had wings, and they answered fcne another 
without intermission, saying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord." And after thai 
they shut up the Gates, Which when I had seen, I wished myself among them. ■' 

He was imprisoned for twelve years and a half; in his dungeon hi 
made wire snares to support himself and his family; he died at the 
age of sixty in 1688. At the same time Milton lingered obscure and 
blind. The last two poets of the Reformation thus survived, amid the 
classical coldness which then dried up English literature, and the social 
excess which then corrupted English morals. * Shorn hypocrites, the 
psalm-singers, gloomy bigots,' such were the names by which men who 
reformed the manners and renewed the constitution of England were 
insulted. But oppressed and insulted as they were, their work continued 
of itself and without noise below the earth ; for ,the ideal which they 
had raised was, after all, that which the clime suggested and the race 
demanded. Gradually Puritanism began to approach the world, and 
the world to approach Puritanism. The Restoration was to fall into 
evil odour, the Revolution was to come, and under the insensible pro- 
gress of national sympathy, as well as under the incessant effort of 
public reflection, parties and doctrines were to lally around a free and 
aoral Protestantism. 

* Pilgrim'* Progress Firet Part, p, 188 ««e. 



OJIAP VI.] MILTON. 40ft 



CHAPTER VT. 

Milton. 

I. Oenyral idea of his mind and character — Family — Educat ion — Studies- 
Travels — Return to England. 
II Effects of a concentrated and solitary character — Austerity — Inexperience — 
Marriage — Children — Domestic Troubles. 

III. Combative energy — Polemic against the bishops— Against the king — En- 

thusiasm and sternness — Theories on government, church, and education 
— Stoicism and virtue — Old age, occupations, person. 

IV. Milton as a prose-\vi'iter — Changes during three centuries in appearances and 

ideas — Heaviness of his logic — The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce — 
Heavy humour — Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence — Clumsi- 
ness of discussion — Defensio Popnli Anglicani — Violence of his animositiei 
— The Reason of Church Government — Eikonoldastes — Liberality of doctrines 
— Of Reformation — Areopagitica — Style — Breadth of eloquence — Wealth oi 
imagery — Lyric sublimity of diction. 
V. Milton as a poet— How he approaches and is distinct from the poets of thfl 
Renaissance — How he gives poetry a moral tone — Profane poems — L' Allegro 
and II Penseroso — Comus — Lycidas — Religious poems — Paradise Lost — 
Conditions of a genuine epic — They are not to be met with in the age or in 
the poet — Comparison of Adam and Eve with an English family — Com- 
parison of God and the angels to a monarch's court — The rest of the poem 
— Comparison between the sentiments of Satan and the republican passions 
— Lyrical and moral character of the scenery — Loftiness and sense of the 
moral ideas — Situation of the poet and the poem between two ages— Com- 
position of his genius and his work. 

ON the borders of the licentious Renaissance which was drawing to 
a close, and of the exact school of poetry which was springing 
up, between the monotonous conceits of Cowley and the correct gal- 
liintries of Waller, appeared a mighty and superb mind, prepared by 
logic and enthusiasm for eloquence and the epic style ; liberal. Pro* 
testant, a moralist and a poet ; adorning the cause of Algernon Sidney 
y,nd Locke with the inspiration of Spenser and Shakspeare ; the heir of 
a pdetical age, tlie precursor of an austere age, holding his place oetween 
the epoch of unbiassed dreamland and tlie epoch of practical action ; 
like his own Adam, who, entering a hostile earth, heard behind him, in 
the closed Eden, the dying strains of heaven. 

John Milton was not one of those fevered souls, void of self- com' 
aand, whose rapture takes them by fits, whom a sickly sensibility drive* 



410 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IT 

for ever to the extreme of sorrow or joy, whose pliability prepares them 
to produce a variety of characters, whose inquietude condemns them to 
paint the insanity and contradictions of passion. Vast knowledge, close 
l(\q;ic, and grand passion: these were his marks. His mind was lucid, 
his imagination limited. He was incapable of disturbed emotion oi of 
transformation. He conceived the loftiest of ideal beauties, but h« 
conceived only one. He was not born for the drama, but for the ode. 
fie does not create souls, but constructs arguments and experiences 
emotions. Emotions and arguments, all the forces and actions of his 
soul, assemble and are arranged beneath a unique sentiment, that of 
the sublime ; and the broad river of lyric poetry streams from hini, 
impetuous, with even flow, splendid as a cloth of gold. 

I. 

This dominant sense constituted the greatness and the firmness oi 
his character. Against external fluctuations he found a refuge in 
himself ; and the ideal city which he had built in his soul endured, 
impregnable to all assaults. It was too beautiful, this inner city, for 
him to wish to leave it ; it was too solid to be destroyed. He believed 
in the sublime with the whole force of his nature, and the whole autho- 
rity of his logic ; and with him, the cvl<ivated reason strengthened by 
its tests the suggestions of the primitive in'=t,inct. With this doublo 
armour, man can advance firmly through life. He who is always 
feeding himself with demonstrations is capable of believing, willing, 
persevering in belief and will ; he does not turn aside to every event 
and every passion, as that fickle and pliable being whom we call a 
poet; he remains at rest in fixed principles. He is capable of em- 
bracing a cause, and of continuing attached to it, whatever may 
happen, spite of all, to the end. No seduction, no emotion, no 
accident, no change alters the stability of his conviction or the 
lucidity of his knowledge. On the first day, on the last day, during 
the whole time, he preserves intact the entire system of his clear ideas, 
and the logical vigour of his brain sustains the manly vigour of his 
heart. When at length, as here, this close logic is employed in the 
sei'vice of ncble ideas, enthusiasm is added to constancy. Man holds 
his opinions not only as true, but as sacred. He fights for them, 
not only as a soldier, but as a priest. He is impassioned, devoted, 
religious, heroic. Earely is such a mixture seen ; but it was clearly 
seen in Milton. 

He was of a family in which courage, moral nobility, the love of 
art, were present to whisper the most beautiful and eloquent words 
around his cradle. His mother was a most exemplary woman, well 
known through all the neighbourhood for her benevolence.^ His 



' Matre probatissima et eleesmosynis per viciniam potissimum nota.-i>« 
fensio secunda. Life of Milton, hy Keisrhtley. 



CHAP. VIj MILTON. 411 

father, a student of Cliiist Church, and disinherited as a Protestant, 
had alone made his fortune, and, amidst his occupations as a scrivener 
or writer, had preserved the taste for letters, Ijeing unwilling to give 
up 'his liberal and intelligent tastes to the extent of becoming 
altogether a slave to the world ; ' he wrote verses, was an excellent 
musician, one of the best composers in his time ; he chose Cornelius 
Jansen to paint his son's portrait when in his tenth year, and gave his 
child the widest and fullest literary education.^ Let the reader try to 
picture this child, in the street inhabited by merchants, in this citizen- 
like and scholarly, religious and poetical family, whose manners were 
regular and their as[)irations lofty, where they set the psalms to music, 
and wrote madrigals in honour of Oriana the queen, ^ where music, 
letters, painting, all the adornments of the beauty-loving Renaissance, 
decorated the sustained gravity, the hard-working honesty, the deep 
Christianity of the Reformation. All Milton's genius springs from 
this; he carried the splendour of the Renaissance into the earnestness 
of the Reformation, the magnificence of Spenser into the severity of 
Calvin, and, with his family, found himself at the confluence of the 
two civilizations which he combined. Before he was ten years old he 
had a learned tutor, 'a Puritan, who cut his hair short; ' after that he 
went to Saint Paul's School, then to the University of Cambridge, that 
he might be instructed in * po'ite literature ; ' and at the age of twelve 
he worked, in spite of his weak eyes and headaches, until midnight 
and even later. His John the Baptist, a character resembling himself, 

says: 

* When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, 
What might be pnblic good ; myself I thought 
Born to that end, born to promote all truth. 
All righteous things. ' ^ 

In fact, at school, then at Cambridge, then with his father, he was 
strengthening and preparing himself with all his power, free from all 
blame, and loved by all good men ; traversing the vast fields of Greek 
and Latin literature, not only the great writers, but all the writers, 
down to the half of the middle-age ; and simultaneously the ancient 
H brew, Syriac and rabbinical Hebrew, French and Spanish, the old 
English literature, all the Italian literature, with such zeal and profit 
that he wrote Italian and Latin verse and prose like an Italian or a 
Roman ; beyond this, music, mathematics, theology, and much besides. 
A serious thought regulated thio great toil. ' The church, to whose 

» My father destined me whil*- yet a little child for the study of humani 
letters,' — Life, by Masson, 1859 i 51. 

2 Queen Elizabeth. 

« The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Cleveland, 1865. Paradiae Rt 
g-jiin^i Book i. ?). 201-20fi 



412 THE RENAISSA^^CE. [BOOK h 

service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of 
a child, and in mine own resolutions : till coming to some maturity of 
years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the church, that he 
who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal^ 
which unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either 
straight perjure, or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blame- 
less silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with 
servitude and forswearing.' ^ 

He refused to be a priest from the same feelings that he had wished 
it: the desire and the renunciation all sprang from the same source — a 
fixed resolve to act nobly. Falling back into the life of a layman, he 
continued to cultivate and perfect himself, studying with passion and 
with method, but without pedantry or rigour ; nay, rather, after hia 
master Spenser, in L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, he set forth in spark- 
ling and variegated dress the wealth of mythology, nature, and fancy ; 
then, sailing for the land of science and beauty, he visited Italy, made 
the acquaintance of Grotius and Galileo, sought the society of the 
learned, the men of letters, the men of the world, heard the musicians, 
steeped himself in all the beauties stored iip by the Renaissance at 
Florence and Rome. Everywhere his learning, his fine Italian and 
I.atin style, secured him the friendship and attachment of scholars, so 
that, on his return to Florence, he * was as well received as if he had 
returned to his native country.' He collected books and music, which 
he sent to England, and thought of traversing Sicily and Greece, those 
two homes of ancient letters and arts. Of all the flowers that opened 
to the Southern sun under the influence of the two great Paganisms, he 
gathered freely the sweetest and the most exquisite of odours, but with- 
out staining himself with the mud which surrounded them. * I call the 
Deity to witness,' he wrote later, ' that in all those places in which vice 
meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, 
I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and per- 
petually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of 
men, it could not elude the inspection of God.' ^ 

Amid the licentious gallantries and inane sonnets such as those of 
the Cicisbei and Academicians lavished forth, he had retained his sublime 
idea of poetry : he thought to choose a heroic subject from ancient 
Er.giish history; anii as he says, 'I was confirmed in this opinion, that he 
Nvh:) would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
things, ought himself to be a true poem ; that is, a composition and 
pattern of the best and honourablest things ; not presuming to sing high 
praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the 



' Milton's Prose Wcrks, ed. St. John, 5 vols., 1848, T7te lieason of Church 
QoDernment, ii. 482. 

^ Ibid., Second Defence of the People of England i. 257. See also his ./.'*• 
ian Sonnets, with their religious sentiment. 



Ill A p. VI.] MILTON. 413 

experience and tlie practice of all that which is praiseworthy.** Amidst 
all, he loved Dante and Petrarch for their purity, telling himself that ' il 
unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be sucli 
a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image 
and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much 
more deflouring and dishonourable.' * 4^ He thought ' that every free and 
gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight,* for the 
practice and defence of chastity, and he kept himself virgin till his mar- 
riage. Whatever the temptation might be, whatever the attraction cr 
fear, it found him equally opposed and equally firm. From a sense of 
gravity and propriety he avoided all religious disputes ; but if his owr 
creed were attacked, he defended it ' without any reserve or fear,' even 
in Rome, before the Jesuits who plotted against him, within a few paces 
of the Inquisition and the Vatican. Perilous duty, instead of driving 
him away, attracted him. When the Revolution began to threaten, 
he returned, drawn by conscience, as a soldier Avho hastens to danger 
at the noise of arms, convinced, as he himself tells us, that it was 
a shame to him leisurely to spend his life abroad, and for his own 
pleasure, whilst his fellow-countrymen were striving for their liberty. 
In battle he appeared in the front ranks as a volunteer, courting danger 
everywhere. Throughout his education and throughout his youth, 
in his profane readings and his sacred studies, in his acts and his 
maxims, already a ruling and permanent thought grew manifest — the 
resolution to develop and unfold within him the ideal man. 

n. 

Two special powers lead mankind — impulse and idea: the cno 
influencing sensitive, unfettered, poetical souls, capable of transforma- 
tions, like Shakspeare ; the other governing active, combative, heroic 
souls, capable of immutability, like Milton. The first are sympathetic 
and effusive; the second are concentrative and reserved.* The first 
give themselves up, the others withhold themselves. These, by reliance 
and sociability, with an artistic instinct and a sudden imitative compre- 
hension, involuntarily take the tone and disposition of the men and 
things which surround them, and an immediate counterpoise is effected 
between the inner and the outer man. Those, by mistrust and rigidity, 
with, a combative instinct and a quick reference to rule, become natu- 
rally thrown back upon themselves, and in their narrow retirement no 
longer feel the solicitations and contradictions of their surroundings. 

^ Milton's Works, Apology for Smectymnuus, iii. 117. 

' lUd, 123. See also his Treatise on Divorce, which shows clearly Milton g 
meaning. 

3 ' Though Christianity had been but slightly taught me, yet a certain re- 
servedness of natural disposition, and moral discipline, learnt oul of the noblest 
{)]iilosoph} , was enough to keep me in disdain of far }3ss incc ttinence? han 
this cf the bordello.' — Aiiologij for Smeclyiamius, iii. p 122. 



4:14: THE RENAISSANCE. |BOOK U 

They have formed a model, and thenceforth this model like a watchword 
restrains ot urges them on. Like all powers destined to have sway, 
the inner idea grows and absorbs to its use the rest of their being. 
They bury it in themselves by meditation, they nourish it with reason- 
ing, they put it in communication with the chain of all their doctrines 
and all their experiences ; so that when a temptation assails them, it it 
not an isolated principle which it attacks, but it encounters the whole 
combination of their belief, an infinitely ramified combination, and Ux 
strong for a sensible seduction to tear asunder. Thus a man is by habit 
upon his guard ; the combative attitude is habitual to him, and he 
stands erect, firm in the pride of his courage and the inveteracy of hia 
determination. 

A soul thus fortified is like a diver in his bell ; * it passes through 
life as he passes through the sea, unstained but isolated. On his return 
to JbJngland, Milton fell back among his books, and received a few pupils, 
from whom he exacted, as from himself, continuous toil, serious reading, 
a frugal diet, a strict behaviour ; the life of a recluse, almost of a monk. 
Suddenly, in a month, after a country visit, he married.^ A few weeks 
afterwards, his wife returned to her father's house, would not return, 
took no notice of his letters, and sent back his messenger with scorn. 
The two characters had come into collision. Nothing displeases women 
more than an austere and self-contained character. They see that they 
have no hold upon it ; its dignity awes them, its pride repels, its pre- 
occupations keep them aloof; they feel themselves of less value, neglected 
for general interests or speculative curiosities ; judged, moreover, and 
that after an inflexible rule ; at most regarded with condescension, as a 
sort of less reasonable and inferior being, shut out from the equality 
which they look for, and the love which alone can recompense to them 
the loss of equality. The ' priest ' character is made for solitude ; the 
tact, abandon, charm, pleasantness, and sweetness necessary to all com- 
panionship, is wanting to it; we admire him, but we go no further, 
especially if, like Milton's wife, we are somewhat dull and common- 
place,^ adding m>2diocrity of intellect to the repugnance of our hearts. 
H« had, so his biographers say, a certain gravity of nature, or severity 
of mind which would not condescend to petty things, but kept him in 
ihf! clouds, in a region which is not that of the household. He was 
accused of being harsh, choleric ; and certainly he stood upon his manly 

* An expression of Jean Paul Ilichter. Sv>e an excellent article on MiJinn 
in the Hat Review, July 1859. 

2 1643, at the age of 85. 

8 • Mute and spiritless mate.' ' The bashful muteness of the virgin may 
oftentimes hide all the unloveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit fox 
conversation.' ' A man sha^l find himself bound fast to an image of earth aud 
phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a sweet and delightsome 
pociety '—Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. A pretty woman will say i a 
reply : I cannot love a man wlio carries his head ^ke the Sacrament. 



CHAP. VI.l MILIUM. 415 

dignity, his authority as a husband, and wai not so greatly esieemcd, 
respected, studied, as he thought he deserved to be. In short, he passed 
the day amongst his books, and the rest of the time his heart lived in 
an abstracted and sublime world of which few wives catch a glimpse, his 
wife least of all. He had, in fact, chosen like a student, the more at 
random because his former life had been of 'a well-governed and wise 
appetite.' Equally like a man of the closet, he resented her flight, 
being the more irritated because the world's ways were vmknown to 
him. Without dread of ridicule, and with the sternness of a specula- 
tive man suddenly in collision with actual life, he w^-^te treatises on 
Divorce^ signed them with his name, dedicated them to Parliament, held 
himself divorced, de facto because his wife refused to return, de jur6 
because he had four texts of Scripture for it ; whereupon he paid court 
to a young lady, and suddenly, seeing his wife on her knees and weeping, 
forgave her, took her back, renewed the dry and sad marriage-tie, not 
profiting by experience, but on the other hand fated to contract two 
other unions, the last with a wife thirty years younger than himself. 
Other parts of his domestic life were neither better managed noi 
happier. He had taken his daughters for secretaries, and made thew 
read languages which they did not understand, — a repelling task, of 
which they bitterly complained. In return, he accused them of being 
'undutiful and unkind,' of neglecting him, not caring whether they 
left him alone, of conspiring with the servants to rob him in their 
purchases, of stealing his books, so that they would have disposed of 
the whole of them. Mary, the second, hearing one day that he was 
going to be married, said that his marriage was no news ; the best 
news would be his death. An incredible speech, and one which throws 
a strange light on the miseries of this family. Neither circumstances 
nor nature had created him for happiness. 

in. 

They had created him for strife, and from his return to England he 
toad thrown himself heartily into it, armed with logic, indignation, and 
learning, protected by conviction and conscience. When * the liberty 
of speech wiia iio longer subject to contrc'l ali mouths began to be 
"Opened against the bishops. ... I saw mat a way was opening for 
the establishnicuc of real liberty ; that the foundation was laving foi 
the deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery dnd superstition; ; . . , 
and as I had frum my youth studied the distinction between reli^ouf 
and civil rights, ... I determined to relinquish the other pursuits 
in wl) ich I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talenti 
and my iadustry to this one important object* ^ And thereupon h( 
wrote his Refoi-mation in Englandf^ jeering at and sMa/oldn^ wJt| 

» l^&sond Befeiwe of the People of England, i. 257. 

• III ^^t. Of EefoniMUion in MngUnd. and the Causes that hitheriv .Ijcce 



416 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

haughtiness and scorn the prelacy and its defenders. Refuted and 
attacked in turn, he doubled his bitterness, and crushed those -whom 
he had beaten. Transported to the limits of his creed, and like a 
knight making a rush, and who pierces with a dash the wbole line ot 
battle, ho hurled himself upon the prince, concluded the abolition of 
Royalty as well as the overthro w of the Episcopacy ; and one month 
after the death of Charles i., justified his execution, replied to tho 
Eikon Basilike, then to Salmasius' Defence of the King, with incom- 
purable breadth of style and scorn, like a soldier, like an apostle, like 
A man who everywhere feels the superiority of his science and logic, 
who wishes to make it felt, who proudly treads down and crushes his 
adversaries as ignoramuses, inferior minds, base hearts.^ * Kings most 
commonly,' he says, at the beginning of the Eikonohlastes,^ * though 
strong in legions, are but weak at argument ; as they who ever hav€ 
accustomed from their cradle to use their will only as their right 
hand, their reason always as their left. Whence unexpectedly con- 
strained to that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny adver- 
saries.' Yet, for love of those who suffer themselves to be overcome 
by this dazzling name of royalty, he consents to * take up King Charles' 
gauntlet,' and bangs him with it in a style calculated to make the im- 
prudent ones who had thrown it down, repent. Far from recoiling at 
the accusation of murder, he accepts and boasts of it. He vaunts the 
regicide, sets it on a triumphal car, decks it in all the light of heaven. 
He relates with the tone of a judge, * how a most potent king, after 
he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, and given a shock to 
its religion, and began to rule at his own will and pleasure, was at last 
subdued in the field by his own subjects, who had undergone a long 
slavery under him ; how afterwards he was cast into prison, and when 
he gave no ground, either by words or actions, to hope better things of 
him, was finally by the supreme council of the kingdom condemned 
to die, and beheaded before the very gates of the royal palace. . . . 
For what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so 
brightly, as that of the people of England then did, when, shaking off 
that old superstition, which had prevailed a long time, they gave judg- 
m<:nt upon the king himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been 
their king, caught as it were in a net by his own laws, (who alone q{ 
all mortals challenged to himself impunity by a divine right,) and 
scrupled not to inflict the same punishment upon him, being guilty, 
which he would have inflicted upon any other ? ' * After having justi- 

hindired U. A Treatise of Prelatical Episcopacy. The Reason of Church 
Government urged against Prelacy. Apology for Smectymnuus. 

* The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Eikonoklastes. Defensio PopuU 
AngUcani. Defensio-Secunda. Authoris pro se defensio. Besponsio. 

2 Milton's Works, vol. i. p. 308. 

• Preface to the 1)( fence of the People of England, i. p. 3. 



CHAP VI.] MILTON. 4i1 

fied the execution, he sanctified it ; consecrated it by decrees of heaven 
when he had authorised it by the hiws of the world ; from the support 
of Law he transferred it to the support of God. This is the God 
who * uses to throw down proud and unruly kings, . . . and utterly 
to extirpate them and all their family. By his manifest impulse being 
Bet at work to recover our almost lost liberty, following him as out 
guide, and adoring the impresses of his divine power manifested upon 
all occasions, we went on in no obscure but an illustrious passage, 
pointed out and made plain to us by God himself.' ^ Here the 
reasoning ends with a song of triumph, and enthusiasm breaks out 
thr »ugh the mail of the warrior. Such he displayed himself in ah 
bis actions and in all his doctrines. The solid files of bristling and 
well-ordered arguments which he disposed in battle-array were changed 
in his heart in the moment of triumph into glorious processions of 
crowned and resplendent hymns. He was transported by them, even 
to self-illusion, and lived thus alone with the sublime, like a warrior- 
pontiff, who in his stiff armour, or his glittering stole, stands face to 
face with truth. Thus absorbed in strife and in his priesthood, he lived 
out of the world, as blind to palpable facts as he was protected against 
the seductions of the senses, placed above the stains and the lessons of 
experience, as incapable of leading men as of yielding to them. There 
was nothing in him akin to the devices and delays of the statesman, the 
crafty schemer, who pauses on his way, experimentalises, with eyes 
fixed on what may turn up, who gauges what is possible, and employs 
logic for practical purposes. He was speculative and chimerical. 
Locked up in his own ideas, he sees but them, is attracted but by 
them. Is he pleading against the bishops ? He would extirpate them 
at once, without hesitation ; he demands that the Presbyterian worship 
shall be at once established, without forethought, contrivance, hesita- 
tion. It is the command of God^ it is the duty of every faithful man ; 
beware how you trifle with God or temporise with faith. Concord, 

^ Defence, i. 4. This defence is in Latin. Milton ends the Defence thus : — 
* He (God) has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two 
greatest mischiefs of tliis life, and most pernicious to virtue, tyranny and super- 
stition ; he has endued you with greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, wha 
alter having conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into tlic.ii 
hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and, pursuant to tli it sen- 
tence of condemnation, to put him to death. After the performing so glorious aii 
sctioc as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to 
think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which t<5 
attain to, this is your only way ; as you have subdued your enemies in the field 
BO to make appear, that unarmed, and in the liighest outw^ard peace and tran- 
quiliity, you of all mankind are best able to subdue ambition, avarice, the love 
of riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce, 
(which generally subdue and triumph over other nations,) to shew as great 
justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty.. »-s you 
have shewn courage in freeing yourselves from slavery.' 

2 D 



418 THE RENAISSANCE. LoOOK 11 

gentleness, liberty, piety, he sees a whole swarm of virtues issue from 
this new worship. Let the king fear nothing from it, his power will 
be all the stronger. Twenty thousand democratic assemblies will take 
care that his rights be not infringed. These ideas make us smile. We 
recognise the party-man, who, on the verge of the Restoration, when 
' the whole multitude was mad with desire for a king,' published A 
Heady and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonivealth, and described 
his method at length. We recognise the theologian who, to obtain g 
Uvv of divorce, only appealed to Scripture, and aimed at transforming 
the civil constitution of a people by changing the accepted sense of a 
verse. With closed eyes, sacred text in hand, he advances from con- 
sequence to consequence, trampling upon the prejudices, inclinations, 
habits, wants of men, as if a reasoning or religious spirit were the whole 
man, as if evidence always created belief, as if belief always resulted 
in practice, as if, in the struggle of doctrines, truth or justice gave 
doctrines the victory and sovereignty. To cap all, he sketched out a 
treatise on education, in which he proposed to teach each pupil every 
science, every art, and, what is more, every virtue. ' He who had the 
art and proper eloquence . . . might in a short space gain them to an 
incredible diligence and courage, . . . infusing into their young breasts 
such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make many of 
them renowned and matchless men.' Milton had taught for many years 
and at various times. To retain such deceptions after such experiences, 
one must be insensible to experience or doomed to illusions. 

But his obstinacy constituted his power, and the inner constitution, 
which closed his mind to instruction, armed his heart against weaknesses. 
With men generally, the source of devotion dries up when in contact 
with life. Gradually, by dint of frequenting the world, we come to 
acquire its tone. We do not choose to be dupes, and to abstain from 
the liberty which others allow themselves ; we relax our youthful strict- 
ness ; we even smile, attributing it to our heat of blood ; we come to 
know our own motives, and cease to find ourselves sublime. We end 
by taking it calmly, and we see the world wag, only trying to avoid 
shecks, picking up here and there a few little harmless pleasures. Not 
so Milton. He lived complete and untainted to the end, without loss of 
heart or weakness ; experience could not instruct nor misfortune depress 
him ; he endured all, and repented of nothing. He lost his sight, 
willingly, by writing, though ill, and against the prohibition of hia 
doctois, to justify the English people against the invectives of Sal- 
masius. He saw the funeral of the Republic, the proscription of his 
doctrines, the defamation of his honour. Around him rioted the disgust 
of liberty, the enthusiasm of slavery. A whole people threw itself at 
the feet of a young incapable and treacherous libertine. The glorious 
leaders of the Puritan faith were condemned, executed, cut down alive 
from the gallows, quartered am.idst insults ; others, whom death had 
saved from the hangman, were dug up and exposed on the gibbet; 



CHAP. VI.] MILTON. 419 

others, exiles in foreign lands, lived under the menaces am < titrages of 
royalist arms; others again, more unfortunate, had sold their cause for 
money and titles, and sat amid the executioners of their former friends. 
Tiie most pious and austere citizens of England filled the prisons, or 
wandered in poverty and opprobrium; and gros^ vice, shamelessly seated 
mi the throne, stirred up around it the riot of unbridled licentious lusts 
and sensualities. Milton himself had been constrained to hide ; his books 
hill been burned by the hand of the hangman; even after the geneial 
act of indemnity he was imprisoned; when set at liberty, he lived in 
the expectancy of assassination, for private fanaticism might seize the 
weapon relinquished by public revenge. Other smaller misfortunes 
came to aggravate by their stings tlie great wounds which afflicted them. 
Confiscations, a bankruptcy, finally, the great fire of London, had 
robbed him of three-fourths of his fortune ; ^ his daughters neither 
esteemed nor respected him; he sold his books, knoAving that his family 
could not profit by them after his death ; and amidst so many private 
and public miseries, he continued calm. Instead of repudiating what 
he had done, he gloried in it ; instead of being cast down, he increased 
in firmness. He says, in his 17th sonnet: 

* Cyriack, this three years day these eyes, though clear, 

To outward view, of blemish or of spot. 

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; 

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 

Of sun, or moon, or star, througliout the year. 

Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 

Of heart or liope ; but still bear up and steer 

Eight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 

In liberty's defence, my noble task, 

Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 

This thought might lead me through the world's vain maak 

Content though blind, had I no better guide.' ^ 

That thought was indeed his guide ; he was ' armed in himself, and 
that 'breastplate of diamond'^ which had protected the strong njan 
against the wounds in battle, protected the old man against the (^empta- 
lii>ns and doubts of defeat and adversity. 

IV. 
Milton lived in a small house in London, or in the country, in Buck* 

* A scrivener caused him to lose £2000. At the Restoration lie Wj.s i^^iused j^ay- 
ment of £2000 which he had put into the Excise Office, and deprived of an Co-Jate 
of £50 a year, bought by him from the property of the Chapter of Westminster. 
His house was burnt in the great li/e. When he died he only left £1500, iaclAding 
the produce of his hbrary. 

9 1553, Milton's Poetical Works, ed. Cleveland, 1865, Sonnet 17. 

* Italian Sonnets. 



4-20 THE llENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

mghamshire, at the foot of a high green hil], published his History of 
Britain, his Logic, a Treatise on True Religion and Heresy, meditated 
his great Treatise on Christian Doctrine. Of all consolations, work is the 
most fortifying and the most healthy, because it solaces a man not by 
bringing him ease, but ,by requiring efforts. Every morning he had a 
chapter of the Bible read to him in Hebrew, and remained for si;me 
time in silence, grave, in order to meditate on what he had hsard. He 
never went to a place of worship. Independent in religion as in all 
else, he was sufficient to himself ; finding in no sect the marks of the 
true church, he prayed to God alone, without needing others' help. 
He studied till mid-day ; then, after an hour's exercise, he played the 
organ or the bass-violin. Then he resumed his studies till six, and in 
the evening enjoyed the society of his friends. When any one came 
to visit him, he was usually found in a room hung with old green 
hangings, seated in an arm-cliair, and dressed quietly in black ; his 
complexion was pale, says one of his visitors, but not sallow ; his hands 
and feet were gouty ; his hair, of a light brown, was parted in the 
midst, and fell in long curls ; his eyes, grey and clear, showed no sign 
of blindness. He had been very beautiful in his youth, and his Eng- 
lish cheeks, once delicate as a young girl's, retained their colour almost 
to the end. His face, we are told, was pleasing ; his straight and manly 
gait bore witness to intrepidity and courage. Something great and 
proud breathes out yet from all his portraits ; and certainly few men 
have done such honour to their kind. Thus expired this noble life, 
like a setting sun, bright and calm. Amid so many trials, a pure and 
lofty joy, altogether worthy of him, had been granted to him: the 
poet, buried under the Puritan, had reappeared, more sublime than 
ever, to give to Christianity its second Homer. The dazzling dreams 
of his youth and the reminiscences of his ripe age were found in 
him, side by side with Calvinistic dogmas and the visions of John, to 
create the Protestant epic of damnation and grace ; and the vastness ol' 
primitive horizons, the flames of the infernal dungeon, the splendours 
of the celestial court, opened to the inner eye of the soul unknown 
regions beyond the sights which the eyes of flesh had lost. 

V. 

I have before me the formidable volume in which, some lime afle! 
Milton's death; his prose woi-ks were collected.-^ What a book ! The 
chairs creak when you place it upon them, and a man who had turned 
its leaves over for an hour, would have less pain in his head than in 

* The titles of Milton's chief writings in prose are these : — History of 
Reformation ; The Reason of Church Oomrnment urged against Prelacy : An 
imadversions upon the Remonstrants' Defence; Doctrine and Discipline oj 
Divorce; Tetrachordon ; Tractate on Education; Areopagitica ; Tenure of 
Kings and Magistrates ; Eikonoklastes ; History of Britain ; Thesaurus Lin 
gure Latince ; History of Moscovia ; De Logicce Arte. 



CHAP. VI.J MILTON. 421 

his ariri. As the boolc, so were the men : from the mere outsides we 
might gather some notion of the controversialists and theologians whose 
doctrines they contain. Yet we must conclude that the author was 
eminently learned, elegant, travelled, philosophic, and of high worldly 
culture for the times. We think involuntarily of the portraits of the 
theologians of the age, severe faces engraved on steel by the hard too. 
of m.asters, whose square brows and steady eyes stand out in startling 
prominence against the black oak panel. We compare them to modern 
countenances, in which the delicate and complex features seem to 
shudder at the alternate contact of hardly begun sensations and in- 
numerable ideas. We try to imagine the heavy Latin education, the 
physical exercises, the rude treatment, the rare ideas, the imposed 
dogmas, which once occupied, oppressed, fortified, and hardened the 
young ; and we might fancy ourselves looking at an anatomy of mega- 
theria and mastodons, reconstructed by Cuvier. 

The race of living men is changed. Our mind fails us now-a-dayg 
at the idea of this greatness and this barbarism ; but we discover that 
barbarism was then the cause of greatness. As in other times we 
might have seen, in the primitive sHme and among the colossal ferns, 
ponderous monsters slowly wind their scaly backs, and tear the flesh 
from one another's sides with their misshapen talons; so now, at a 
distance, from the height of our calm civihsation, we see the battles 
of the theologians, who, armed wdth syllogisms, bristling with texts, 
covered one another with filth, and laboured to devour each other. 

Milton fought in the front rank, pre-ordained to barbarism and 
greatness by his individual nature and surrounding manners, capable 
of displaying in high prominence the logic, style, and spirit of his 
age. It is drawing-room life which trims men into shape ; the society 
of ladies, the lack of serious interests, idleness, vanity, security, are 
needed to bring men to elegance, urbanity, line and light humour, to 
teach the desire to please, the fear to become wearisome, a perfect clear- 
ness, a finished precision, the art of insensible transitions and delicate 
tapt, the taste for suitable images, continual ease, and choice diversity. 
Soek nothing like this in Milton. The old scholastic system was not 
far off; it still weighed on those who were destroying it. Under this 
secular armour discussion proceeded pedantically, with measured steps. 
The first thing was to propound a thesis ; and Milton writes, in large 
characters, at the head of his Treatise on Divorce., ' that indisposition, 
unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature 
unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of 
conjugal society, wdiich are solace and peace, is a greater reason of 
divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and 
that there be mutual consent.' And then follow, legion after legion, 
the disciplined army of the arguments. Battalion after battalion they 
pass by, numbered very distinctly. There is a dozen of them together, 
each with its title in clear characters, and the little brigade of sub 



422 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

divisions which it commands. Sacred texts hold the post of honour 
They are discussed word by word, the substantive after the adjective, 
the verb after the substantive, the preposition after the verb ; inter- 
pretations, authorities, illustrations, are summoned up, and ranged 
between palisades of new divisions. And yet there is a lack of crder 
the question is not reduced to a single idea ; we cannot see our waj ; 
proofs succeed proofs without logical sequence ; we are rather tiled out 
than convinced. We remember that the author speaks to Oxford men, 
lay or cleric, trained in pretended discussions, capable of obstinate 
attention, accustomed to digest indigestible books. They are at home 
in this thorny thicket of scholastic brambles ; they beat a path through, 
somewhat at hazard, hardened against the hurts which repulse us, and 
not giving a thought to the daylight which we require. 

With such ponderous reasoners, you must not look for wit. Wit is 
the nimbleness of victorious reason : here, because all is powerful, all 
is heavy. When Milton wishes to joke, he looks like one of Cromwell's 
pikemen, who, entering a room to dance, should fall upon the floor, and 
that with the extra momentum of his armour. Few things could be 
more stupid than his Animadversions upon the Remonstrants^ Defence. 
At the end of an argument his adversary concludes with this specimen 
of theological wit : ' In the meanwhile see, brethren, how you have with 
Simon fished all night, and caught nothing.* And Milton boastfully 
replies : ' If we, fishing with Simon the apostle, can catch nothing, see 
what you can catch Avith Simon Magus ; for all his hooks and fishing 
implements he bequeathed among you.' Here a great savage laugh 
would break out. The spectators saw a charm in this way of insinuating 
that his adversary Avas simoniacal. A little before, the latter says: 
* Tell me, is this liturgy good or evil?' Answer : * It is evil. Repair 
the acheloian horn of your dilemma, how you can, against the next 
push.' The doctors wondered at the fine mythological simile, and re- 
joiced to see the adversary so neatly compared to an ox, a beaten ox, 
a pagan ox. On the next page the Remonstrant said, by way of a 
spiritual and mocking reproach : * Truly, brethren, you have not wcl) 
taken the height of the pole.' Answer : * No marvel ; there be many 
more that do not take well the height of your pole, but will take bettei 
the declination of your altitude.' Three quips of the same savour follow 
one upon the other ; all this looked pretty. Elsewhere, Salm£.sius ex- 
claiming Hhnt the sun itself never beheld a more outrageous action' than 
the murder of the king, Milton cleverly answers, * The sun has beheld 
many things that blind Bernard never saw. But we are content you 
should mention the sun over and over. And it will be a piece of piii- 
dence in you so to do. For though our wickedness does not require it, 
the coldness of the defence that you are making does.'^ The marvel- 
lous heaviness of these conceits betrays spirits yet entangled in the 

» A Defence of the People of England '. cU i 20. 



CHAP. VI.] MILTON, 423 

iwaddling-clothes of learning. The Reformation was the inauguration 
of free thought, but only the inauguration. Criticism was still unborn , 
authority still presses with a full half of its weight upon the most 
enfranchised and bold minds. Milton, to prove that it was lawful to 
put a king to death, quotes Orestes, the laws of Publicola, and the 
death of Nero. His History of Britain is a farrago of all the traditions 
and fables. Under every circumstance he adduces a text of Scripture 
for proof ; kis boldness consists in showing himself a rash grammarian a 
valorous commentator. He is blindly Protestant, as others were blindly 
Catholic. He leaves in its bondage the higher reason, the mother of 
principles ; he has but emancipated a subordinate reason, an interpreter 
of texts. Like the vast half shapeless creatures, the birth of early times, 
he is yet but half man and half mud. 

Can we expect urbanity here? Urbanity is the elegant dignity 
which answers insult by calm irony, and rtspects man whilst piercing 
a dogma. Milton coarsely knocks his adversary down. A bristling 
pedant, born from a Greek lexicon and a Syriac grammar, Salmasius 
had disgorged upon the English people a vocabulary of insults and 
a folio of quotations. Milton replies to him in the same style ; calling 
him a buffoon, a mountebank, ^professor triololaris,^ a hired pedant, a 
nobody, a rogue, a heartless being, a wretch, an idiot, sacrilegious, a 
slave Avorthy of rods and a pitchfork. A dictionary of big Latin words 
passed between them. ' You, who know so many tongues, who read 
so many books, who write so much about them, you are yet but an ass.' 
Finding the epithet good, he repeats and sanctifies it. ' O most drivel- 
ling of asses, you come ridden by a woman, with the cured heads of 
bishops whom you had wounded, a little image of the great beast of 
the Apocalypse!' He ends by calling iiim savage beast, apostate, and 
devil. 'Doubt not that you are reserved for the same end as Judas, 
and that, driven by despair rather than repentance, self-disgusted, you 
must one day hang yourself, and like your rival, burst asunder in your 
belly.'^ We fancy we are listening to the bellowing of two bulls. 

They had all a bull's ferocity. Milton hated heartily. He fought 
with his pen, as the Ironsides with the sword, foot to foot, with a con- 
centi'ated rancour and a fierce obstinacy. The bishops and the kmg 
then suflfered for eleven years of despotism. Each one recalled the 
banishments, confiscations, punishments, the law violated systematically 
and relentlessly, the liberty of the subject attacked by a well-laid 



' Salmasins said of the death of the king : * Horribilis nuntius aures nostras 
atroci vulnere, sed magis mantes perculit.' Milton replied : ' Profecto nuntius ist(9 
horribilis aut gladium multo longiorem eo qiiem strinxit Petrus habuerit oportet, 
»ut aures istse auritissimae fuerint, quas tarn longinquo vulnere perculerit ' 

' Oratorem tam insipidum et insulium ut ne ex lacrymis quidem ejus mic* 
Balis exiguissima possit exprimi,' 

Salmasius nova qiiadam metamorphosi salmacls factus est.' 



424 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK L 

plot, Episcopal idolatr}' imposed on Christian consciences, the faithful 
preachers driven into the wilds of America, or given up to the execu* 
tioner and the stocks.^ Such reminiscences, arising in powerful minds, 
stamped them with inexpiable hatred, and the writings of Milton bear 
witness to an acerbity which is now unknown. The impression left by 
his Eikonohlastes^ is oppressive. Phrase by phrase, harshly, bitterly, 
the king is refuted and accused to the last, without a minute's respite of 
Recusation, the accused being credited with not the slightest goc^d in- 
tention, the slightest excuse, the least show of justice, the accuser never 
for an instant digressing to or resting upon a general idea. It is a 
hand-to-hand fight, where every word is a blow, prolonged, obstinate, 
without dash and without weakness, of a harsh and fixed hostility, 
where the only thought is how to wound most severely and to kill 
surely. Against the bishops, who were alive and powerful, his hatred 
flowed more violently still, and the fierceness of his envenomed meta- 
phors hardly suffices to express it. Milton points to them ' basking in 

* I copy from Neal's History of the Puritans, ii. eh. vii. 367, one of these 
sorrows and complaints. By the greatness of the outrage the reader can judge 
of the intensity of hatred : — 

* The humble petition of (Dr.) Alexander Leighton, Prisoner in the Fleet, — 
* Humbly slieweth, 

* That on Feb. 17, 1630, he was apprehended coming from sermon by a high 
commission warrant, and dragged along the street with bills and staves to London- 
house. That the gaoler of Newgate being sent for, clapt him in irons, and carried 
him with a strong power into a loathsome and ruinous dog-hole, full of rats and 
mice, that had no light but a little grate, and the roof being uncovered, the snow 
and rain beat in upon him, having no bedding, nor place to make a fire, but the 
ruins of an old smoaky chimney. In this woeful place he was shut up for fifteen 
weeks, nobody being suffered to come near him, till at length his wife only was 
admitted. That the fourth day after his commitment the pursuivant, with a 
mighty multitude, came to his house to search for Jesuits books, and used his wife 
in such a barbarous and inhuman manner as he is ashamed to express ; that they 
rifled every person and place, holding a pistol to the breast of a child of five years 
old, threatening to kill him if he did not discover the books ; that they broke open 
chssts, presses, boxes, and carried away everything, even houshold stuff, apparel, 
aims, and other things ; that at the end of fifteen weeks he was served with a 
!iul)piiena, on an information laid against him by Sir Robert Heath, attorney- 
general, whose dealing with him was full of cinielty and deceit ; but he was then 
eick, and, in the opinion of four physicians, thought to be poisoned, because all 
his hair and skin came off ; that in the height of this sickness the cruel sentence 
was passed upon him mentioned in the year 1630, and executed Nov. 26 following, 
when he received thirty-six stripes upon his naked back with a threefold cord, his 
hands being tied to a stake, and then stood almost two hours in the pillory in the 
frost and snow, before he was branded in the face, his nose slit, and his ears cut 
off ; that after this he was carried by water to the Fleet, and shut up in such a 
room that he was never well, and after eight years was turned into the common gaol. ' 

' Answer to the Eikon BasUike, a work in the king's favour, and aUribute<3 
lo the king. 



CHAP. V1.1 MILTON. 423 

the sunny warmth of wealth and protection,' like a brood of foul reptiles. 
* The sour leaven of human traditions, mixed in one putrified mass Avith 
the poisonous dregs of hypocrisie in the heart of Prelates, ... is the 
serpent's egg that will hatch an antichrist wheresoever, and ingendei 
the same monster as big or little as the lump is which breeds him.' 

So much coarseness and dulness was as an outer breastphite, the 
mark and the protection of the superabundant force and life whict 
coursed in those athletic limbs and chests. Now-a-days, the mind being 
more refined, has become feebler; convictions, being less stern, have 
become less strong. The attention, delivered from the heavy scholastic 
logic and scriptural tyranny, is softer. The faith and the will, dissolved 
by universal tolerance and by the thousand opposing shocks of multi- 
plied ideas, have engendered an exact and refined style, the instrument 
of conversation itnd pleasure, and have expelled the poetic and rude 
style, the weapon of war and enthusiasm. If we have effaced ferocity 
and folly, we have diminished force and greatness. 

Force and greatness are manifested in Milton, displayed in his 
opinions and his style, the sources of his belief and his talent. This 
superb reason aspired to unfold itself without shackles; it demanded 
that reason might unfold itself without shackles. It claimed for 
humanity what it coveted for itself, and championed every liberty in 
his every work. From the first he attacked the corpulent bishops,* 
scholastic upstarts, persecutors of free discussion, pensioned tyrants of 
Christian conscience. Above the clamour of the Protestant Revolu- 
tion, his voice was heard thundering against tradition and obedience. 
He sourly railed at the pedantic theologians, devoted worshippers of 
old texts, who took a mouldy martyrology for a solid argument, and 
answered a demonstration with a quotation. He declared that most 
of the Fathers were turbulent and babbling intriguers, that they were 
not worth more collectively than individually, that their councils were 
but a pack of underhand intrigues and vain disputes; he rejected 
their authority ^ and their example, and set up logic as th9 only in- 
terpreter of Scripture. A Puritan as against bishops, an Independent 
as against Presbyterians, he was always the master of his thought and 
the inventor of his own faith. No one better loved, practised, and 
praised the free and bold use of reason. He exercised it even rashly 
and scandalously. He revolted against custom, the illegitimate queen 
of human belief, the born and relentless enemy of truth, raised his 
hand against marriage, and demanded divorce in the case of contrariety 
of tempers. He declared that ' error supports custom, custom counte- 
nances error ; and these two between them, . . . with the numerous 
and vulgar train of their followers, . . . envy and cry down the 

' Of Reformation in England, ii. 

2 ' The loss of Cicero's works alone, or those of Livy, could not he repaired 
oy all the Fathers of the church.' — Areopagitica, 



426 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

industry of free reasoning, under the terms of humour and innova- 
tion.'^ He showed that truth 'never comes into the world, but like a 
bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth ; till time, the 
midwife rather than the mother of truth, have washed and salted the 
infant, declared her legitimate.' * He held fast by three or four writings 
against the flood of blame and anathemas, and dared even more ; he 
attacked before Parliament censure, its own work ; he spoke as a man 
who is wounded and oppressed, for whom a public prohibition is a 
personal outrage, who is himself fettered by the fetters of the nation. 
He does not want the pen of a paid * licenser ' to insult by its approval 
the first page of his book. He hates this ignorant and imperious hand, 
and claims liberty of writing as he claims liberty of thought : — 

* "What advantage is it to he a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if we have 
only escaped the ferula, to come under the fescue of an imprimatur ? if serious and 
elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under 
his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and 
extemporizing licenser ? He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not 
being known to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no 
great argument to think himseK reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was 
born for other than a fool or a foreigner. "When a man WTites to the world, he 
summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him ; he searches, meditates, 
is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends ; after all 
which done, he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that 
wrote before him ; if in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, 
no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state 
of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he cany all his 
considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to 
the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far 
his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book writing ; 
and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his 
guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety, 
that he is no idiot or seducer ; it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the 
author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.' * 

Throw open, then, all the doors ; let there be light ; let every man 
think, and bring his thoughts to the light. Dread not any divergence, 
rejoice in this great work ; why insult the labourers by the name of 
schismatics and sectarians ? 

'Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and sectares, aa if, 
while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the 
marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men, who 
could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the 
quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone 
is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be con- 
tiguous in this world : neither can every piece of the building be of one form ; 
nay, rather the perfei /.ion consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties 

• Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, iii. 173. * Ihid. 173. 

' Areoiyagitica, ii. 78. 



O'HAP. VI.J MILTON. 427 

and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodlj 
and the graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure.' ^ 

Milton triumphs here through sympathy; he breaks forth into 
magnificent images, he displays in his style the force which he 
perceives around him and in himself. He lauds the Revolution, and 
his praises seem like the blast of a trumpet, to come from a brazen 
thr )at : — 

* Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of lib«rty,j 
encompassed and surrounded with his protection ; the shop of war has not there 
more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments cf 
armed justice in defence of heleagured truth, than there be pens and heads there. 
Bitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and 
ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching 
reformation. . . . What could a man require more from a nation so pliant, and 
BO prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and 
pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a 
nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies ? ^ . . . Methinks I see in my mind a 
noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and 
shaking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty 
youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and 
unsealing her Jong-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while 
the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the 
twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble 
would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.' * 

It is Milton who speaks, and it is Milton whom he unwittingly 
describes. 

With a sincere writer, doctrines foretell the style. The sentiments 
and needs which form and govern his beliefs, construct and colour his 
phrases. The same genius leaves once and again the same impress, in 
the thought and in the form. The power of logic and enthusiasm 
which explains the opinions of Milton, explains his genius. The sec- 
tarian and the writer are one man, and we shall find the faculties of 
the sectarian in the talent of the writer. 

When an idea is planted in a logical mind, it grows and fructifies 
there in a multitude of accessory and explanatory ideas which surround 
it, attached one to the others, and forming a thicket and a forest. The 
phrases in Milton are immense ; page-long periods are necessary to 
enclose the train of so many linked arguments, and so many accumulated 
metaphors around the governing thought. In this great production, 
heart and imagination are shaken ; Milton exults while he reasons, and 
the phrase comes as from a catapult, doubling the force of its flight 
by its heavy weight. I dare not place before a modern reader the 
gigantic periods which commence the treatise on the Reformation in 
England. We no longer possess this blast ; we only understand little 
short phrases ; we cannot fix our attention on the same point for a 

* Areopagitica, ii. 93. ' Ibid. ii. 91 ' lUd. ii. 94. 



428 'I'^E RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

page at a time We require manageable ideas ; we Tiave disused the 
big two-handed sword of our fathers, and we only carry a light foil. 
I doubt, however, if the piercing phraseology of Voltaire be more 
mortal than the cleaving of this iron mass :— 

*If in less noble and almost mechanick arts he is not esteemed to deserve the 
name of a compkat architect, an excellent painter, or the like, that bears nst a 
generous mind above the peasantly regard of wages and hire, much more must vtb 
think him a most imperfect and incompleat divine, who is so far from being a 
contemner of filtliy lucre, that his whole divinity is moulded and bred up in the 
beggarly and brutish hopes of a fat prebendary, deanery, or bishoprick.' 

If Michael Angelo's prophets could speak, it would be in this style ; 
and twenty times while reading it, we may discern the sculptor. 

The powerful logic which lengthens the periods sustains the images. 
If Shakspeare and the masculine poets embrace a picture in the compass 
of a fleeting expression, break upon their metaphors with new ones, 
and exhibit successively in the same phrase the same idea in five or six 
forms, the abrupt motion of their winged imagination authorises or 
explains these varied colours and these mingling flashes. More con- 
nected and more master of himself, Milton develops to the end the 
threads which these poets break. All his images display themselves in 
little poems, a sort of solid allegory, all whose interdependent parts 
concentrate their light on the single idea which they are intended to 
embellish or demonstrate : — 

*In this manner the prelates, . . . coming from a mean and plebeian life on a 
sudden to be lords of stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare, and princely 
attendance, thought the plain and homespun verity of Christ's gospel unfit any 
longer to hold their lordships' acquaintance, unless the poor threadbare matron 
were put into better clothes : her chaste and modest veil, surrounded with celestial 
beams, they overlaid with wanton tresses, and in a flaring tire bespeckled her 
with all the gaudy allurements of a whore. ' * 

Politicians reply that this gaudy church supports royalty. 

* What greater debasement can there be to royal dignity, Avhose towering and 
steadfast height rests upon the unmovable foundations of justice, and heroic virtue, 
than to chain it in a dependence of subsisting, or ruining, to the painted battle- 
ments and gaudy rottenness of prelatry, which want but one puif of the king's to 
blow them down lilce a pasteboard house built of court-cards ?''' 

Metaphors thus sustained receive a singular breadth, pomp, and majesty. 
They are spread forth without clashing together, like the wide folds of 
a sscarlet cloak, bathed in light and fringed with gold. 

Do not take these metaphors for an accident. Milton lavishes them, 
like a priest who in his worship exhibits splendours and wins the eye, 
to gain the heart. He has been nourished by the reading of >>penser, 
Drayton, Shakspeare, Beaumont, all the most sparkling poets ; and tha 
golden flow of the preceding age, though impoverished all around him 

' Of Reformation in England, ii. first book, 383. 
^ Ibid. ii. second book, 397. 



CHAP. VI.] MILTON. 

and slackened in liimself, has become enlarged like a lake through being 
dammed up in his heart. Like Shakspeare, he imagines at every turn, 
and even out of turn, and scandalises the classical and French taste. 

' ... As if they could make God earthly and fleshly, because they could not 
make themselves heavenly and spiritual ; they began to draw down all the divine 
intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God himself, into an 
exterior and bodily form ; . . . they hallowed it, they fumed up, they sprinkled 
it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other 
deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, and gewgaws fetched from 
Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamins vestry : then was the priest set to con hig 
motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means 
of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace 
downward : and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague, 
the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now brokei*, and flagging, 
shifted off" from herself the labour of high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly 
flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudg- 
ing trade of outward conformity.' ^ 

If we did not discern here the traces of theological coarseness, we might 
fancy we were reading an imitator of the Phcedo, and under the fana- 
tical anger recognise the images of Plato. There is one phrase which 
for manly beauty and enthusiasm recalls the tone of the Republic: — 

* I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered, unexercised and unbreathed virtue, 
that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that 
immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. * 

But Milton is only Platonic by his richness and exaltation. For the 
rest, he is a man of the Renaissance, pedantic and harsh ; he insults the 
Pope, who, after the gift of Pepin le Bref, 'never ceased baiting and 
goring the successors of his best lord Constantine, what by his barking 
curses and excommunications;'^ he is mythological in his defence of 
the press, showing that formerly * no envious Juno sat cross-legged over 
the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring.' It matters little: these 
learned, familiar, grand images, whatever they be, are powerful and 
natural.^ Superabundance, like crudity, here only manifests the vigour 
And lyric dash which Milton's character had predicted. 

Even passion follows ; exaltation brings it with the images. Bold 
expressions, exaggeration of style, cause us to hear the vibrating voice 
of the suffering man, indignant and determined. 

* For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in 
them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are ; nay, they do pre- 
serve as in a vial the purest eflicacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred 

* Of Reformation in England, ii. book first, p. 365. 

* Of Reformation in England, ii. second book, 395. 

^ Whatsoever time, or the heedless liand of blind chance, hath dra-vrn dowu 
from of old to this present, in her huge drag-net. whether fish or sef*-weed; 
Bhells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are tlie fathers. [Of PrilaticW 
h^pisoopacy ii. 422.) 



^30 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK D 

them. I knoTT they are as lively, and as vigorously prcdnctive, as those fabulous 
dragon's teeth : and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed 
men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a 
man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; 
but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it 
were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is Ui4 
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a 
life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps there is no 
great loss ; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected trutb, 
for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, 
what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill 
that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books ; since we see a kind of 
homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom ; and if it extend to the 
whole impression, a kind of massacre, w^hereof the execution ends not in the slaying 
of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath ol 
reason itself ; slays an immortality rather than a life.' * 

This energy is sublime ; the man is equal to the cause, and never did 

a loftier eloquence match a loftier truth. Terrible expressions over- 
whelm the book-tyrants, the profaners of thought, the assassins of 
liberty. ' The council of Trent and the Spanish inquisition, engender- 
ing together, brought forth or perfected those catalogues and exp urging 
indexes, that rake through the entrails of many an old good author, 
with a violation worse than any that could be offered to his tomb.'^ 
Similar expressions lash the carnal minds which believe without think- 
ing, and make their servility into a religion. There is a passage which, 
by its bitter familiarity, recalls Swift, and surpasses him in all loftiness 
of imagination and genius : — 

* A man may be an hen 1 ic in the truth, and if he believes things only because 

his pastor says so, . . . tlie very truth he holds becomes his heresy. ... A 
wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic 
so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot 
skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. . . . What does he therefore, but 
reaolvBS to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and 
credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs ; some divine ol 
note and estimation that must be. To him he ad^ieres, resigns the whole ware- 
house of his religion, with all the locks and keys, into his custody ; an I indeed 
makos the very person of that man his religion. ... So that a man may say his 
leligion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and 
goes and comes near him, according as that good man frequents the house. He 
entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him ; his religion comes home at 
night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep ; rises, is saluted, 
and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced bruage, and better breakfasted, . . . 
his religion Avalks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop 
trading all day without his religion.'^ 

He condescended to mock for an instant, with what piercing irony yoo 



' Areopagitica, ii. 55. '^ Ibid. ii. 60. ' ibid. ii. 85. 



OHA.P. V1.1 MILTON. 433 

have seen. But irony, piercing as it may be, seems to him weak.' 
Hear him when he comes to himself, when he returns to open and 
serious invective, when after the carnal believer he overwhelms the 
carnal prelate : — 

* The table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like an 
exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado, 
to keep oflf the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest 
scruples not to paw and mammoc the sacramental bread, as familiarly as his tavern 
biscuit. ' ' 

He triumphs in believing that all these profanations are to be avenged. 
The horrible doctrine of Calvin has once more fixed men's gaze on the 
dogma of malediction and everlasting damnation. Hell in hand, Milton 
menaces ; he is drunk with justice and vengeance amid the abysses 
which he opens, and the flames which he wields: — 

'They shall be thrown eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, 
where, under the despiteful controul, the trample and spurn of all the other 
damned, that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exer- 
cice a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall 
remain in that plight for ever the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most 
underfoo*, and down-trodded vassals of perdition. ' 

Fury here mounts to the sublime, and Michael Angelo's Christ is not 
more inexorable and vengeful. 

Let us fill the measure ; let us add, as he does, the prospects of 
heaven to the visions of darkness ; the pamphlet becomes a hymn : — 

* When I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge 
overshado-winp; train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of 
the church ; how the bright and blissful Eeformation (by divine power) struck 
through the black and settled night of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, 
methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that 
reads or hears ; and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with 
the fragrancy of heaven. ' * 

Overloaded with ornaments, infinitely prolonged, these periods are 
triumphant choruses of angelic alleluias sung by deep voices to the 
accompaniment of ten thousand harps of gold. In the midst of his 
rUlogisms, Milton prays, sustained by the accent of the prophets, sur- 
rounded by memories of the Bible, ravished with the splendours of the 
Apocalypse, but checked on the brink of hallucination by science and 
logic, in tbe summit of the calm clear atmosphere, without rising to the 
burning tracts where ecstasy dissolves the reason, with a majesty cl 

1 When he is simply comic, he reaches, like Hogarth and Swift, a rude and 
farcical address. * A bishop's foot that has all his toes (maugre the gout), and a 
linen sock over it, is the aptest emblem of the prelat himself ; who, being a 
pluialist, may, under one surplice, hide four benefices, besides that great metro« 
politan toe. ' 

« Of RsformaUoii in Bngland, ii. 378. « Md, ii. 868 



4J2 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK I'l 

eloquence and a solemn grandeur never surpassed, whose perfection 
proves that he has entered his domain, and gives promise of the poet 
beyond the prose-writer:— 

'Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory unapproachable, parent ol 
»ngels and men ! next, thee I implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost 
remnant whose nature thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love! and 
thou, the third subsistence of divine infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and 
solace of created things ! one Tripersonal Godhead ! look upon this thy poor and 
almost spent and expiring church. ... let them not bring about their darnned 
debic'ns, ... to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkuess, where we 
shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, 
never more hear the bird of morning sing.' * 

* Thou the ever- begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father, . . . Who 
is there that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk through the midst of thy 
sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness 
amongst us through the violence of those that had seized them, and were more 
taken with the mention of their gold than of their starry light ? . . . Come there- 
fore, thou that hast the seven stars in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen 
priests according to their orders and courses of old, to minister before thee, and 
duly to press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy and ever-burnin,!:^ lamps. 
Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the land to this 
effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many waters about thy throne. 
. . . perfect and accomplish thy glorious acts! . . . Come forth out of thy 
royal chambers, Prince of all the kings of the earth ; put on the visible robes of 
thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father 
hath bequeathed thee ; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creaturei 
sigh to be renewed.'* 

This song of supplications and cheerfulness is an outpouring of splen- 
dours ; and if you search all literature, you will hardly find poets equal 
to this writer of prose. 

Is he truly a prose-writer? Entangled dialectics, a heavy and 
awkward mind, fanatical and ferocious provincialism, an epic grandeur 
of sustained and superabundant images, the blast and the temerities of 
implacable and all-powerful passion, the sublimity of religious and 
lyric exaltation : we do not recognise in these features a man born to 
explain, persuade, and prove. The scholasticism and grossness of tlie 
time have blunted or rusted his logic. Imagination and enthusiasm 
carried him away and enchained him in metaphor. Thus dazzled or 
marred, he could not produce a perfect work ; he did but write useful 
tracts, called forth by practical interest and actual hate, and fine isolated 
morsels, inspired by collision with a grand idea, and by the momentary 
flight of genius. Yet, in all these abandoned fragments, the man shows 
in his entirety. The systematic and lyric spirit is manifested in the 
pamphlet as well as in the poem; the faculty of embracing general 
effects, and of being shaken by them, remains on an equality in Milton's 

» Of Reformation in England, 11. 417. ^ Animadoersions, etc.. iii 71 



'EfAP. VI.] MILTON. - 43o 

two careers, and you will see in the Paradise and Comus what you hare 
met with in the Treatise on the Reformation^ and in the Animadversiem 
on the Remonstrant, 

VI. 

' Milton has acknowledged to me,' writes Dry den, *■ that Spenser 
vas his original/ In fact, by the purity and elevation of their morals, 
\jy the fulness and connection of their style, by the noble chivalric sen- 
timents, and their fine classical arrangement, they are brothers. Bui 
he had yet other masters — Beaumont, Fletcher, Burton, Drummond, 
Ben Jonson, Shakspeare, the whole splendid English Renaissance, and 
behind it the Italian poesy, Latin antiquity, the fine Greek literature, 
and all the sources whence the English Renaissance sprang. He con- 
tinued the great current, but in a manner of his own. He took their 
mythology, their allegories, sometimes their conceits,^ and found the 
trick of their rich colouring, their magnificent sentiment of living nature, 
their inexhaustible admiration of forms and colours. But, at the same 
time, he transformed their diction, and employed poetry in a new service. 
He wrote, not by impulse, and at the mere contact with things, but like 
a man of letters, a classic, in a scholarlike manner, with the assistance 
of books, seeing objects as much through previous writings as in 
themselves, adding to his images the images of others, borrowing and 
re-casting their inventions, as an artist who unites and multiplies the 
bosses and driven gold, already entwined on a diadem by twenty work- 
men. He made thus for himself a composite and brilliant style, less 
natural than that of his precursors, less fit for effusions, less akin to the 
lively first glow of sensation, but more solid, more regular, more capable 
of concentrating in one large patch of light all their sparklings and 
splendours. He brings together, like ^schylus, words of 'six cubits,' 
plumed and decked in purple, and made them flow like a royal tJ^vin 
before his idea, to exalt and announce it. He introduces to U8 

* The breathing roses of the wood, 
Fair silver buskin'd nymphs ;' * 

ftiid tells how 

* The gray-hooded Even, 
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed, 

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phcebus' wsin ;*^ 

sund speaks of 

* All the sea-girt isles, 
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 
The unadorned bosom of the deep ;' * 

* See the Hymn an the Natimty ; amongst others, the first few strophej 
Bee also Lycidas. 

' Arcades, v, 32, » Comus, v, 188-190. ■• Ibid. v. 31-33. 

2 E 



434 THE RENAISSANCE. BOOK il 

• That undisturbed song of pure concent, 

Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne^ 

To Him that sits thereon, 

With saintly sliout, and solemn jubilee ; 

Where the bright Seraphim, in burning row, « 

Their loud-uplifted angel-trumpets blow. ' * 

lie gathered into full nosegays the flowers scattered through the othei 
poets: 

* Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 

Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brook% 

On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks ; 

Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes, 

That on the green turf suck the honied showers^ 

And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 

The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet» 

The glowing violet, 

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, 

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head. 

And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed. 

And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 

To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies.** 

When still quite young, on his quitting Cambridge, he incuned to the 
magnificent and grand ; he wanted a great rolling verse, an ample and 
sounding strophe, vast periods of fourteen and four-and-twenty lines. 
He did not face objects on a level, as a mortal, but from on high, like 
those archangels of Goethe,® who embrace at a glance the whole ocean 
lashing its coasts, and the earth rolling on, wrapt in the harmony of the 
fraternal stars. It was not life that he felt, like the masters of the 
Renaissance, but greatness, like ^schylus, and the Hebrew seers,* 
manly and lyric spirits like his own, who, nourished like him in reli 
gious emotions and continuous enthusiasm, like him displayed sacerdolai 
pomp and majesty. Tc express such a sentiment, images, and poetry 
addressed only to the eyes, were not enough ; sounds also were requisit », 
and that more introspective poetry which, purged from corporeal shows, 
could reach the soul : Milton was a musician ; his hymns rolled with the 
slowness of a measured song and the gravity of a declamation ; and he 
seems himself to be describing his art in these incomparable verses, 
which are evolved like the solemn harmony of a motett : 

* Ode at a Solemn Music, v. 6-11. . ^ Lycidas, v. 136-151. 

* Faust, Prolog im Himmel. 

* See the prophecy against Archbishop Laud in Lycidas, v. 130 ; 

' Bat that two-handed engine at the door 
Stands ready to smite once, and suiita no more. 



CHAP VI,] MILTON. 435 

• But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness 
Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I 
To the celestial sirens' harmony, 
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, 
And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 
And turn the adamantine spindle round, 
On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 
Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie, 
To lull the daughters of Necessity, 
And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 
And the low world in measured motion draw 
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear 
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear. ' ^ 

With his style, his subjects differed; he compacted and ennobled 
the poet's domain as well as his language, and consecrated his thoughts 
as well as his words. He who knows the true nature of poetry soon 
finds, as Milton said a little later, what despicable creatures * libidinous 
and ignorant poetasters' are, and to what religious, glorious, splendid 
use poetry can be put in things divine and human. ' These abilities, 
wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, 
but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation; and are of power, 
beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people 
the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the 
mind, and set the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and 
lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what 
he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in 
his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds 
Rnd triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith 
against the enemies of Christ.' ^ 

In fact, from the first, at St. Paul's School and at Cambridge, he had 
written Paraphrases of the Psalms^ then composed odes on the Nativity^ 
Circumcision^ and Passion. Presently appeared sad poems on the Death 
of a Fair Infant^ An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester ; then 
grave and noble verses On Time^ at a Solemn Mustek^ a sonnet On his 
being arrived to the Age of Twenty-three, *■ a late spring which shew'tb 
no bud or blossom.' At last we have him in the country with his father, 
and the hopes, dreams, first enchantments of youth, rise from his heart 
like the morning breath of a summer's day: But what a distance be- 
tween these calm and bright contemplations and the warm youth, the 
voluptuous Adonis of Shakspeare ! He walked, used his eyes, listened j 
there h.s joys ended ; they are but the poetic joys of the soul : 

*To hear the lark begin his flight, 
And singing, startle the dull nighty 
From his watch-tower in the skiea^ 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; . . . 

» Arcades, v. 61-73. ' 

' iii. The Reason of Church Government, book ii. Introduction, 479. 



i36 THE RENAISSANCE, [BOOS U 

"While the plowman, near at hand. 
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, 
And the milk-maid singeth blithe, 
And the mower whets his sithe, 
And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale.' * 

To see the Tillage dances and gaiety; to look upon the *high triumphs 
and the 'busy hum of men' in the 'towered cities;' above all, t« 
abandon himself to melody, to the divine roll of sweet verse, and the 
charming dreams which they spread before us in a golden light ; — this 
is all ; and presently, as if he had gone too fiir, to counterbalance thia 
eulogy of sensuous joys, he summons Melancholy : 

"Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure, 
Sober, stedfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest gi'ain, 
Flowing with majestick train, 
And sable stole of Cyprus lawn 
Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
Come, but keep thy wonted state. 
With even step, and musing gait ; 
And looks commercing with the skiea^ 
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.'* 

With her he wanders amidst grave thoughts and grave sights, which 
recall a man to his condition, and prepare him for his duties, now 
amongst the high colonnades of primeval trees, whose ' high-embowed 
roof retains the silence and the twilight under their shade; now in 

* The studious cloysters pale, , . • 
With antick pillars massy proof, 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light ;' * 

now again in the retirement of the study, where the cricket chirps, 
where the lamp of labour shines, where the mind, alone with the noble 
minds of the past, may 

* Unsphere 

The spirit of Plato, to unfold 

What worlds or what vast regions hold 

The immortal mind, that hath forsook 

Her mansion in this fleshly nook. ' * 

He was filled with this lofty philosophy. Whatever the language he 
used, English, Italian, or Latin, whatever the kind of verse, sonnets, 
hymns, stanzas, tragedy or epic, he always returned to it. He praised 
above all chaste love, piety, generosity, heroic force. It was not from 
scruple, but it was innate in him ; his chief need and faculty led him to 
noble conceptions. He took a delight in admiring, as Shakspeare in creat« 

> L' Allegro, v. 41-68. « M Penseroso, v. 31-40. 

» Ibid. V. 150-160. * Ibid. v. 88 -92. 



CHAV. VI.] MILTON. 437 

ing, as Swift in destroying, as Byron in combating, as Spenser in dream- 
ing. Even on ornamental poems, which were only employed to exhibit 
costumes and introduce fairy-tales, in Masques, like those of Ben Joiison, 
he impressed his own character. They were amusements for the castle ; 
he made out of them lectures on magnanimity and constancy : one of 
ihem, ComuSj well worked out, with a complete originality and extra- 
ordinary elevation of style, is perhaps his masterpiece, and is simply the 
eulogy of virtue. 

Here we are in the heavens at the first dash. A spirit, descended 
in the midst of wild woods, repeats this ode : 

* Before the starry threshold of Jove's court 
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes 
Of briglit aerial spirits live irisphered 

In regions mild of calm and serene air, 

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, 

Which men call earth ; and, with low-thoughted care 

Confined, and pester'd in this pinfold here, 

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, 

Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives. 

After this mortal change, to her true servants, 

Amongst the enthroned Gods on sainted seats. ' ' 

Such characters cannot speak ; they sing. The drama is an antique 
opera, composed like the Prometheus of solemn hymns. The spectator 
is transported beyond the real world. He does not listen to men, but 
to sentiments. He assists at a concert, as in Shakspeare ; the Comus 
continues the Midsummer NigMs Dream^ as a choir of deep men's voices 
continues the glowing and sad symphony of the instruments : 

* Through the perplex'd paths of this drear wood, ^ 
The nodding horrour of whose shady brows 
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger,' ' 

strays a noble lady, separated from her two brothers, troubled by the 
savage cries and turbulent joy which she hears from afar. There the 
ion of Circe the enchantress, sensual Comus, dances and shakes his 
torches amid the clamour of men transformed into brutes; it is the 
hour when 

* The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove^ 
Now to the moon in wavering morrice move ; 
And, on the tawny sands and slielves 

Trip the pert faeries and the dapper elvRS. * ' 

llie lady is terrified, and sinks on her knees ; and in the misty forms 
which float above in the pale light, perceives the mysterious and 
heavenly guardians who watch over her life and honour : 

' O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith ; white-handed Hope^ 
Thou hovering' angel, girt with golden wings ; 



» Comus, V. 1-11. 2 iii^ ^^ 37_39^ s 75/^ ^ 115-118. 



438 TFIF RENAISSANCE. [BOOK O 

And thou, imblemisli'd form of Chastity ! 

I see ye visibly, and now believe 

That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, 

Would send a glistering guardian, if need were, 

To keep my life and honour unassail'd. 

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud 

Turn forth her silver lining on the night f 

I did not err ; there does a sable cloud 

Turn forth her silver lining on the night. 

And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.' * 

She calls hei brothers : 

* At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
Kose like a steam of rich distill'd perfumes, 
And stole upon the air,* 

across the * violet-embroider'd vale,* to the dissolute god whom ehc 
enchants. He comes disguised as a * gentle shepherd,' and says : 

* Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould 
Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment f 
Sure something holy lodges in that breast. 
And with these raptures moves the vocal air 
To testify his hidden residence. 

How sweetly did they float upon the wings 

Of silence, through the empty-vaulted nighty 

At every fall smoothing the raven down 

Of darkness, till it smiled ! 1 have oft heard 

My mother Circe with the syrens three, 

Amidst the flowery -kirtled Naiades, 

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs ; 

Who, as they sung, Avould take the prisbn'd soul. 

And lap it in Elysium : Scylla wept, 

And chid her barking waves into attention. . . . 

But such a sacred and home-felt delight, 

Such sober certainty of waking bliss, 

I never heard till now. ' ^ 

They were heavenly songs which Comus heard ; Milton describes^ 
and at the same time imitates them; he makes us understa-Tj the 
saying of his master Plato, that virtuous melodies teach virtue. 

Circe's son has by deceit carried off the noble lady, and seats her, 
with ' nerves all chained up,' in a sumptuous palace before a tal)le 
spread with all dainties. She accuses him, resists, insults him, and the 
style assumes an air of heroical indignation, to scorn the offer of tha 
tempter. 

* When lust. 
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk. 
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, 

> Comzis, V. 213-325. « Ibid. v. 555-557. » Ibid. v. 244-2gI 



<;aAP. VL] MILTON. 4^ 

Lets in defilement to the inward parts ; 
The soul grows clotted by contagion, 
Imbodies and iuibrutes, till she quite lose 
The divine property of her first being. 
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows danrp. 
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres 
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave. 
As loth to leave the body that it loved. ' ^ 

Confounded, Comus pauses ; and at the same instant the brothers, led by 
the attendant Spirit, cast themselves upon him v^dth drawn swords. He 
flees, carrying off his magic wand. To deliver the enchanted lady, 
they summon Sabrina, the benevolent naiad, who sits 

* Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, 
In twisted braids of lilies knitting 

The loose train of thy (her) amber-dropping hair.' ■ 

The * goddess of the silver lake * rises lightly from her * coral-paven 
bed,' and her chariot * of turkis blue and emerald-green,' sets her dowD 

* By the rushy-fringed bank, 

Where grows the willow, and the osier dank.'* 

Sprinkled by this chaste and cool hand, the lady leaves the * venom'd 
seat' which held her spell-bound; the brothers, with their sister, reign 
peacefully in their father's palace ; and the Spirit, who has conducted 
all, pronounces this ode, in which. the poetry leads up to philosophy: 
the voluptuous light of an Oriental legend bathes the Elysium of the 
good, and all the splendours of nature assemble to add a seductiveneM 
U) virtue. 

* To the ocean now I fly. 

And those happy climes that lie 

Where day never shuts his eye 

Up in the broad fields of the sky : 

There I suck the liquid air 

All amidst the gardens fair 

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three 

That sing about the golden tree : 

Along the crisped shades and bowers 

Kevels the spruce and jocund Spring ; 

The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours, 

Thither all their bounties bring ; 

There eternal Summer dwells. 

And west winds, with musky wing, 

About the cedar'n alleys fling 

Nard and cassia's balmy smells. 

Iris there with humid bow 

Waters the odorous banks, that blow 



* Vomus, t). 463-473. It is the elder brother who utters these lines wntjfl 
Bj>«»ffiug of his sister. — Tr. 

^ Jbid. V. 861-863. -' 2Md. v. 890. 



440 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOKS 

Flowers of more mingled hew 

Than her purpled scarf can shew ; 

And drenches with Elysian dew 

(List, mortals, if your ears be true) 

Beds of hyacinth and roses, 

"Where young Adonis oft reposes, 

"Waxing well of his deep wound 

In slumber soft, and on the ground 

Sadly sits the Assyrian queen : 

But far above in spangled sheen 

Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced, 

Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced. 

After her wandering labours long, 

Till free consent the gods among 

Make her his eternal bride, 

And from her fair unspotted side 

Two blissful twins are to be born. 

Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn. 

But now my task is smoothly done, 

I can fly, or I can run. 

Quickly to the green earth's end. 

Where the boAv'd welkin slow doth bend; 

And from thence can soar as soon 

To the comers of the moon. 

Mortals, that would follow me, 

Love Virtue ; she a^one is free : 

She can teach ye how to climb 

Higher than the sphery chime ; 

Or, if Virtue feeble were. 

Heaven itself would stoop to her.* * 

Should I have remarked on the awkwardnesses, strangenesses, over- 
loaded expressions, the inheritance of the Renaissance, a philosophical 
question, the work of a reasoner and a Platonist ? I have not perceived 
these faults. All was effaced before the spectacle of the bright Renais- 
sance, transformed by austere philosophy, and of sublimity adored upon 
Rn altar of flowers. 

That, I think, was his last profane poem. Already, in the cine 
which followed, Li/cidas, celebrating in the style of Virgil the death of 
a beloved friend,^ he suffers the Puritan wrath and prejudices to sliino 
through, inveighs against the bad teaching and tyranny of the bishops, 
and speaks of ' that two-handed engine at the door, ready to smite 
once, and smite no more.' On his return from Italy, controversy and 
action carrier! him away ; prose begins, poetry is arrested. From 
time to time a patriotic or religious sonnet comes to break the long 
silence; now to praise the chief Puritans, Cromwell, Vane, Fairfax^ 
DOW to celebrate the death of a pious lady, or the life of ' a virtuous 
young lady;' once to pray God * to avenge his slaughter'd saints.' the 

» Comus, V. 976-1023. ^ Edward King, 16<J7. 



CHAP. VI.] MILTON. 441 

unhappy Protestants of Piedmont, 'whose bdnes lie scattered on the 

Alpine mountains cold;' again, on his second wife, dead a year after 
their marriage, his well beloved 'saint' — * brought to me, like Alcestis, 
from the grave, . . . came, vested all in white, pure as her mind ; ' loyal 
friendships, sorrows bowed to or subdued, aspirations generous or 
stoical, which reverses did but purify. Old age came ; cut o£F from 
power, action, even hope, he returned to the great dreams of his youth. 
As of old, he went out of this low world in search of the sublime ; for 
the actual is petty, and the familiar seems dull. He selects his new 
chni-acters on the verge of sacred antiquity, as he selected his old ones 
on the verge of fabulous antiquity, because distance adds to their 
stature ; and habit, ceasing to measure, ceases also to depreciate them. 
Ju«t now we had creatures of fancy : Joy, daughter of Zephyr and 
Aurora; Melancholy, daughter of Vesta and Saturn; Comus, son of 
Circe, ivy-crowned, god of echoing woods and turbulent excess. Now, 
Samson, despiser of giants, elect of the strong god, exterminator of 
idolaters, Satan and his peers, Christ and his angels, come and rise be- 
fore our eyes like superhuman statues ; and their far removal, rendering 
vain our curious hands, will preserve our admiration and their majesty. 
Let us rise further and higher, to the origin of things, amongst eternal 
beings, to the commencement of thought and life, to the battles of God, 
in this unknown world where sentiments and existences, raised above 
the ken of man, elude his judgment and criticism to command his 
veneration and awe ; let the sustained song of solemn verse unfold the 
actions of these shadowy figures : we shall experience the same emotion 
as in a cathedral, while the organ prolongs its reverberations among the 
arches, and through the dim light of the tapers the incense clouds en- 
velope the colossal bulk of the columns. 

But if the heart remains unchanged, the genius is transformed. 
Manliness has supplanted youth. The richness has decreased, the 
severity has increased. Seventeen years of fighting and misfortune 
have steeped his soul in religious ideas. Mythology has yielded to 
theology ; the habit of discussion has ended by subduing the lyric 
flight ; accumulated learning by choking the original genius. The poet 
no more sings sublime verse, he relates or harangues in grave verse. 
He no longer invents a personal style ; he imitates antique tragedy or 
epi:. In Samson he finds a cold and lofty tragedy, in Paradise Re- 
gahud a cold and noble epic : he composes an imperfect and sublime 
poem in Paradise Lost. 

Would he could have written it as he tried, in the shape of a drama, 
or better, as the Promethevs of ^schylus, as a lyric opera ! Such and 
such a subject demands such and such a style ; if you resist, you de- 
stroy your work, too happy if, in the deformed medley, chance pro- 
duces and preserves a few beautiful fragments. To bring the super- 
natural upon the scene, you must not continue in your original mood ; 
if you do, you have the air of not believing in it. Vision reveals it, 



442 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

and the style of vision must express it. When Spenser writes, he 
dreams. We listen to the happy concerts of his aerial music, and th« 
varying train of his fanciful apparitions unfolds like a vapour before 
our accommodating and dazzled gaze. When Dante writes, he is rapt, 
and his cries of anguish, his transports, the incoherent succession of his 
infernal or mystical phantoms, carry us with him into the invisille 
world which he describes. Ecstasy alone renders visible and credib.e 
the objects of ecstasy. If you tell us of the exploits of the Deity as 
you tell us of Cromwell's, in a grave and lofty tone, we do not see God ; 
and as He constitutes the whole of your poem, we do not see anything. 
We conclude that you have accepted a tradition, that you adorn it with 
the fictions of your mind, that you are a preacher, not a prophet, a 
decorator, not a poet. We find that you sing of God as the vulgar 
pray to him, after a formula learnt, not from spontaneous emotion. 
Change your style, or, if you can, change your emotion. Try and dis- 
cover in yourself the ancient fervour of psalmist§ and apostles, to re- 
create the divine legend, to feel over again the sublime motions by which 
the inspired and disturbed mind perceives God ; then the grand lyric 
verse will roll on, laden with splendours. Thus roused, we shall not have 
to examine whether it be Adam or Messiah who speaks ; we shall not 
have to demand that they shall be real, and constructed by the hand 
of a psychologist ; we shall not trouble ourselves with their puerile or 
unlooked for actions ; we shall be carried away, we shall share in your 
creative madness; we shall be drawn onward by the flow of bold images, 
or raised by the combination of gigantic metaphors ; we shall be moved 
like -^schylus, when his thunder-stricken Prometheus hears the uni- 
versal concert of streams, seas, forests, and created beings, lament with 
him,^ as David before Jehovah, for whom a thousand years are but as 
yesterday, who * carriest them away as with a flood ; in the morning 
they are like grass which groweth up.'^ 

But the age of metaphysical inspiration, long diverted, had not yet 
reappeared. Far in the past Dante was fading away ; far in the future 
Goethe lay unrevealed. People saw not yet the pantheistic Faust, and 
the vague nature which absorbs all transformed existence in her deep 
bosom ; they saw no longer the mystic paradise and immortal Lcve, 
whose ideal light envelopes souls redeemed. Protestantism had neither 
altered nor renewed divine nature; the guardian of an accepted creed 
and ancient tradition, it had only transformed ecclesiastical discipline 

1 d) Slog aWr/p Koi raxinrrepot Tzvoai 

irorcfiwv re Ttr/yai^ 7TOvri.o)v re KVfidruv 

av^piO^ov ysTiaajuaj Ttafifi'^dp re 77, 

Kot rbv TzavdTzrijv kvkTvcw rfA'tov Kokci, 

Idecde fji^ , ola rrpoq deuv izaox^ de6g. 
Prometheus Vinctus, ed. Herman, p. 487 line 88. — Tb 
* Ps. xc. 5. 



CHAP. VI J MILTON. 443 

and the doctrine of grace. It had only called the Christian to persona? 
salvation and secular liberty. It had only remodelled man, it had not 
re-created the Deity. It could not produce a divine epic, but a human 
epic. It could not sing the battles and works of God, but the tempta- 
tions and salvation of the soul. At the time of Christ came the poems 
of cosmogony ; at the time of Milton, the confessions of psychology. 
At the time of Christ each imagination produced a hierarchy of super- 
natural beings, and a history of the world ; at the time of Milton, every 
heart recorded the series of its upliftings, and the history of grace. 
Learni^ig and reflection led Milton to a metaphysical poem which was 
not the natuial oifspring of the age, whilst inspiration and ignorance 
revealed to Bunyan the psychological narrative which suited the age, 
and the great man's genius was feebler than the tinker's simplicity. 

And why? Milton's poem, suppressing lyrical illusion, admitted 
critical inquiry. Free from enthusiasm we judge his characters; W8 
demand that they shall be living, real, complete, harmonious, like those 
of a novel or a drama. No longer hearing odes, we would see objects 
and souls : we ask that Adam and Eve should act in conformity with 
their primitive nature ; that God, Satan, and Messiah should act and 
feel in conformity with their superhuman nature. Shakspeare would 
barely have discharged the task ; Milton, the logician and reasoner, 
failed in it. He gives us correct solemn discourse, and gives us nothing 
more ; his characters are speeches, and in their sentiments we find only 
heaps of puerilities and contradictions. 

Adam and Eve, the first pair ! I approach, and it seems as though 
I discovered the Adam and Eve of Raphael Sanzio, imitated by Milton, 
so his biographers tell us, glorious, strong, voluptuous children, naked 
in the light of heaven, motionless and absorbed before grand land- 
scapes, with bright vacant eyes, with no more thought than the bull or 
the horse on the grass beside them. I listen, and I hear an English 
household, two reasoners of the period — Colonel Hutchinson and his 
wife. Heavens 1 dress them at once. Folk so cultivated should have 
invented before all a pair of trousers and modesty. What dialogues ! 
Dissertations capped by politeness, mutual sermons concluded by bows. 
What bows! Philosophical compliments and moral smiles. I yielded, 
»ays Eve, 

' And from that time see 
How beauty is excell'd by manly grace 
And wisdom, whi:h alone is truly fair.' * 

Dear learned poet, you would have been better satisfied if one of your 
three wives had, as an apt pupil, uttered to you by way of conclusion 
the above solid theoretical maxim. They did utter it to you; this is 
a scene from your own household : 

^ Paradise Lost, book iv. v. 489. 



444 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

* So spake our general mother ; and. with eyes 
Of conjugal attraction unreproved 
And meek surrender, half-embracing lean'd 
On our first father ; half her swelling breast 
Kaked met his, under the flowing gold 
Of her loose tresses hid ; he, in delight 
Both of her beauty and submissive charms, 
Smiled with superiour love, . . . and press'd hei- matron lip 
With kisses pure. ' ^ 

fhis Adam entered Paradise via England. There he learned respect*- 
biUty, and there lie studied moral speechifying. Let us hear this man 
before he has tasted of the tree of knowledge. A bachelor of arts, in his 
introductory address, could not utter more fitly and nobly a greater 
number of pithless sentences : 

* Fair consort, the hour 
Of night, and all things now retired to rest, 
Mind us of like repose ; since God hatli set 
Labour and rest, as day and night, to meu 
Successive ; and the timely dew of sleep, 
Now falling with soft slumbrous weight, inclinea 
Our eyelids ; other creatures all day long 
Eove idle, unemploy'd, and less need rest: 
Man hath his daily work of body or mind 
Appointed, which declares his dignity, 
And the regard of Heaven on all his ways ; 
"While other animals unactiv- range, 
And of then" doings God takes no account.** 

A very useful and excellent Puritanical exhortation 1 That is English 
virtue and morality; and at evening, in every family, it can be read to the 
children like the Bible. Adam is your true paterfamilias, with a vote, 
an M.P., an old Oxford man, consulted at need by his wife, dealing 
out to her with prudent measure the scientific explanations which she 
requires. This night, for instance, the poor lady had a bad dream, 
and Adam, in his trencher-cap, administers this learned psychological 
draught : * 

* Know, that in the souJ 

Are many lesser faculties that serve 

Reason as chief ; among these Fancy next 

Her office holds ; of all external things, 

"Which the five watchful senses represent, 

She forms imaginations, aery shapes 

Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames 

All what we affirm or what deny, and call 

Our knowledge or opinion. , . • 

> Paradise Lost, book iv. v. 492-502. « Ibid. v. 610-622.. 

• It would be impossible that a man so learned, so argumentative, should 
gpend his whole time in gardening and making up nosegays. 



CHAP. VI.] MILTON. 445 

Oft In her absence mimic fancy wakea 
To imitate lier ; but, misjoining shapes, 
"Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams j 
lU matching words and deeds long past or late.** 

Here was something to send Eve off to sleep again. Her husband, 
a')»\ng the effect, adds like an accredited casuist : 

* Yet be not sad : 
Evil into the mind of God or man 

Llay come and go, so unapproved ; and leave 
No spot or blame behind. ' ^ 

We recognise the Protestant husband, his wife's confessor. Next dt^y 
comes an angel on a visit, Adam tells Eve : 

* Go with speed, 

And, what thy stores contain, bring forth, and pour 

Abundance, fit to honour and receive 

Our heavenly stranger ... he 

Beholding shall confess, that here on earth 

God hath dispensed his bounties as in heaven.'* 

Mark this becoming zeal of a hospitable lady. She goes in haste j 

* What choice to choose for delicacy best ; 
What order, so contrived as not to mix 
Tastes, not well join'd, inelegant ; but bring 
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change.'* 

She makes sweet wine, perry, creams ; scatters flowers and leaves 
under the table. Good housewife I How many votes will she gain 
among the country squires, when Adam stands for Parliament 1 Adam 
belongs to the Opposition, is a Whig, a Puritan. He 

* Walks forth ; without more train 
Accompanied than with his own complete 
Perfections : in himseK was all his state ; 
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits 
On princes, when their rich retinue long 
Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold, 
Dazzles the crowd. ' * 

The epic is changed into a political poem, and we have heard an 
epigram against power. The preliminary ceremonies are somewhat 
long ; fortunately, the dishes being uncooked, * no fear lest dinner 
cooL' The angel, though ethereal, eats like a Lincolnshire farmer : 

* Nor seemingly 

The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss 

Of theologians ; but with keen dispatch 

Of real hunger, and concoctive heat 

To transubstantiate : what redounds, transpires 

Through spirits with ease. ' • 

1 Paradise Lost, book v. v. 100-113. * Ibid v. 116-119. ^ Jhid. v. 313^330. 

" Hid. v. mn-nnr,. 5 y^,^-,?. v. 351-357, ^ 7^,^-^_ ,,^ 434-439. 



44(> THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK 11 

At table Eve listens to the angel's stories, then discreetly rises at 
dessert, when they are getting into politics. English ladies may learn 
by her example to perceive from their lords' faces when they are 

* entering on studious thoughts abstruse.* The sex does not mount 
60 high. A wise lady prefers her husband*s talk to that of strangers, 

* Her husband the relater she preferred.' Now Adam hears a iittie 
Ireatise on astronomy. He concludes, like a practical Englishman : 

• But to know 
That which before us lies in daily life, 
Is the prime wisdom . what is more, is fume, 
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence ; 
And renders us, in things that most concern. 
Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek.* * 

The angel gone, Eve, dissatisfied with her garden, wishes to have it 
improved, and proposes to her husband to work in it, she on one side, 
he on the other. He says, with an approving smile : 
* Nothing lovelier can he found 
In woman, than to study household good, 
And good works in her husband to promote.* ' 

But he fears for her, and would keep her at his side. She rebels with 
a little prick of proud vanity, like a young lady w^ho mayn't go out by 
herself. She has her way, goes, and eats the apple. Here interminable 
speeches come down on the reader, as numerous and cold as winter 
showers. The speeches of Parliament after Pride's Purge were hardly 
heavier. The serpent seduces Eve by a collection of arguments worthy 
of the punctilious Chillingworth, and then the syllogistic mist enters 
her poor brain : 

* His forbidding 
Commends thee more, while it infers the good 
By thee communicated, and our want : 
For good unknown sure is not had ; or, had 
And yet unknown, is as not had at all. . , . 
Such prohibitions bind not.' ^ 

Eve is from Oxford too, has also learned law in the inns about the 
Teniple, and wears, like her husband, the doctor's trencher-cap. 

The flow of dissertations never pauses ; from Paradise it gets into 
heaven : neither heaven nor earth, nor hell itself, would swamp it. 

Of all characters which man could bring upon the scene, God is tho 
finest. The cosmogonies of peoples are sublime poems, and the artists' 
genius does not attain perfection until it is sustained by such concep- 
tions. The Hindoo sacred poems, the Biblical prophecies, the Edda, 
the Olympus of Hesiod and Homer, the visions of Dante, are glowing 
flowers from which a whole civilisation blooms, and every emotion 

* Paradise Lost, book viii. v. 193-197. 

« Ibid book ix ®. 233. ^ Ibid. o. 753-7G0. 



CHAP. VI.] MILTOT^. 447 

vanishes before the lightning thouglit by which they have leapt from 
the bottom of our heart. Nothing then can be more depressing than 
the degradation of these noble ideas, settling into the regularity of 
formulas, and under the discipline of a popular worship. What is 
smaller than a god sunk to the level of a king and a man? what mor< 
repulsive than the Hebrew Jehovah, defined by theological pedantry, 
governed in his actions by the last manual of doctrine, petrified by 
literal interpretation? 

Milton's Jehovah is a grave king, who maintains a suitable state, 
something like Charles I. When we meet him for the first time, in 
Book III., he is holding council, and setting forth a matter of business. 
From the style we see his grand furred cloak, his pointed Vandyke 
beard, his velvet-covered throne and golden dais. The business con- 
cerns a law which does not act well, and respecting which he desires to 
justify his rule. Adam is about to eat the apple: why have exposed 
Adam to the temptation? The royal orator discusses the question, and 
shows the reason : 

* I made him just and right, 

Sufficient to have stood, though free to falL 

Such I created all the ethereal powers 

And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd, • • .' 

Not free, what proof could they have given sincere 

Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love ? 

Where only, what they needs must do, appear'd, 

Not what they would : what praise could they receive I 

What pleasure I from such obedience paid ? 

When w^ill and reason, (reason also is choice) 

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd. 

Made passive both, had served necessity, 

Not me. They therefore, as to right belong'd. 

So were created, nor can justly accuse 

Their Maker, or their making, or their fate ; 

As if predestination over-ruled 

Their will, disposed by absolute decree 

Or high foreknowledge : they themselves decreed 

Their own revolt, not I : if I foreknew. 

Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, 

Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. 

So without least impulse or shadow of fate, 

Or aught by me immutably foreseen, 

They trespass, authours to themselves in all. 

Both what they judge and what they choose.'* 

Vhe modern reader is not so patient as the Thrones, Seraphtm, and 
Dominations ; this is why I stop half-way in the roj^al speech. We 
perceive that Milton's Jehovah is connected with the theologian James 
I., versed in the arguments of Arminians and Gomarists, very clevel 

' Paradise Lost, book iii. v. 98-133. 



^48 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK li 

at the distmgitOy and, before all, incomparably tedious. To get them to 
listen to such tirades he must pay his councillors of state very well. 
His son answers him respectfully in the same style. Goethe's God, 
half abstraction, half legend, source of calm oracles, a vision just beheld 
after a pyramid of ecstatic strophes,^ greatly excels this Miltonic God, 
a business man, a schoolmaster, a man for show! 1 honour him too 
much in giving him these titles. He deserves a worse name, when he 
fends Raphael to warn Adam that Satan intends him some mischief: 

* This let him know, 
Lest, wilfully transgressing, lie pretend 
Surprisal, unadmonish'd, unforewarn'd.'* 

This Miltonic Deity is only a schoolmaster, who, foreseeing the fault of 
his pupil, tells him beforehand the grammar rule, so as to have the 
pleasure of scolding him without discussion. Moreover, like a good 
politician, he had a second motive, just as with his angels, ' For state, 
as sovran king ; and to inure our prompt obedience' The word is out ; 
we see what Milton's heaven is : a Whitehall filled with bedizened foot- 
men. The angels are the chapel singers, whose business is to sing 
hymns about the king and before the king, relieving each other to sing 
' melodious hymns about the sovran throne.' What a life for this poor 
king ! and what a cruel condition, to hear eternally his own praises 1 ' 
To amuse himself, Milton's Deity decides to crown his son king — 
partner-king, if you prefer it. Read the passage, and say if it be not a 
ceremony of his time that the poet describes : 

* Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced. 

Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear 

Stream in the air, and for distinction serve 

Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees ; 

Or in their glittering tissues bear imblazed 

Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love 

Recorded eminent ; ' * 

doubtless the capture of a Dutch vessel, the defeat of the Spaniards in 
the Downs. The king brings forward his son, * anoints' him, declaies 
him * his great vicegerent :* 

* To him shall bow 

All knees in heaven. . . . Him who disobeys, 

Me disobeys ; ' '^ 

* End of the continuation of Faust. Prologue in Heaven. 
^Paradise Lost, book v. v. 243. 

^ We are reminded of the history of Ira in Voltaire, condemned to hear with- 
out iutermissioii or end the praises of four chamberlains, and the following hymn : 
* Que son merite est extreme ! 
Que de graces, que de grandeur. 
Ah ! combien monseigneur 
Doit etre content de lui-meme ! * 

" Paradise Lost, book y. v. 588-594. * Ibid. v. 607-612. 



CHAP. VI.] , MILTOK 449 

and such were, in fact, expelled from heaven the same day, 'All 
seem'd well pleased ; all seem'd, but were not all.' Yet 

* That day, as other solemn days, they spent 
In song and dance about the sacred hill. . . . 
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they tnm 
Desirous.* * 

Milton describes the tables, the dishes, the wine, the vessels. It is a 
popular festival; I miss the fireworks, the bell-ringing, as in London, 
and I can fancy that all would drink to the health of the new king. 
Then Satan revolts ; he takes his troops to the other end of the country, 
like Lambert or Monk, toward 'the quarters of the north,' Scotland 
perhaps, passing through well-governed districts, * empires,' with their 
sheriffs and lord-lieutenants. Heaven is divided like a good map. 
Satan holds forth before his officers against royalty, opposes in a 
word-combat the good royalist Abdiel, who refutes his ' blasphemous, 
false, and proud' arguments and quits him to rejoin his prince at 
Oxford. Well armed, the rebel marches with his pikemen and 
artillery to attack the fortress.' The two parties cut each other with 
the sword, mow each other down with cannon-balls, knock each 
other down with political arguments. These sorry angels have a 
mind as well disciplined as the Parliamentarians; they have passed 
their youth in a class of logic and in a drill school. Satan holds 
forth like a preacher : 

* What heaven's Lord had powerfulest to send 
Against us from about his throne, and judged 
SuflScient to subdue us to his will. 
But proves not so : then fallible, it seems, 
Of future we may deem him, though till now 
Omniscient thought.' ^ 

He also talks like a drill-sergeant. * Vanguard, to right and left the front 
unfold.' He makes quips as clumsy as those of Harrison, the former 
butcher turned ofiicer. What a heaven 1 It is enough to disgust one 
with Paradise ; one would rather enter Charles L's troop of lackeys, or 
Cromwell's Ironsides. We have orders of the day, a hierarchy, exact 
submission, extra-duties, disputes, regulated ceremonials, prostrations, 
etiquette, furbished arms, arsenals, depots of chariots and ammunition. 
Was it worth while leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works, 



^ Paradise Lost^ book v. v. 617-631. 

' The Miltonic Deity is so much on the level of a king and man, that he uses 
(with irony certainly) words like these : ' Lest unwary we love this place, our 
sanctuary, our hill.' 

His son, about to flesh his maiden sword, replies : ' If I be found the worst 
in heaven,' etc, — Book vi. 

* Paradise Lost^ book vi. «. 435-420. 
2 F 



4:6x1 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II 

buildings^ artillery, a manual of tactics, the art of salutations, and th« 
Almanac de Gotha ? Are these the things which ' eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart to conceive?' What a gap 
between this monarchical frippery^ and the visions of Dante, the souls 
floating like stars amid the harmonies, the mingled splendours, the 
mystic roses radiating and vanishing in the azure, the impalpable world 
in which all the laws of eartKly life are dissolved, the unfathomable 
abyss traversed by fleeting visions, like golden bees gliding in the rays 
of the deep central sun I Is it not a sign of extinguished imagination, 
of the inroad of prose, of the birth of the practical genius, replacing 
metaphysics by morality ? What a fall I To measure it, read a true 
Christian poem, the Apocalypse. I copy half-a-dozen vers^ ; think 
what it has become in the hands of the imitator : 

* And I tnmed to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw 
seven golden candlesticks ; 

* And in the midst of the sevf;n candlesticks, one like unto the Son of man, 
clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden 
girdle. 

* His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow ; and his eyes 
were as a flame of fire ; 

* And his feet like imto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace ; and his voice 
as the sound of many waters. 

* And he had in his right hand seven stars : and out of his mouth went a sharp 
two edged sword : and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. 

* And when 1 saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.' ' 

When Milton was arranging his celestial show, he did not fall as 
dead. 

But if the innate and inveterate habits of logical argument, joined 
wi^h the literal theology of the time, prevented him from attaining to 
lyrical illusion or from creating living souls, the splendour of his grand 
imagination, joined with the Puritan passions, furnished him with an 
heroic character, several sublime hymns, and scenery which no one has 
surpassed. The finest thing in connection with this Paradise is hell ; 
and in this history of God, the chief part is taken by the devil. The 
ridiculous devil of the middle-age, a horned enchanter, a dirty jester, 
a petty and mischievous ape, band-leader to a rabble of old women, 
has become a giant and a hero. Like a conquered and vanished Crom- 
well, he remains admired and obeyed by those whom he has drawp 
into the abyss. If he continues master, it is because he deserves it ; 
firmer, more enterprising, more scheming than the rest, it is always 

^ When Eaphael comes on earth, the ange"'s who are * under watch,' ' in honour 
rise.* The disagi-eeable and characteristic feature of this heaven is, that the uni- 
versal motive is obedience, while in Dante's it is love. * Lowly reverent thej 
bow. . . . Out happy state we hold, like yours, while our obedience holdri.' 

' llov. i. li 



CHAT VIj MILTON 45-J 

from him that deep counsels, unlooked-for resources, courageous deeds, 
proceeds It was he who invented ' deep-throated engines . . . dis- 
gorging, . . . chained thunderbolts, and hail of iron globes,' and won 
the second day's victory ; he who in hell roused his dejected troops, 
and planned the ruin of man; he who, passing the guarded gatei 
and the endless chaos, amid so many dangers, and across so many 
obstacles, made man revolt against God, and gained for hell the whole 
posterity of the new-born. Though defeated, he prevails, since he has 
won from the monarch on high the third part of his angels, and almost 
all the sons of his Adam. Though wounded, he triumphs, for the thunder 
which smote his head, left his heart invincible. Though feebler in 
force, he remains superior in nobility, since he prefers suffering inde- 
pendence to happy servility, and welcomes his defeat and his torments 
as a glory, a Uberty, and a joy. These are the proud and sombre 
political passions of the constant though oppressed Puritans ; Milton 
had felt them in the vicissitudes of war, and the emigrants who had 
taken refuge amongst the panthers and savages of America, found them 
strong and energetic in the depths of their heart. 

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime. 

Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat 

That we must change for heaven ? this mournfiil gloom 

For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he, 

Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid 

What shall be right : farthest from him is best. 

Whom reason has equal'd, force hath made supreme 

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 

Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrours ; hail« 

Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest hell, 

Receive thy new possessour ; one who brings 

A mind not to be changed by place or time. 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

What matter where, if 1 be stiU the same. 

And what I should be ; all but less than he 

Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at le«rt 

We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built 

Here for his enxj ; will not drive us hence : 

Here we may reign secure ; and in my choice 

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell : 

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.'* 

This sombre heroism, this harsh obstinacy, this biting irony, these 
proud stiff arms which clasp grief as a mistress, this concentration of 
mvintible courage which, cast on its own resources, finds everything in 
itself, this power of passion and sway over passion, — 

* The unconquerable will. 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 

• Paradise Lost, book i. v. 242-263 



152 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

And courage never to submit or yield. 
And what is else not to be overcome,' ' 

are features proper to the English character and to English literature, 
and you will find them later on in Byron's Lara and Conrad. 

Around the fallen angel, as within him, all is great. Dante's hell 
is but a hall of tortures, whose cells, one below another, descend to tb« 
deepest wells. Milton's hell is vast and vague : 

*A dungeon horrible on all sides round, 
As one great furnace, flamed ; yet from those flamee 
No light, but rather darkness visible 
Served only to discover sights of woe. 
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades.^ . , , 
Beyond this flood a frozen continent 
Lies, dark and wild, beat with perpetual stoims 
Of whirlwind, and dire hail which on firm land 
Thaws not ; but gathers heap, and ruin seems 
Of ancient pile. ' ^ 

The angels gather, innumerable legions : 

* As when heaven's fire 
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, 
"With singed top their stately growth, though bare^ 
Stands on the blasted heath.'* 

Milton needs the grand and infinite ; he lavishes them. His eyes are 
only content in limitless space, and he produces colossuses to fill it 
Such is Satan wallowing on the surges of the livid sea : 

* In bulk as huge . . . as . . . that sea-beast 
Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream : 
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam. 
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiflE^ 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell. 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished mom delays.' * 

Spenser has discovered images just as fine, but he has not the tragic 
gravity which the idea of hell impresses on a Protestant. No j»oeti<i 
creation equals in horror and grandeur the spectacle that greeted Satao 
on leaving his dungeon : 

At last appear 
Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, 
And thrice threefold the gates ; three folds were brass, 
Three iron, three of adamantine rock, 
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire. 
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat 



» Paradise Lost, book i. v. 106-109. ^ Ibid. v. 61-65. 

• Ibid, book ii. v. 587-591. * Ibid, book i. « 612-615. 

» Ibid. V. 196-208. 



(HAP VI I MILTON. 4^^ 

On either side a formidable shape ; 

The one seem'd woman to the waist, »nd fair. 

But ended foul in many a scaly fold 

Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd 

With mortal sting : about her middle round 

A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd 

"With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 

A hideous peal : yet, when they list, would creep, 

If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb. 

And kennel there ; yet there still bark'd and howl'd 

Within unseen. . . . The other shape, 

If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none 

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, 

Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd. 

For each seem'd either : black it stood as night. 

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell. 

And shook a dreadful dart ; what seem'd his head 

The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat 

The monster moving onward came as fast, 

With horrid strides ; hell trembled as he strode. 

The undaunted fiend what this might be admired. 

Admired, not fear'd. * 

The heroic glow of the old soldier of the Civil Wars animates the 
infernal battle; and if one were to ask why Milton creates things greater 
than other men, I should answer, because he has a greater heart. 

Hence the sublimity of his scenery. If I did not fear the paradox, I 
should say that this scenery was a school of virtue. Spenser is a smooth 
glass, which fills us with calm images. Shakspeare is a burning mirror, 
which overpowers us, one alter another, with multiplied and dazzling 
visions. The one distracts, the other disturbs us. Milton raises our mind. 
The force of the objects which he describes passes into us; we become 
great by sympathy with their greatness. Such is the effect of his descrip- 
tion of the Creation. The calm and creative command of the Messiah 
haves its trace in the heart which listens to it, and we feel more vigouf 
and moral health at the sight of this great work of wisdom and will » 

• On heavenly ground they stood ; and from the shore 
They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss 
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild. 
Up from the bottom turn'd by furious winds 
And surging waves, as mountains, to assault 
Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole. 
•* Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace,** 
Said then the omnific Word : "your discord end ! " . . . 
Let there be light, said God ; and forthwith light 
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, 
Sprung from the deep ; and from her native east 

' Paradise Lost, book li. v. 643-978. 



454 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U 

To jonrney through the aery gloom began, 
Sphered in a radiant cloud. . . . 
The earth was form'd ; but in the womb as yet 
Of waters, embryon immature involved, 
Apx)ear'd not : over all the face of earth 
Main ocean flow'd, not idle ; but, with warm 
Prolific humour softening all her globe, 
Fermented the great mother to conceive, 
Satiate with genial moisture ; when God said, 
"Be gather'd now, ye waters under heaven, 
Into one place, and let dry land appear." 
Immediately the mountains huge appear 
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave 
Into the clouds ; their tops ascend the sky : 
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, 
Capacious bed of waters : thither they 
Hasted with glad precipitance, uproll'd, 
As drops on dust conglobing from the dry.' * 

This is the primitive scenery ; immense bare seas and mountains 
as Kaphael Sanzio outlines them in the background of his biblical 
paintings. Milton embraces the general effects, and handles the whole 
as easily as his Jehovah. 

Let us quit superhuman and fanciful spectacles. A simple sunset 
equals them. Milton peoples it with solemn allegories and regal figures, 
and the sublime is born in the poet, as just before it was born from the 

subject : — 

* The sun, now fallen . . • 
An-aying with reflected purple and gold 
The clouds that on his western throne attend. 
Now came still evening on, and twilight gray 
Had in her sober livery all things clad : 
Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, 
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, 
Were slunk, aU but the wakeful nightingale ; 
She all night long her amorous descant sung ; 
Silence was pleased : now glowed the firmament 
With living sapphires : Hesperus, that led 
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, 
Rising in clouded majesty, at length, 
Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light, 
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. ' * 

The changes of the light become here a religious procession of vagot 
beings who fill the soul with veneration. So sanctified, the poet praya. 
Standing by the nuptial couch of Adam and Eve, he says : — 
* Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true soui je 
Of human offspring, sole propriety 
In Paradise of all things common else ! 



» Paradm Lost, book vii. 7:. 210-293. « Ibid book Iv. v. 501-609. 



CHAP. VI.J MILTON. 455 

By thee adulterous lust was driven from men 
Among the bestial herds to range : by thee, 
Founded in reason, loyal, ju6t, and pure, 
Relations dear, and all the charities 
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.' » 

He justifies it by the example of saints and patriarchs. He immo- 
lates before it bought love and * court amours,' wanton women and 
harlots. We are a thousai;id miles from Shakspeare ; and in this Pro- 
testant eulogy of the family tie, of lawful love, of * domestic sweets,' oi 
orderly piety and of home, we perceive a new literature and an altered 
time. 

A strange great man, and a strange spectacle ! He was born with 
the instinct of noble things ; and this instinct, strengthened in him by 
solitary meditation, by accumulated knowledge, by stern logic, becomes 
changed into a body of maxims and beliefs which no temptation could 
dissolve, and no reverse shake. Thus fortified, he passes life as a com- 
batant, as a poet., with courageous deeds and splendid dreams, heroic 
and rude, chimerical and impassioned, generous and calm, like every 
self-contained reasoner, like every enthusiast, insensible to experience 
and enamoured of the beautiful. Thrown by the chance of a revolution 
into politics and theology, he demands for others the liberty which his 
powerful reason requires, and strikes at the public fetters which im- 
pede his personal energy. By the force of his intc llect, he is more 
capable than any one of accumulating science ; by the force of his 
enthusiasm, he is more capable than any of experiencing hatred. Thus 
armed, he throws himself into controversy with all the clumsiness 
•and barbarism of the time ; but this proud logic displays its argu- 
ments with a marvellous breadth, and sustains its images with an 
unwonted majesty: this lofty imagination, after having spread over 
his prose an array of magnificent figures, carries him into a torrent of 
passion even to the height of the sublime or excited ode — a sort of 
archangel's song of adoration or vengeance. The chance of a throne 
preserved, then re-established, carries him, before the revolution took 
place, into pagan and moral poetry, after the revolution into Christian 
and moral verse. In both, he aims at the sublime, and inspires admira- 
tion : because the sublime is the work of enthusiastic reason, and a:l« 
miration is the enthusiasm of reason. In both, he arrives at hiy point 
by the accumulation of splendours, by the sustained fulness of poetic 
song, by the greatness of his allegories, the loftiness of his sentiments, 
the description of infinite objects and heroic emotions. In the first, a 
lyrist and a philosopher, with a wider poetic freedom, and the creator 
of a stranger poetic illusion, he produces almost perfect odes and 
choruses. In the second, an epic writer and a Protestant, enslaved bji 
a strict theology, robbed of the style which makes the supernatural 



» Paradise Lost, book iv. v. 750-757. 



*56 THE RENAISSANCE. 

visible, deprived of the dramatic sensibility which creates varied and 
living souls, be accumulates cold dissertations, transforms man ard God 
into orthodox and vulgar machines, and only regains his genius in 
endowing Satan with his republican soul, in multiplying grand sceneries 
and colossal apparitions, in consecrating his poetry to the praise of 
religion and duty. 

Placed, as it happened, between two ages, he participates in their 
two characters, as a stream which, flowing between two diiEFerent soils, 
is tinged by their two hues. A. poet and a Protestant, he receives 
from the closing age the free poetic afflatus, and from the opening age 
the severe political religion. He employed the one in the service of 
the other, and displayed the old inspiration in new subjects. In his 
works we recognise two Englands : one impassioned for the beautiful, 
devoted to the emotions of an unshackled sensibility and the fancies of 
pure imagination, with no law but the natural feelings, and no religion 
but natural belief ; voluntarily pagan, often immoral ; such as it is ex- 
hibited by Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Shakspeare, Spenser, and 
the superb harvest of poets which covered the ground for a space of 
fifty years : the other fortified by a practical religion, void of meta- 
physical invention, altogether political, with worship and law, attached 
to measured, sensible, useful, narrow opinions, praising the virtues of 
the family, armed and stiffened by a rigid morality, driven into prose, 
raised to the highest degree of power, wealth, and liberty. In thia 
sense, this style and these ideas are monuments of history : they con- 
centrate, recall, or anticipate the past and the future; and in the limits 
of a single work are found the c /ents and the feelings of several cen- 
turies and of a whole nation. 



BOOK in. 

rtlE CLASSIC AQE. 

^^— 

CHAPTER L 
The Restoration. 

1 The Roisterers. 

I fht excesses dF Puritanism— How they induce excesses of sensuality. 
IL Picture of these manners by a strauger-The M6moire8 de GrainmofU^ 
Difference of deoaucheiy in France and England. 

III. Butler's /ftt<ii6ra«— Platitude of his comic style, and harshness of hii 

rancorous style. .. t# 

IV. Baseness, cruelty, brutality, debauchery of the court-Rochester, his life, 

poems, style, morals. ^ _ 

V Philosophy consonant with these manners-Hobbes, his spirit and his style 
—His curtailments and his discoveries-His mathematical method— In 
how much he resembles Descartes— His morality, aesthetics, politics, 
logic, psychology, metaphysics-Spirit and aim of his philosophy. 
TI. The theatre-Alteration in taste, and in the public-Audiences before and 

after the Restoration. ^ 

VII. Dryden— Disparity of his comedies— Gftucherie of his indecencies— How h« 

- translates Moliere's Amphitryon. 
nil Wycherley— Life— Character— Melanchdy, greed, immodesty-i^ove m a 
Wood, Country Wife, Dancing Jtfas^er - Licentious picture^- and re- 
pugnant details-His energy and realism-Parts of Olivia and Manlj 
in his Plain i>eofer— Certain words of Milton. 

2. The Worldlings. 
L Appearance of the worldly life in Europe-Its conditions and causes-How 
it was established in England-Etiquette, amusements, conversations, 
manners, and talents of the drawing-room.. 
11. Dawn of the classic spirit in Europe-Its origin- Its nature -Difference of 

conversation under Elizabeth and Charles ii. 
III. Sir WiUiam Temple— His life, character, spirit, and style. ^ 
IV Writers of fashion- Their correct language and gallant bearing— Sir Charlei 
Sedley, the Earl of Dorset, Edmund Waller— His opinions amd style- 



ti>8 ■ THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Wherein consists his polish — "Wherein he is not snfRciently polished— 
Culture of style — Lack of poetry — Character of nionarcliical and classic 
style, 
V. Sir John Denham — His poem of Cooper's Hill — Ora-toiical swell of hi? 
verse— English seriousness of his moral preoccupations — How pcopk <y\ 
fashion and literary men followed then the fashions of France. 
VI. The comic-authors — Comparison of this theatre with that of Moli^re — 
Arrangement of ideas in Moli^re — General ideas in Molike — How wilh 
Moliere the odious is concealed, while the truth is depicted — How in 
Moliere the honest man is still the man of the world — How the honest 
man of Moliere is a French type- 
Vn. Action — Complication of intrigues — Frivolity of purpose — Crudeness of 
the characters — Crossness of manners — Wherein consists the talent of 
Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquliar — Kind of characters 
they are able to produce. 
VIIL Natural characters — Sir John Brute, the husband ; Squire Sullen — Sir Tun- 
belly, the. father — Miss Hoyden, the young lady — Squire Humphry, the 
young gentleman — Idea of nature according to this theatre. 
IX. Artificial characters — Women of the world — Miss Prue, Lady Wishfort^ 
Lady Pliant, Mrs Millamant — Men of the world — Mirahell — Idea of 
society according to this theatre — Why this culture and this literature 
have not produced durable works — Wherein they are opposed to the 
English character — Transformation of taste and manners. 
X. The continuation of comedy — Sheridan — Life — Talent — The School for 
Scandalr—Row comedy degenerates and is extinguished— Causes of the 
decay of the theatre in Europe and in England. 

1. The Roisterers. 

WHEN we alternately look at the works of the court painters of M | 
Charles i. and Charles ii., and pass from the noble portraits of 1 ' 
Van Dyk to the figures of Lely, the fall is sudden and great ; we have 1 

left a palace, and we light on a bagnio. 

Instead of the proud and dignified lords, at once cavaliers and 
courtiers, instead of those fine yet simple ladies who look at the same 
time princesses and modest maidens, instead of that generous and heroic 
company, elegant and resplendent, in whom the spirit of the Renaissance 
yet survived, but who already displayed the refinement of the modem 
ago, we are confronted by perilous and importunate courtesans, with an 
expression either vile or harsh, incapable of shame or of remorse.^ 
Their plump smooth hands toy fondlingly with their dimpled fingers ; 
ringlets of heavy hair fall on their bare shoulders ; their swimming eyes 
languish voluptuously; an insipid smile hovers on their sensual lips. 
One is lifting a mass of dishevelled hair which streams over the curves 
of her rosy flesh; another languishingly, and without constraint, uncloses 
a sleeve whose soft folds display the full whiteness of her arms. Nearly 

' See especially the portraits of Lady Moilaud, Lady Williams, theConnteea 
of Ossory, the Duchess of Cleveland, Lady Price, and many others. 



CHAP. I.J THE RESTORATION. 459 

all are half-draped ; many of them seem to be just rising from their 
beds ; the rumpled dressing-gown clings to the neck, and looks as 
though it were soiled by the night's debaucli ; the tumbled under- 
gnrment slips down to the hips: their feet crumple the bright and 
glossy silk. Though shameless, with bosoms uncovered, they are decked 
out in all the luxurious extravagance of prostitutes ; diamond girdles, 
pufls of lace, the vu.gar splendour of gilt, a superfluity of embroidf red 
and rustling fabrics, enormous head-dresses, the curls and fringes of 
which, rolled up and sticking out, compel notice by the very heiglit of 
their shameless magnificence. Folding curtains hang round them in 
the shape of an alcove, and the eyes penetrate through a A'ista into 
the recesses of a wide park, whose solitude will not ill serve the purpose 
of their pleasures. 



All this came by way of contrast ; Puritanism had brought on an 
orgie, and fanatics had talked down the virtues. For many years the 
gloomy English imagination, possessed by religious terrors, had desolated 
the life of men. Conscience had become disturbed at the thought of 
death and the dark eternity ; half-expressed doubts swarmed within 
like a bed of thorns, and the sick heart, starting at every emotion, had 
ended by taking a disgust at all its pleasures, and a horror at all its 
natural instincts. Thus poisoned at its spring, the divine sentiment of 
justice became a mournful madness. Man, confessedly perverse and 
condemned, believed himself pent in a prison-house of perdition and 
vice, into which no effort and no chance could dart a ray of light, 
except a hand from above should come by free grace, to rend the sealed 
stone of the tomb. Men lived the life of the condemned, amid torments 
and anguish, oppressed by a gloomy despair, haunted by spectres. Such 
a one would frequently imagine himself at the point of death ; another 
was weighed down by his grievous hallucinations as by a cross ; some 
would feel within them the motions of an evil spirit ; one and all passed 
the night with their eyes chained to the tales of blood and the im- 
passioned a] peals of the Old Testament, listening to the threats and 
thunders of a terrible God, and renewing in their own hearts tue 
ferocity of murderers and the exaltation of seers. Under such a strain 
reason gradually left them. While seeking after their Lord, they four d 
but a dream. After long hours of exhaustion, they laboured under a 
warped and overwrought imagination. Dazzling forms, unwonted ideas, 
sprang up on a sudden in their heated brain ; men were raised and 
penetrated by extraordinary emotions. So transformed, they knew 
themselves no longer; they did not ascribe to themselves these violent 
and sudden inspirations which were forced upon them, which compelled 
them out of the beaten tracks, which had no connection one with 
another, which shook and enlightened them when ieast expectel, with- 
out being able either to check or to govern them ; they saw in tbeci th« 



460 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IB 

agency of a supernatural power, and gave themselves up with enthusiasm 
to the madness and the stubbornness of faith. 

To crown all, the nature of fanaticism had been changed ; the sec- 
tary had laid down all the steps of mental transfiguration, and reduced 
the encroachment of his dream to a theory : he set about metht^dically to 
drive out reason and enthrone ecstasy. George Fox wrote it5 history, 
Biinyan gave it its laws, Parliament worked out its type, all the pulpits 
lauded its practice. Artisans, soldiers, women discussed it, mastered 
it, encouraged one another by the details of their experience and the 
publicity of their exaltations. A new life was inaugurated which had 
blighted and expelled the old. All secular tastes were suppressed, all 
sensual joys forbidden; the spiritual man alone remained standing upon 
the ruins of the past, and the heart, debarred from all its natural safety- 
valves, could only direct its views or aspirations towards a sinister Deity, 
The typical Puritan walked slowly along the streets, his eyes raised t'?- 
wards heaven, with elongated features, yellow and haggard, with cropt 
hair, clad in brown or black, unadorned, clothed only to cover his naked- 
ness. If a man had round cheeks, he passed for lukewarm.^ The whole 
body, the exterior, the very tone of his voice, all must wear the sign of 
penitence and divine grace. Man spoke slowly, with a solemn and some- 
what nasal tone of voice, as if to destroy the vivacity of conversation and 
the melody of the natural voice. His speech stuffed with scriptural 
quotations, his style borrowed from the prophets, his name and the 
names of his children drawn from the Bible, bore witness that hia 
thoughts were confined to the terrible world of the seers and ministers 
of divine vengeance. From within, the contagion spread outwards. 
The fears of conscience were converted into laws of the state. Personal 
asceticism grew into public tyranny. The Puritan proscribed pleasure 
as an enemy, for others as well as for himself. Parliament closed the 
gambling-houses and theatres, and had the actors whipped at the cart's 
tail ; oaths were fined ; the May-trees were cut down ; the bears, whose 
fights amused the people, Avere put to death ; the plaster of Puritan 
masons reduced nude statues to decency ; the beautiful poetic festival! 
were forbidden. Fines and corporal punishments shut out, sven frona 
children, games, dancing, bell-ringing, rejoicings, junketings, wrestling, 
the chase, all exercises and amusements which might profane the Sab- 
bath. The ornaments, pictures, and statues in the churches were pulled 
dc wn or mutilated. The only pleasure which they retained and permitted 
was the singing of psalms through the nose, the edification of long ser- 
mons, the excitement of acrimonious controversies, the eager and sombre 
joy of a victory gained over the enemy of mankind, and of the tyranny 
exercised against the demon's supposed abettors. In Scotland, a colder 
and sterner land, intolerance reached the utmost limits of ferocity and 

^ Colonel Hutchinson was at one time held in suspicion becaus«3 he wow 
long liair and dressed well. 



CHAP. l.J THE RESTORATION. 463 

pettiness, instituting a surveillance over the private life and the secret 
devotions of every member of a family, depriving Catholics of their 
children, imposing an oath of abjuration under pain of perpetual impri- 
sonment or death, dragging crowds of witches^ to the stake. ^ It seemed 
as though a black cloud had weighed down the life of man, drowning 
til light, wiping out all beauty, extinguishing all joy, pierced here and 
there by the glitter of the sword and by the flickering of torches, be- 
neath which one might perceive the indistinct forms of gloomy despoto, 
cf bilious sectarians, of silent victims. 

n. 

The king once re-established, a deliverance ensued. Like a checked 
and flooded stream, public opinion dashed with all its natural force and 
all its acquired momentum, into the bed from which it had been debarred. 
The outburst carried away the dams. The violent return to the senses 
drowned morality. Virtue had the semblance of Puritanism. Duty 
and fanaticism became mingled in a common reproach. In this great 
reaction, devotion and honesty, swept away together, left to mankind 
but the wreck and the mire. The more excellent parts of human 
nature disappeared ; there remained but the animal, without bridle or 
guide, urged by his desires beyond justice and shame. 

When we see these manners in a Hamilton or a Saint Evremond, 
we can tolerate them. Their French varnish deceives us. Debauchery 
in a Frenchman is only half disgusting ; with them, if the animal breaks 
loose, it is without abandoning itself to excess. The foundation is not, 



^ 1648 ; thirty in one day. One of them confessed that she had been at a 
gathering of more than five hundred witches. — Pictorial History, iii. 489. 

^ In 1652, the kirk-session of Glasgow *brot hoyes and servants before them, foi 
breaking the Sabbath, and other faults. They had clandestine censors, and gave 
money to some for this end. ' — Kote 28, taken from Wodrow's Collection ; Buckle, 
History of Civilization in England^ 3 vols. 1867, iii. 208. 

Even yearly in the eighteenth century, ' the most popular divines ' in Scotland 
affirmed that Satan ' frequently appears clothed in a corporeal substance.' — Ptid. 
XXL 233, note 76, taken from Memoirs of C. L. Lewes. 

• No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her child on tha 
Sabbath day.' — Ihid. iii. 253, note from Revd. Lyon, with regard to government of 
a colony. 

'(Sept. 22, 1649) The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act, thai 
ther sould be no pypers at brydels,' etc. — Ihid. iii. 258, note 153. In 1719, the 
Presbytery of Edinburgh indignantly declares : * Yea, some have arrived at that 
height of impiety, as not to be ashamed of washing in waters, and swimming in 
rivers upon the holy Sabbath.' — Ihid. iii. 266, note 187. 

* I think David had never so sweet a time as then, when he was pursued ai 
a partridge by his son Absalom.' — Gray's Great and Precious Promises. 

See the whole of chapter iii. vol. iii., in which Buckle has described, by sin: 
ilar quotations, the condition of Scotland, chiefly in the seventeenth century 



4(52 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 11 1 

as with the EngHshman, coarse and powerful. You may break the 

glittering ice which covers him, without bringing down upon yourself 
the swollen and muddy torrent that roars beneath his neighbour ; ^ the 
stream which will issue from it will only have its petty dribblings, and 
will rc::,urn quickly and of itself to its accustomed channel. The French- 
man is mild, naturally refined, little inclined to great or gross sensuality, 
affecting a sober style of talk, easily armed against filthy manners by 
his delicacy and good taste. The Count de Grammont has too much 
wit to love an orgie. After all, an orgie is not pleasant ; the breaking 
of glasses, brawling, lewd talk, gluttony in eating and drinking, — there 
is nothing in this very tempting to a delicate disposition : the French- 
man, after Grammont's type, is born an epicurean, not a glutton or a 
drunkard. What he seeks is amusement, not unrestrained joy or 
bestial pleasure. I know well that he is not void of reproach. I would 
not trust him with my purse, he forgets too readily the distinction be- 
tween meum and tuum; above all, I would not trust him with my wife : 
he is not over-delicate ; his escapades at the gaming-table and with 
women smack too much of the sharper and the false-swearer. But I 
am wrong to use these big words in connection with him ; they are too 
weighty, they crush so delicate and so pretty a specimen of humanity. 
These heavy habits of honour or shame can only be worn by a serious 
class of men, and Grammont takes nothing seriously, neither his fellow- 
men, nor himself, nor vice, nor virtue. To pass his time agreeably is 
his sole endeavour. *They had said good-bye to dulness in the army/ 
observed Hamilton, * as soon as he was there.' That is his pride and 
his aim ; he troubles himself, and cares for nothing beside. His valet 
robs him : another would have brought the rogue to the gallows ; but 
the theft »\ras clever, and he keeps his rascal. He left England forget- 
ting to marry the girl he was betrothed to ; he is caught at Dover ; he 
returns and marries her : this was an amusing contretemps ; he asks 
for nothing better. One day, being penniless, he fleeces the Count de 
Cam^ran at play. * Could Grammont, after the figure he had once cut, 
pack off like any common fellow ? By no means ; he is a man of feeling ; 
he will maintain the honour of France.' He covers his cheating at play 
with a joke ; at bottom, his notions of property are not over-clear. Pie 
regales Cameran with Cameran's own money ; would Cameran have 
done it better, or otherwise ? What matter if his money be in Gram- 
mont's purse or his own ? The main point is arrived at, since there is 
pleasure in getting the money, and there is pleasure in spending it, 
Th«? h»^fful and the ignoble vanish from a life conducted thus. If he 
pays his conrt to princes, you may be sure it is not on his knees ; so 
lively a soul is not weighed down by respect ; his wit places him on a 
level with the greatest ; under pretext of amusing the king, he tells 

* See, in Richardson, Swift, and Fielding, but particularly in Hogarth tht 
lelineation of this brutish debauchery. 



CHAP. I.J THE RESTORATION. 463 

him plain truths.* If he finds himself in London, surrounded hy open 
debauchery, he does not plunge into it ; he passes thiough on tiptoe, 
and so daintily that the mire does not stick to him. We do not recog- 
nise any longer in his anecdotes the anguish and the brutality which 
the circumstances actually conceal ; the narrative flows on quickly, 
raising a smile, then another, and another yet, so that the mind is 
brought by an adroit and easy progress to something like good humour. 
At table, Grammont will never stuff himself; at play, he will nevei 
grow violent ; with his mistress, he will nevei give vent to coarse 
talk ; in a duel, he vnll not hate his adversary. Tlie v/it of a French- 
man is like French wine ; it makes men neither brutal, nor wicked, 
nor gloomy. Such is the spring of these pleasures : a supper will de- 
stroy neither the delicacy, nor the good nature, nor the enjoyment. 
The libertine remains sociable, polished, obliging; his gaiety culminates 
cn!y in the gaiety of others ;^ he is attentive to them as naturally as 
to himself; and in addition, he is ever on the alert and in a mood for 
intellectual exertion : sallies, flashes of brilliancy, witty speeches, sparkle 
on his lips ; he can think at table and in company, sometimes better 
than if alone or sober. It is clear that with him debauchery does not 
extinguish the man ; Grammont would say that it perfects him, that 
wit, the heart, the intelligence only arrive at excellence and true en- 
joyment, amid the elegance and animation of a choice supper. 

III. 

It is quite the contrary in England. When we scratch the covering 
of an Englishman's moralitv, the brute appears in its violence and its 
deformity. One of the English statesmen said that with the French au 
unT-.hained mob could be led by words of humanity and honour, but that 
in England it was necessary, in order to appease them, to throw to them 
raw flesh. Violence, blood, orgie, that is the food on which this mob 
of noblemen precipitated itself All that excuses a carnival was 
absent ; and, in particular, wit. Three years after the return of the 
king, Butler published his Hudibras; and with what eclat his con- 
temporaries only could tell, while the echo is sustained down to our 
own days. How mean is the wit, with what awkwardness and dulness 
he dilutes his splenetic satire I Here and there lurks a happy picture, 
the remnant of a poetry which has just perished ; but the whole 
material of the work reminds one of a Scarron, as unworthy as the 
other, and more malignant. It is written, they say, on the model of 

^ The king was flaying at backgammon ; a doubtful throw occurs : * Ah, her€ 
is Grammont, who '11 decide for us ; Grammont, come and decide. ' * Sire, you 
have lost.' 'What ! you do not yet know.' . . . * Ah, Sire, if the throw had 
been merely doubtful, these gentlem m would not have failed to say you had won.' 

* Hamilton says of Grammont, • He sought out the unfortunate ouly to buc 
eoT them. 



464 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Don Quixote ; Hudibras is a Puritan knight, who goes about, like hi? 
antitype, redressing wrongs, and pocketing beatings. It would be 
truer to say that it resembles the wretched imitation of Avellaneda.' 
The short metre, well suited to buffoonery, hobbles along without 
rest on its crutches, floundering in the mud which it delights in, as 
foul and as dull as that of the Eneide Travestied The description 0/ 
Hudibras and his horse occupies the best part of a canto ; forty linei 
are taken up by describing his beard, forty more by describing his 
shoes. Endless scholastic discussions, arguments as long as those of the 
Puritans, spread their wastes and briars over half the poem. No action, 
no nature, all is would-be satire and gross caricature ; neither art, nor 
harmony, nor good taste : the Puritan style is convex Jed into a harsh 
gibberish ; and the engalled rancour, missing its aim by its mere ixcess, 
spoils the portrait it wishes to draw. Would you believe that such a 
writer gives himself airs, wishes to enliven us, pretends to be funny ? 
What delicate raillery is there in this picture of Hudibras' beard 1 

* His tawny beard was th' equal grace 
Both of liis wisdom and his face ; 
In cut and die so like a tile, 

A. sudden view it would beguile : 

The upper part whereof was whey. 

The nether orange, mix'd with grey. 

The hairy meteor did denounce 

The fall of sceptres and of crowns : 

With grisly type did represent 

Declining age of government, 

And tell with hieroglyphic spade 

Its own grave and the state's were made.' • 

Butler is so well satisfied with his insipid fun, that he prolongs it far 
good many lines : 

* Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew 
In time to make a nation rue ; 

Tho' it contributed its own fall, 
To wait upon tlie public downfall . , , 
'Twas bound to suffer persecution 
And martyrdom with resolution ; 
T' oppose itself against the hate 
And vengeance of the incens'd state, 
In whose defiance it was worn, 
Still ready to be pull'd and torn, 

• A Spanish author, who continued and imitated Cervantes' Bon Quiok^te. 

' A work by Scarron. Hudibras, ed. Z. Grey, 1801, 2 vols., i. canto i. v 2S^ 

pays also : 

* For as ^neas bore his sire 
Upon his shoulder through the fire, 
Our knight did bear no less a pack 
Of his own buttocks on his back.' 

• Hudibras, part i. canto i v. 341-350. 



CItAP 1.1 THE RESTORATION. ^gg 

With red-hot irons to be tortiir'd, 

Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd. 

Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast 

As long as monarchy should last ; 

But when the state should hap to reel, 

Twas to submit to fatal steel. 

And fall, ns it was consecrate, 

A sacrifice to fall of state, 

Whose thread of life the fatal sisters 

Did twist together with its whiskers, 

And twine so close, that time should never, 

In hie or death, their fortunes sever ; 

But with his rusty sickle mow 

Both down together at a blow. ' * 

CofiW uiy one have taken pleasure in humour such as thU: 

* This sword a dagger had, his page. 
That was but little for his age ; 
And therefore waited on him so 
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do. , , • 
When it had stabb'd, or broke a head. 
It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread. , , ," 
'Twoidd make clean shoes, and in the earth 
Set leeks and onions, and so forth. ' * 

Everything turns on the trivial : if any beauty presents itself, it is 
spoiled by burlesque. To read those long details of the kitchen, those 
bcistercus and crude jokes, one might fancy oneself in the company of 
a common buftbon in the market ; it is the talk of the quacks on the 
bridges, adapting their imagination and language to the manners of the 
beor-shop and the hovel. There is filth to be met with there ; in short, 
tht rabble will laugh when the mountebank alludes to the disgusting acts 
of private life.^ Such is the grotesque stuff in which the courtiers of the 
Restoration delignted ; their spife and their coarseness took a ple^.su^€ 

MudV)ras, part i. canto i. v. 253-280. « Ibid. v. 375-386. 

2 * Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat. 
Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate ; 
For though the thesis which thou lay'st 
Be true ad amussim as thou say'st 
(For that bear-baiting should appear 
Jure divino, lawf uller 
Than Synods are, thou do'st deny, 
Totidem verbis ; so do I), 
Yet there is fallacy in this ; 
For if by thy hom(Bosis, 
Tussis pro crepitu, . . . 
Thou wouldst sophigtically imply. 
Both are unlawful, I deny.' 

Part i. canto I v. 831-884. 
2 G 



466 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lie 

in the spectacle of these bawling puppets; even now, after two centuries, 
we hear the ribald laughter of this audience of lackeys. 

TV. 

Charles ii., when at his meals, ostentatiously drew jlrammont'fl 
attention to the fact that his officers served him on their kflees. They 
were in the right; it was tlieir fit posture. Lord Chancellor Clarendon, 
one of the most honoured and honest men of the Court, learns sud- 
denly and in full council that his daughter Anne is enceinte by the Duke 
of York, and that the duke, the king's brother, has promised her 
marriage. Listen to the words of this tender father ; he has himself 
taken care to hand them down : 

* The Chancellor broke out into a very immoderate passion against the wickea* 
ness of his daughter, and said with all imaginable earnestness, '* that as soon as hf 
came liome, he would turn her (his daughter) out of his house as a strumpet to 
shift for herself, and would never see her again. " * * 

Observe that this great man had received the news from the king 
unprepared, and that he made use of these fatherly expressions on the 
spur of the moment. He added, ' that he had much rather his daughter 
should be the duke's whore than his wife.' Is this not heroical ? But 
let Clarendon speak for himself. Only such a true monarchical heart 
can surpass itself . 

* He was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their lordships 
would concur with him ; that the king should immediately cause the woman to be 
sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon under so strict a guard, that no 
person living should be admitted to come to her : and then that an act of parlia- 
ment should be immediately passed for the cutting off her head, to which he would 
not only give his consent, but would veiy willingly be the first man that should 
propose it. ' * 

What Roman virtue ! Afraid of not being believed, he insists ; who- 
ever knew the man, will believe that he said all this very heartily. He 
is not yet satisfied; he repeats his advice; he addresses to the king 
different conclusive reasonings, in order that they might cut off the head 
of his daughter : 

* I had rather submit and bear it (this disgrace) with all humility, than that it 

should be repaired by making her his wife, the thought whereof I do so much 
abominate, that I had much rather see her dead, with all the infamy that is due 
to her presumption. ' ^ 

In this manner, a man, who is in a difficulty, can keep his salary and 
his Chancellor's robes. Sir Charles Berkley, captain of the Duke of 
York's guards, did better still ; he solemnly swore * that he had lain 

» The Life of Clarendon, ed. by himself, new ed., 1827, 3 vols., i. 378. 
« Md. i. 370. 2 Md. i. 380. 



CHAP. I.l THE RESTORATION. 467 

with the ytung lady,* and declared himself ready to inarry her * for the 
Bake of the duke, though he knew well the familiarity the duke had 
with her.' Then, shortly afterwards, he confessed that he had lied, but 
in all good intention, in all honour, in order to save the royal family 
from such a mesalliance. This admirable self-devotion was rewarded ; 
he soon had a pension from the privy purse, and was created Earl of 
Falmou'Ji. From the first, the baseness of the public corporations 
rivalled that of individuals. The House of Commons, but receiitly 
master of the country, still full of Presbyterians, rebels, and con- 
querors, voted ' that neither themselves nor the people of England 
could be freed from the horrid guilt of the late unnatural rebellion, 
or from the punishment which tliat guilt merited, unless they formally 
availed themselves of his Majesty's grace and pardon, as set forth in 
4he declaration of Breda.' ^ Then all these heroes went in a body aud 
threw themselves with contrition at the sacred feet of their monarch. 
In this universal weakness it seemed that no one had any courage left. 
The king became the hireling of Louis xiv., and sold his country for a 
pension of £200,000. Ministers, members of Parliament, ambassadors, 
all received French money. The contagion spread even to patriots, to 
men noted for their purity, to martyrs. Lord Russell intrigued with 
Versailles ; Algernon Sidney accepted 500 guineas. They had not dis- 
crimination enough to retain a show of spirit; they had not spirit 
enough to retain a show of honour.^ 

In men so degraded, the first thing that strikes you is the blood- 
thirsty instinct of brute beasts. Sir John Coventry, a member of 
Parliament, had let some word escape him, which was construed into 
a reproach of the royal amours. His friend, the Duke of Monmouth, 
contrived that he should be treacherously assaulted under the king's 
command, by respectable men devoted to his service, who slit his nose 
to the bone. A vile wretch of the name of Blood tried to assassinate 
the Dake of Ormond, and to stab the guardian of the Tower, in order 
to steal the crown and jewels. Charles ii., considering that this was 
an interesting and distinguished man of his kind, pardoned him, gave 
him an estate in Ireland, and admitted him to his presence, side by 

* Pictorial History^ iii. 664. 

* * Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the Court lacking 
bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the King's coming in.' — Pepy»* 
Diary, ed. Lord Braybrooke, 3d ed., 1848, 5 vols., iv. April 26, 1667. 

* Mr. Povy says that to this day the King do follow the women as much as he 
ever di(? ; that the Duke of York .... hath come out of his wife's bed, and 
gone to others laid in bed for him ; . . . . that the family (of the duke) is in 
horrible disorder by being in debt by spending above £60,000 per annum, when ho 
hath not £40,000' {Ibid. iv. June 23, 1667). 

* It is certain that, as it now is, the seamen of England, in my consdence, 
would, if they could, go over and serve the king of France or Holland rathei 
than xi&:—(]bid. iv. June 25, 1667). 



468 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

side with the Duke of Ormond, so that Blood became a sort of hero, 
and was received in society. After such splendid examples, men dared 
eveiything. The Duke of Buckingham, a lover of the Countess of 
Shrewsbury, slew the Earl in a duel ; tlie Countess, disguised as a page, 
held Buckingham's horse, while she embraced him, covered as he was 
with her husband's blood ; and the murderers and adulterers returned 
publicly, as in a triumphal march, to the house of the dead man. One 
can no longer wonder at hearing Count Konigsmark describe as a 
' peccadillo' an assassination which he had committed by waylaying 
his victim. I transcribe a duel out of Pepys, to give a notion of the 
manners of these soldier cut-throats : — 

* Sir H. Bellassis and Tom Porter, the greatest friends in the world, were 
talking together : and Sir H. Bellassis talked a little louder than ordinary to Tom 
Porter, giving of him some advice. Some of the company standing by said, 
•* What ! are they quarrelling, that they talk so high ?" Sir H. Bellassis, hearing 
it, said, ** No ! " says he : ** I would have you know I never quarrel, hut I strike ; 
and take that as a rule of mine ! " " How ? " says Tom Porter, ** strike ! I would 
I could see the man in England that durst give me a blow ! " with that Sir H. 
"Bellassis did give him a box of the eare ; and so they were going to fight there, 
but were hindered. . . . Tom Porter, being informed that Sir H. Bellassis' coach 
was coming, went out of the coffee-house where he staid for the tidings, and stopped 
the coach, and bade Sir H. Bellassis come out. ** Why," says H. Bellassis, "you 
will not hurt me coming out, will you ? " " No," says Tom Porter. So out he 
went, and both drew. . . . They wounded one another, and Sir H. Bellassis m 
much that it is feared he will die,' which he did ten days after. ^ 

Bull-dogs like these, were not to be expected to take pity on their 
enemies. The Restoration opened with a butchery. The Lords con- 
ducted the trials of the republicans with a shamelessness of cruelty and 
an excess of rancour that were extraordinary. A sheriff struggled 
with Sir Harry Vane on the scaffold, rummaging his pockets, and 
taking from him a paper which he attempted to read. During the trial 
of Major-General Harrison, the hangman was placed by his side, in a 
black dress, with a rope in his hand ; they sought to give him a full 
enjoyment of the foretaste of death. He was cut down alive from the 
gibbet, and disembowelled ; he saw his entrails cast into the tire ; he 
was then quartered, and his still beating heart was torn out and shown 
tc the people. The cavaliers gathered round for amusement. Here 
and there one of them would do worse even than this. Colonel Turner, 
seeing them quarter John Coke, the lawyer, told the sheriff's men to 
bring Hugh Peters, another of the condemned, nearer ; the executioner 
came up, and rubbing his bloody hands, asked the unfortunate man if 
the work pleased him. The rotting bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and 
Bradshaw were dug up in the night, and their heads fixed on poles 
over Westminster Hall. Ladies went to see these disgraceful scenes ; 



» P6|}.y«' Diary, vol. iv., 29th July, 1687. 



UHAf I.] THE RESTORATION. 469 

the good Evelyn applauded them ; the courtiers made songs on them. 
These people were fallen so low, that they did net even turn sick at it. 
Sight and smell no longer brought a natural repugnance ; their senses 
were as dead as their hearts. 

From carnage they threw themselves into debauchery. You should 
read the life of the Earl of Rochester, a courtier and a poet, who was 
th-B hero of the time. His manners were those of a lawless and wretched 
fflviuntebapk ; his delight was to haunt the stews, to debauch women, 
to write filthy songs and lewd pamphlets ; he spent his time between 
scandal with the maids of honour, broils with men of letters, the re- 
ceiving of insults, the giving of blows. By way of playing the gallant, 
he eloped with his wife before he married her. To make a display of 
scepticism, he ended by declining a duel, and gained the name of a 
coward. For five years together he was said to be drunk. The spirit 
within him failing of a worthy outlet, plunged him into adventures 
more befitting a clown. Once with the Duke of Buckingham he rented 
an inn on the Newmarket road, and turned innkeeper, supplying the 
husbands with drink and defiling their wives. He introduced himself, 
disguised as an old woman, into the house of a miser, robbed him of his 
wife, and passed her on to Buckingham. The husband hanged himself ; 
they made very merry over the affair. At another time he disguised 
himself as a chairman, then as a beggar, and paid court to the gutter- 
gijls. He ended by turning charlatan, astrologer, and vendor of drugs 
for procuring abortion, in the suburbs. It was the licentiousness of a 
fervid imagination, which fouled itself as another would have adorned 
it, which forced its way into lewdness and folly as another would 
have done into sense and beauty. What can come of love in hands 
like these ? One cannot copy even the titles of his poems ; they were 
written only for the haunts of vice. Stendhal said that love is like a 
dried. up bough cast into a mine; the crystals cover it, spread out into 
filagree work, and end by converting the worthless stick into a spark- 
ling tuft of the purest diamonds. Rochester begins by depriving love 
of all its adornment, and to make sure of grasping it, converts it into 
a stick. Every refined sentiment, every fancy ; the enchantment, the 
serene, sublime glow which transforms in a moment this wretched world 
of jurs ; the illusion which, uniting all the powers of our being, shows 
us perfection in a finite creature, and eternal bliss in a transient emo- 
tion, — all has vanished; there remain but satiated appetites and palled 
senses. The worst of it is, that he writes without spirit, and methodi- 
cally enough. He has no natural ardour, no picturesque sensuality ; 
his satires prove him a disciple of Boileau. Nothing is more disgusting 
than obscenity in cold blood. One can endure the obscene works of 
Giulio Romano, and his Venetian voluptousness, because in them genius 
sets off sensuality, and the loveliness of the splendid coloured draperies 
transforms an orgie into a work of art. We pardon Rabelais, when we 
have entered into the deep current of manly joy and vigour, with which 



470 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

his feasts abound. We can hold our nose and have done Avith it, while 
we follow with admiration, and even sympathy, the torrent of ideas and 
fancies which flows through his mire. But to see a man trying to be 
elegant and remaining coarse, endeavouring to paint the sentiments of 
a navvy in the language of a man of the world, who tries to find a 
suitable metaphor for every kind of obscenity, who plays the black* 
guard studiously and deliberately, who, excused neither by character, 
nor the glow of fancy, nor science, nor genius, degrades a good style o! 
writing to such a work, — it is like a rascal who sets himself to sully a 
set of gems in a gutter. The end of all is but disgust and sickness. 
While La Fontaine continues to the last day capable of tenderness and 
happiness, this man at the age of thirty insults the weaker sex with 
spiteful malignity : 

* When she is young, she whores herself for sport ; 
And when she's old, she bawds for her support. . , . 
She is a snare, a shamble, and a stews ; 
Her meat and sauce she does for lechery chuse. 
And does in laziness delight the more, 
Because by that she is provoked to whore. 
Ungrateful, treacherous, enviously inclined, 
Wild beasts are tamed, floods easier far confined. 
Than is her stubborn and rebellious mind. . . . 
Her temper so extravagant we find, 
She hates or is impertinently kind. 
Would she be grave, she then looks like a devil. 
And like a fool or whore, when she be civil. . , • 
Contentious, wicked, and not fit to trust, 
And covetous to spend it on her lust. ' * 

What a confession is such a judgment ! what an abstract of life I You 
see the roisterer dulled at the end of his career, dried up like a mummy, 
eaten away by ulcers. Amid the choruses, the crude satires, the re- 
membrance of abortive plans, the sullied enjoyments which are heaped 
up in his wearied brain as in a sink, the feav of damnation is fermenting; 
he dies a devotee at the age of thirty-three years. 

At the head of all, the king sets the example. This * old goat/ as 
the courtiers call him, imagines himself a man of gaiety and elegance. 
Wha', gaiety ! what elegance! French manners do not suit menbcyonJ 
the Channel. Catholics, they fall into a narrow superstition ; epicureans, 
into gross debauchery; courtiers, into a base servility; sceptics, into a 
vulgar atheism. The court in England could imitate only French 
furniture and dress. The regular and decent exterior which public 
taste maintained at Versailles, was here dispensed with as troublesome 
Charles and his brother, in their state dress, would set off running as 
in a carnival. On the day when the Dutch fleet burned the English 

* Tt is doubtful if these lines are Rochester's, at least I have not been ab!f 
to find theui in any edition of his works — Tr 



OflAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 471 

ihips in the Tliames, the king supped with the Duchess of Monmouth^ 
and amused himself by chasing a moth. In council, while business 
was being transacted, he would be playing with his dog. Rochester 
and Buckingham insulted him by insolent repartees or dissolute epi- 
grams ; he would fly into a passion and suffer them to go on. He 
quarrelled with his mistress in public ; she called him an idiot, and he 
called her a jade. He would leave her in the morning, * so that the 
very sentrys speak of it.' ^ He suffered her to play hira false before the 
eyes of all ; at one time she received a couple of actors, one of whom 
was a mountebank. If need were, she would use abusive language to 
him. 'The King hath declared that he did not get the child of which 
she is conceived at this time. But she told him, * ... I but you 
Bhall own it.'^ Whereupon he did acknowledge the child, and took to 
himself a couple of actresses for consolation. When his new wife, 
Catherine of Braganza, arrived, he drove away her attendants, used 
coarse language to her, that he might force on her the familiarities of 
his mistress, and finished by degrading her to a friendship such as this. 
Tlie good Pepys, notwithstanding his loyal heart, ends by saying, 
* Having heard the King and the Duke talk, and seeing and observing 
their habits of intercourse, God forgive me, though I admire them 
with all the duty possible, yet the more a man considers and observes 
them, the less he finds of difference betAveen them and other mei^, 
though, blessed be God 1 they are both princes of great nobleness 
and spirits.' ^ He heard that, on a certain day, the king was with 
Mrs. Stewart ' into corners, together, and will be with her halt 
an hour, kissing her to the observation of all the world.'* Another 
day. Captain Ferrers told him ' how, at a ball at Court, a child was 
dropped by one of the ladies in dancing.' They took it off in a hand- 
kerchief, 'and the King had it in his closet a week after, and did dissect 
it, making great sport of it.' * These ghastly freaks about such vile 
events make one shudder. The courtiers went with the stream. Miss 
Jennings, who became Duchess of Tyrconnel, disguised herself one day 
as an orange girl, and cried her wares in the street.^ Pepys recounts 
f«.'Stivities in which lords and ladies smeared one another's faces with 
candle- grease and soot, 'till most of us were like devils.' It was the 
fashion to swear, to relate scandalous adventures, to get drunk, to prata 
against the preachers and Scripture, to gamVjle. Lady Castlemaine in 
one night lost £25,000. The Duke of St. Albans, a bhnd man, eighty 
years old, went to the gambling-house with an attendant at his side to 
tell him the cards. Sedley and Buckhurst stripped nearly naked, and 
ran through the streets after midnight. Another, in the open day, 
Stood naked at the window to address the people. I let Grammont keejs 

1 Pepys' Diary, ii. January 1, 1663-1663. « Md. iv. July 30, 1667. 

3 Ihid. ill. July 25, 1665. " Ihid. ii. Nov. 9, 1668. 

Ibid. ii. Feb. 8. 17. 1662-3. « Ihid. Feb, 20, 1 664-1 (Xl.'i 



iTii THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 

to himself his accounts of the maids of honour brought to bed, and of 
unnatural lusts. We must either exhibit or conceal them, and I have 
not the courage lightly to insinuate them, after his fashion. I end by a 
quotation from Pepys, which will serve for example : * Heie I first 
understood by their talk the meaning of company that lately were 
called Bailers ; Harris telling how it was by a meeting of some young 
blades, where he was among them, and my Lady Bennet and her 
ladies; and their dancing naked, and all the roguish things in the 
world.' ^ The marvellous thing is, that this fair is not even gay ; these 
people were misanthropic, and became morose ; they quote the gloomy 
Hobbes, and he is their master. In fact, the philosophy of Hobbe^ 
ihall give us the last word and thr last characteristics of this society. 

V. 

Hobbes was one of those powerful, limited, and, as they are called, 
positive minds so common in England, of the school of Swift and 
Bentham, efficacious and remorseless as an iron machine. Hence we 
find in him a method and style of surprising dryness and vigour, most 
adapted to build up and pull down ; hence a philosophy which, by the 
audacity of its teaching, has placed in an undying light one of the 
indestructible appearances of the human mind. In every object, every 
event, there is some primitive and constant fact, which forms, as it were, 
the nucleus around which group themselves the various developments 
which complete it. The positive mind strikes down immediately upon 
this nucleus, crushes the brilliant growth which covers it ; disperses, 
annihilates it ; then, concentrating upon it the full force of its violent 
grasp, loosens it, raises it up, pares it down, and lifts it into a con- 
spicuous position, from whence it may henceforth shine out to all men 
and for all time like a crystal. All ornament, all emotions, are ex- 
cluded from the style of Hobbes ; it is a mere aggregate of arguments 
and concise fticts, united together by deduction, as by iron bands. 
There are no tints, no fine or unusual word. He makes use only of 
words most familiar to common and lasting usage ; there are not a 
dozen employed by him which, during two hundred years, have grown 
obsolete ; he pierces to the root of all sensation, removes the transient 
and brilliant externals, compresses the solid portion which is the per- 
manent subject-matter of all thought, and the proper object of common 
intelligence. He curtails throughout in order to strengthen ; he attains 
solidity by suppression. Of all the bonds which connect ideas, he 
retains but one, and that the most stable; his style is only a continunus 
chain of the most stubborn descrij)tion, wholly made up of additions 
and subtractions, reduced to a combination of certain simple processes, 
which, added on to or diminishing from one another, make up, under 
Tarious names, the totals or differences, of which we are for ever eithei 



' Pepys' Diary, iv. May 30, H 



OHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION^ 473 

studying the formation or unravelling the elements. He pursued before- 
hand the method of Condillac, beginning with tracing to the original 
fact, palpably and clearly, so as to pursue step by step the descent and 
parentage of the ideas of which this primary fact is the stock, in such 
a manner that the reader, conducted from total to total, may at any 
moment test the exactness of his operation, and verify the truth of his 
results. Such a logical system cuts across the grain of prejudice with a 
mechanical stiffness and boldness. Hobbes clears science of scholastio 
words and theories. He laughs down quiddities, he does away with 
rational and intelligible classifications, he rejects the authority of re- 
ferences.^ He cuts, as with a surgeon's knife, at the heart of the most 
living creeds. He denies the authenticity of the books of Moses, Joshua, 
and the like. He declares that no argument proves the divinity of 
Scripture, and that, in order to believe it, every man requires a super- 
natural and personal revelation. He upsets in half-a-dozen words the 
authority of this and every other revelation.* He reduces man to a 
mere body, the soul to a function, God to an unknown existence. His 
phrases read like equations or mathematical results. In fact, it is from 
mathematics * that he derives the idea of all science. He would recon- 
stitute moral science on the same basis. He assigns to it this foundation 
when he lays down that sensation is an internal movement caused by 
an external shock ; desire, an internal movement toward an external 
object; and he builds upon these two notions the whole system of 
morals. Again, he assigns to morals a mathematical method, when he 
distinguishes, like the geometrician, between two simple ideas, which he 
transforms by degrees into two more complex ; and when on the basis 
of sensation and desire he constructs the passions, the rights and institu- 
tions of man, just as the geometrician out of straight lines and curves 
constructs all the varieties of figure. To morals he gives a mathe- 
matical aspect, by mapping out the incomplete and rigid construction 
of human life, like the network of imaginary forms which geometricians 
have conceived. For the first time there was discernible in him, as well 
as in Descartes, but exaggerated and standing out more conspicuously, 
that species of intellect which produced the classic age in Europe : not 

* If we would pay respect to antiquity, the present age Is the most ancient. 

* * To say lie hath spoken to him in a dream, is no more than to say he dreamed 
that God spoke to him. To say he hath seen a vision or heard a voice, is to say 
that he has dreamed between sleeping and waking. To say he speaks by super- 
natural inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong; 
opinion of himself for which he cannot allege any sufficient and natural reason.* 

5 * From the principal parts of nature, reason, and passion, have proceeded tw« 
kinis of learning, mathematical and dogmatical. The former is free from contro- 
versy and dispute, because it consisteth in comparing figure and motion only, in 
which things truth and the interest of men oppose not each other. But in th« 
other there is nothing undisputable, because it compares men, and meddles with 
their 'ight and profit.' 



474 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK m 

the indepenclence of inspiration and genius wliicli marked the Renais- 
sance ; not the mature experimental methods and conceptions combined 
which distinguish the present age, but the independence of argumenta- 
tive rea3aning, which, dispensing with the imagination, liberating itself 
from tradition, badly practising experience, acknowledges its queen in 
logic its model in mathematics, its instrument in ratiocination, its 
audience in polished society, its employment in average truth, its sub- 
ject-matter in abstract humanity, its formula in ideology, and in the 
French Kevolution at once its glory and its condemnation, its triumph 
and its end. 

But whereas Descartes, in the midst of a purified society and religion, 
noble and calm, enthroned intelligence and elevated man, Hobbes, in the 
midst of an overthrown society and a rehgion run mad, degraded man 
and enthroned matter. Through disgust of Puritanism, the courtiers 
reduced human existence to an animal licentiousness ; through disgust 
of Puritanism, Hobbes reduced human nature to its merely animal 
aspect. The courtiers were practically atheists and brutish, as he was 
atheistic and brutish in the province of speculation. They had estab- 
lished the fashion of instinct and egotism; he wrote the philosophy c( 
egotism and instinct. They had wiped out from their hearts all refined 
and noble sentiments ; he wiped out from the heart all noble and refined 
sentiment. He arranged their manners into a theory, gave them the 
manual of their conduct, wrote down beforehand^ the maxims which 
they were to reduce to practice. With him, as with them, * the greatest 
good is the preservation of life and limb ; the greatest evil is death, 
especially with pain.' The other goods and the other evils are only the 
parts of these. None seek or wish for anything but that which is 
pleasurable. ' No man gives except for a personal advantage.' Why 
are friendships good things? 'Because they are useful; friends serve 
for defence and otherwise.' Why do we pity one another? * Because 
we imagine that a similar misfortune may befall ourselves.' Why is it 
noble to pardon him who asks it ? * Because thus one proves confi- 
dence in self.' Such is the background of the human heart. Consider 
now what becomes of the most precious flowers in these blighting hands. 
^ Music, painting, poetry are agreeable as imitations which recall the 
past, because if the past was good, it is agreeable in its imitation as a 
good thing ; but if it was bad, it is agreeable in its imitation as being 
past.' To this gross mechanism he reduces the fine arts ; it was per- 
ceptible in his attempt to translate the Iliad. In his sight, philosophy 
is a thing of like kind. * Wisdom is serviceable, because it has in it 
some kind of protection ; if it is desirable in itself, it is therefore plea- 
sant.' Thus there is no dignity in science. It is a pastime or an 
assistance ; gocd, as a servant or a puppet is a good thing. Money, 
being more serviceable, is worth more. * Not he who is wise is rich, as 

' His cliief works were written between 1646 and 1655. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 47| 

the Stoics say ; but, on the contrary, he who is rich is wise.* As to re- 
ligion, it is but ' the fear of an invisible pow^, whether this be a fig- 
ment, or adopted from history by general consent.' Indeed, this was 
true for a Rochester or a Charles ii.; cowards or bullies, superstitious 
or blasphemers, they conceived of nothing beyond. Neither is there 
any natural right. * Before men were bound by contract one with 
anotlier, each had the right to do what he would against whom he 
would.' Nor any natural friendship. * All association is for the cause 
of advantage or of glory, that is, for love of one's self, not of one's 
associates. The origin of great and durable associations is not mutual 
well-wishing, but mutual fear. The desire of injuring is innate in all 
. . . Warfare was the natural condition of men before societies were 
formed ; and this not incidentally, but of all against all : and this war 
is of its own nature eternal.' Sectarian violence let loose the conflict 
ol' ambitions ; the fall of governments, the overflow of soured imagina- 
tions and malevolent passions, had raised up this idea of society and of 
mankind. One and all, philosophers and people, yearned for monarchy 
and repose. Hobbes, the inexorable logician, would have had it ab- 
solute; repression would have been more stern, peace more lasting. 
The sovereign should be unopposed. Whatsoever he might do against 
a subject, under whatever pretext, would not be injustice. He ought 
to decide upon the canonical books. He was pope, and more than 
pope. Were he to command it, his subjects should renounce Christ, at 
least with their mouth; the original contract has given up to him, with- 
out any reservation, all responsibility of external actions ; at least, 
according to this view^, the sectarian will no longer have the pretext of 
his conscience in harassing the state. To such extremities had the in- 
tense weariness and horrors of civil war driven a narrow but logical 
intellect. Upon the secure den in which he had with every effort im- 
prisoned and confined the evil beast of prey, he laid as a final weight, in 
order that he might perpetuate the captivity of humanity, the whole 
philosophy and theory not simply of man, but of the remainder of the 
universe. He reduced judgment to the ' combination of two terms,' 
ideas to conditions of the brain, sensations to motions of the body, 
general laws to simple words, all substance to corporeality, all science 
tc the knowledge of sensible bodies, the human being to a body capable 
of motion given or received ; so that man, recognising himself only under 
this despised form, and degraded in his conception of himself and of 
til ? world, might bow beneath the burden of a necessary authority, and 
submit in the end to the yoke which his rebellious nature rejects, yet 
is forced to undergo. Such, in brief, is the aim which this spectacle of 
the English Restoration suggests. Men deserved then this treatment, 
because they gave birth to this philosophy; they were represented on 
the stage as they had proved tVmselves to be in theory and in 
inannen. 



LASSIC AGE. [BOrK lU 

VI. 

When tha theatres, which Parliament had closecl, were re-opened, 
th3 change of public taste was soon manifested. Shirley, the last oi 
f-.he grand old school, wrote and lived no longer. Waller, Buckingham, 
and Dryden were compelled to dish up the plays of Shakspeare and 
Fletcher and Beaumont, and to adapt them to the modern style, 
Pepys, who went to see Midsummer Night's Dream, declared that he 
V7ould never go there again ; ' for it is the most insipid, ridiculous pla) 
that ever I saw in my life.' ^ The comedy was transformed ; the fact 
was, that the public was transformed. 

What an audience was that of Shakspeare and Fletcher 1 What 
youthful and pleasing souls I In this evil-smelling room in which it 
was necessary to burn juniper, before that miserable half-lighted stage, 
before decorations worthy of an alehouse, with men playing the women's 
parts, illusion enchained them. They scarcely troubled themselves about 
probabilities; they could be carried in an instant over forest and ocean, 
from clime to clime, across twenty years of time, through ten battles and 
all the hurry of adventure. They did not care to be always laughing ; 
comedy, after a burst of buffoonery, resumed its serious or tender tone. 
They came less to be amused than to muse. In these youthful minds, 
amidst a woof of passions and dreams, there were dark passions and 
brilliant dreams whose imprisoned swarm buzzed indistinctly, waiting 
lor the poet to come and lay bare to them the novelty and the splendour 
of heaven. The green fields revealed by a lightning flash, the gray mane 
of a long and overhanging billow, a wet forest nook where the deer 
raise their frightened heads, the sudden smile and purpling cheek of a 
young girl in love, the sublime and various flight of all dehcate senti- 
ments, a cloak of ecstatic and romantic passion over all, — these were 
the sights and feelings which they came to seek. They raised themselves 
without any assistance to the summit of the world of ideas; they 
desired to contemplate extreme generosity, absolute love; they were 
»iot astonished at the sight of fairy-land ; they entered without an effort 
into the region of poetical transformation, whose light was necessary to 
their eyes. They took in at a glance its excess and its caprices ; they 
jfeeded no preparation ; they followed its digressions, its whimsicalities, 
the cro\vding of its abundant creations, the sudden prodigality of its 
high colouring, as a musician follows a symphony. They were in that 
transient and strained condition in which the imagination, adult and 
pure, laden with desire, curiosity, force, develops man all at once, and 
in that man the most exalted and exquisite feelings. 

The roisterers took the place of these. They Avere rich, they had 
tried to invest themselves with the polish of Frenchmen ; they added 
to the stage moveable decorations, music, lights, probability, comfort, 

' Fcpys' Diary, ii. Sept. 29, lOG } 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 477 

every external aid ; but they wanted the heart. Imagine those foppish 
and half-intoxicated men, who saw in love nothing beyond desire, and 
in man nothing beyond sensuality ; Rochester in the place of Mercutio 
What part of his soul could comprehend poesy and fancy ? Romantifl 
poetry was altogether beyond his reach ; he could only seize the actual 
world, and of this world but the palpable and gross externals. Give 
him an exact picture of ordinary life, commonplace and probable occur- 
rences, literal imitations of what he himself is and does; lay the scene 
hi London, in the current year; copy his coarse words, his brutal jokes, 
his conversation with the orange girls, his rendezvous in the park, his 
attempts at French dissertation. Let him recognise himself, let him 
find again the people and the manners he has just left behind him in 
the tavern or the ante-chamber; let the theatre and the street reproduce 
one another. Comedy will give him the same entertainment as real 
life ; he will wallow equally well there in vulgarity and lewdness ; tc 
be present there will demand neither imagination nor -wit ; eyes and 
memory are the only requisites. This exact imitation will amuse him 
and instruct him at the same time. Filthy words will make him laugh 
through sympathy; shameless scenes will divert him by appealing to 
his recollections. The author, too, will take care to arouse him by his 
plot, which generally has the deceiving of a father or a husband for its 
subject. The fine gentlemen agree with the author in siding with the 
gallant; they follow his fortunes with interest, and fancy that they 
themselves have the same success with the fair. Add to this, women 
debauched, and willing to be debauched ; and it is manifest how these 
provocations, these manners of prostitutes, that interchange of exchanges 
and surprises, that carnival of rendezvous and suppers, the impudence 
of the scenes only stopping short of physical demonstration, those 
songs with their double meaning, those indecent speeches and repartees 
which accompanied the tableaux vivants^ all that stage imitation of 
orgie, must have stirred up the innermost feelings of the habitual 
practisers of intrigue. And what is more, the theatre gave its sanction 
to their manners. By representing nothing but vice, it authorised their 
vices. Authors laid it down as a rule, tliat all women were impudent 
hussies, and that all men were brutes. Debauchery in their hands 
became a matter of course, nay more, a matter of good taste ; they 
teach it. Rochester and Charles ii. could quit the theatre edified in 
their heaito; more convinced than ever that virtue was only a pretence, 
the pretence of clever rascals who wanted to sell themselves dear. 

VII. 

Dryden, who was amongst the first ^ to adopt this view of the 
matter, did not adopt it heartily. A kind of hazy mist, the relic of the 
former age, still floated over his plays. His wealthy imagination hali 



' His Wild GallaM dates front 1662. 



478 'fHE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

botmd liim to the comedy of romair.ce. At one time lie adapted Miltou'i 
Paradise, Sbakspeare's Temjtest, and Tro'ihis and Cressida. Another time 
he imitated, in Love in a Nunnery^ in Marriage a la Mode, in The Mock 
Astrologer^ the imbroglios and surprises of the Spanish stage. Some- 
times he displays the sparkling images and lofty metaphors of the older 
national poets, sometimes the affected phraseology and cavilling wit of 
Oalderon and Lope de Vega. He mingles the tragic and the humorous, 
lh3 overthrow of thrones and the ordinary description of manners. But 
in this awkward compromise the poetic spirit of ancient comedy dis- 
appears; only the dress and the gilding remain. The new characters 
are gross and vicious, with the instincts of a lackey under the externals 
of a lord ; which is the more shocking, because by it Dryden contradicts 
his own talents, being at bottom grave and a poet; he follows the 
fashion, and not his own mind ; he plays the libertine with deliberate 
forethought, to adapt himself to the taste of the day.^ He plays the 
blackguard awkwardly and dogmatically ; he is impious without en- 
thusiasm, and in measured periods. One of his gallants cries : 

* Is not love love without a priest and altars ? 
The temples are inanimate, and know not 
What vows are made in them ; the priest stands ready 
For his hire, and cares not what hearts he couples ; 
Love alone is maniage. * * 

Hippolita says, * I wished the ball might be kept perpetually in our 
cloister, and that half the handsome nuns in it might be turned to men, 
for the sake of the other.' ^ Dryden has no tact or contrivance. In his 
Spanish Friar ^ the queen, a good enough woman, tells Torrismond that 
she is going to have the old dethroned king put to death, in order to 
marry him, Torrismond, more at her ease. Presently she is informed 
that the murder is completed. * Now,' says she, ' let us marry ; this 
night, this happy night, is yours and mine.' * Side by side with sensual 
tragedy, a comic intrigue, pushed to the most indecent familiarity, 
exhibits the love of a cavalier for a married woman, who in the end 

* * We love to get our mistresses, and purr over them, as cats do over mice, 
ftnd let them get a little way ; and all the pleasure is to pat them back again.'— 
Mock Astrologer, ii. 1. 

^Vildblood says to his mistress : * I am none of those unreasonable lovers that 
propose to th'imselves the loving to eternity. A month is commonly my stint. 
And Jaciutha replies : * Or would not a fortnight serve our turn ? ' — Mock Astro- 
loger, ii. 1. 

Frequently one would think Dryden was translating Hobbes, by the harshncM 
of Lis jests. 

2 Love in a Nunnery, ii. 3. * Ibid. iiL 3. 

* Spanish Friar, iii. 3. And jumbled up with the plot we keep meeting with 
political allusions. This marks the time. Torrismond, to excuse himself from 
marrying the queen, says, ' Power which in core age is tyranny is ripeu'd in th« 
ttezt to ti!^ guccesBi©n She's in possession.*— -ASijawts/i Friary iv. 2. 



OHAP. 1.1 THE EESTORATIUN. * 479 

turns out to be W. sister. Dryden discovers nothing i" f y''"^^ 
to chock him. He has lost the commonest repugnances of natural 
modesty T^ nslating any pretty broad play, Amphitryon for ms anee^ 
L t/s' it too pure • he strips off all its smaU deUoacies, and enlarge. 
ite Tery improprieties.' Thus Jupiter says : 

' Kings and priest are in a manner bound, 
For reverence sake, to be close hypocrites.' • 

And he -proceeds thereupon boldly to lay bare his o™ despotism At 
bottom Ms sophisms and his shamelessness serve Dryden as a mean, of 
drying by rebound the arbitrary Divinity of the theologians: 

* Fate is what I, 
By virtue of omnipotence, have made it ; 
And power omnipotent can do no wrong 1 
'Not to myself, because I will it so ; 
Nor yet to men, for what they are is mine.— 
This night I will enjoy Amphitryon's wife ; 
For when I made her, I decreed her such 
As I should please to love.' ^ 
This open pedantry is changed into open lust as soon 8S he se« 
Alcmena No detail is omitted: Jupiter speaks his whole mind to 
her and before the maids; and next morning, when he is going away 
si"' outdoes him: she hangs on to him, and indulges in the most 
familkr details. All the noble externals of high gallantry are torn 
offUke a troublesome garment ; it is a cynical recklessness m place o 
an aristocratic decency, the scene is written after the example of 
ChX I. and Castlem'aW not of Louis xiv. and Mme. de Montespan 

VIII. 

I pass over several writers: Crowne, author of 5.V Cmrtlymcej 

Shadill an imitator of Ben Jonson ; Mrs. Aphra Behn, who calls her- 

Srlstr^a, a spy and a courtesan, paid by government and the publ.a 

Etheredge is the first to set the example of imitative comedy m h,. 

ipiautasMmpWfryon has been imitated by Dryden and Molifere. Sir Walter 

Beani^g, the Englishman always contrives to make it a singje je. 

:lrSt; departing, on the plea of daylight, Alcmena says to hi»i . 

* But you and I will draw our curtams close, 
Extinguish daylight, and put out the sun. 
Come back, my lord. ... 
You have not yet laid long enough in bed 
Towarmyourwidowedside.'— Actii. 2. 
r„m,..re Ploutus' Eonian matron and Molitre-s honest Frenchwoman •!« 
IhlB GMpansiive personage. 



*80 THE CLASSIC AOfE. [BOOK III 

Man of Fashion^ and to depict only the manners of his age ; foi tha 
test he is an open roisterer, and frankly describes his habits : 

* From hunting whores, and haunting play, 
And minding nothing all the day. 
And all the night too, you will say.' , , . 

Such were his pursuits in London; and further on, in a iette; froir 
Ratisbon to Lord Middleton, 

' He makes grave legs in formal fetters, 
Converses with fools and writes dull letters ;' 

and gets small consolation out of the German ladies. In this grave mood 
Etheredge undertook the duties of an ambassador. One day, having 
dined too freely, he fell from the top of a staircase, and broke his neck; 
a loss of no great importance. But the hero of this society was William 
Wycherley, the coarsest writer who has polluted the stage. Being sent 
to France during the Revolution, he there became a Roman Catholic; 
then on his return abjured ; then in the end, as Pope tells us, abjured 
again. Robbed of their Protestant ballast, these shallow brains ran from 
dogma to dogma, from superstition to incredulity or indifference, to end 
in a state of fear. He had learnt of M. de Montausier^ the art of wearing 
gloves and a peruke, which sufficed in those days to make a gentleman. 
This merit, and the success of a filthy piece, Love in a Wood, drew upon 
him the eyes of the Duchess of Cleveland, mistress of the king and of 
anybody. This woman, who used to have amours with a rope-dancer, 
picked him up one day in the very midst of the Ring. She put her 
head out of her carriage-window, and cried to him before all, ' Sir, you 

are a rascal, a villain, the son of a .' Touched by this compliment, 

he accepted her favours, and in consequence obtained those of the king. 
He lost them, married a woman of bad temper, ruined himself, remained 
seven years in prison, passed the remainder of his life in pecuniary 
difficulties, regretting his youth, losing his memory, scribbling bad 
verses, which he got Pope to correct, pestering him with his pride and 
self-esteem, stringing together dull obscenities, dragging his spcist. body 
and enervated brain through the stages of misanthropy and libertinage, 
playing the miserable part of a toothless roisterer and a Avhite-haired 
blackguard. Eleven days before his death he married a young girl, whc 
turned out to be a strumpet. He ended as he had begun, by imskil- 
fulness and misconduct, having succeeded neither in becoming happy 
nor honest, having used his vigorous intelligence and real talent only 
to his Own injury and the injury of others. 

The reason was, that Wycherley was not an epicurean born. His 
rature, genuinely English, that is to say, energetic and sombre, rebelled 



' Himself a Huguenot, who had become a Roman Catholic, and the ha& 
band of Juiie d'Angennes, for whom the French poets composed the celebrated 
Qmrlande, — Tuu 



CHAP. L] THE RESTORATION. 481 

against the easy and amiable carelessness which enables one' to take life as 
B pleasure-party. His style is laboured, and troublesome to read. His 
tone is virulent and bitter. He frequently forces his comedy in older 
to g3t at spiteful satire. EiFort and animosity mark all that he says 
or puts into the mouths of others. It is Hobbes, not meditative and 
calm, but active and angry, who sees in man nothing but vice, yet feela 
himself man to the very core. The only fault he rejects is hypocrisy; 
the only virtue he preaches is frankness. He wants others to confess 
thoir 1 ice, and he begins by confessing his own. 

' ITiough I cannot lie like them (the poets), I am as vain as they ; I cannot 
hut publicly give your Grace my humble acknowledgments. . . . This is the poet's 
gratitude, wliich ir plain English is only pride and ambition. '^ 
We find in hin no poetry of expression, no glimpse of the ideal, no 
system of moralicy which could console, raise, or purify men. He shuts 
them up in their waywardness and uncleanness, and settles himself 
along with them. He shows them the filth of the shoals in which he 
confi'nes them ; he expects them to breathe this atmosphere ; he plunges 
them into it, not to disgust them with it as by an accidental fall, but to 
accustom them to it as if it were their natural element. He tears down 
the partitions and decorations by which they endeavour to conceal their 
state, or regulate their disorder. He takes pleasure in making them 
ficrht, he delights in the hubbub of their unfettered instincts ; he loves 
the violent ragings of the human mass, the confusion of their crimes, 
the rawness o'f their bruises. He strips their lusts, sets them forth at 
full length, feels them in their rebound ; and whilst he condemns them 
as naus°eous, he relishes them. People take what pleasure they can 
get : the drunkards in the suburbs, if asked how they can relish their 
miserable liquor, will tell you it makes them drunk as soon as better 
stuff, and that is the only pleasure they have. 

I can understand that an author may dare much in a novel. It is a 
psychological study, akin to criticism or history, having almost equal 
licence, because it contributes almost equally to explain the anatomy of 
the heart. It is quite necessary to expose moral diseases, especially 
when this is done to add to science, coldly, accurately, and in the 
fashion of a dissection. Such a book is by its nature abstruse ; must 
b>5 read in the study, by lamp-light. But transport it to the stage, 
fxaggerate the bed-room liberties, give them additional life by a few 
disreputable scenes, bestow bodily vigour upon them by the energetic 
action and words of the actresses ; let the eyes and the senses be filled 
with them, not the eyes of an individual spectator, but of a thousand 
men and women mingled together in the pit, excited by the interest of 
the story, by the correctness of the literal imitation, by the glitter of 

» The Dramatic Works of Wycherly, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and 7\rquhar 
ed. Leigh Hunt, :840. Dedication of Love in a Wood to her Grace the Duchesi 

of CI c-^ -.land. 

2 H 



482 'iHE CLASSIC AGE. fKOOK IV\ 

the lights, by the noise of applause, by the contagion of impressions 
which run like a shudder across excited and stretched nerves. That 
was the spectacle which Wycherley furnished, and which the court 
appreciated. Is it possible that a public, and a select public, could 
come and listen to such scenes ? In Love in a Wood, amidst the com- 
plications of nocturnal rendezvous, and violations effected or begun, we 
meet with a witling, named Dapperwit, who desires to sell his mistrci»a 
Lucy to a fine gentleman of that age, Kanger. With what minuteness 
hfi bepiaises her 1 He knocks at her door; the intended purchaser 
inea7itime, growing impatient, is treating him like a slave. The mother 
comes in, but wishing to sell Lucy on her own part and for her own 
profit, scolds them and packs them ofi*. Next appears an old puritanical 
usurer and hypocrite, named Gripe, who at first will not bargain : — 

* Mrs. Joyner. You must send for something to entertain her with. . . . Upon 
my life a groat ! what will this purcliase ? 

Gripe. Two black pots of ale and a cake, at the cellar.— Ccme; the wine hai 
arsenic in't. . . . 

Mrs. J. A treat of a groat ! I will not wag. 

O Why don't you go ? Here, take more money, and fetch what you will ; lake 
here, half-a-crown. 

Mrs. J. What wiU half-a-crown do ? 

O. Take a crown then, an angel, a piece ; — ^begone ! 

Mrs. J. A treat only will not serve my turn ; I must buy the poor wretch there 
ionie toys. 

G. What toys ? what ? speak quickly. 

Mrs. J. Pendants, necklaces, fans, ribbons, points, laces, stockings, gloves. . . . 

G. But here, take half a piece for the other things. 

Mrs. J. Half a piece ! — 

G. Prithee, begone ! — take t'other piece then — two pieces— three pieces — fiTe I 
here ; 'tis all I have. 

Mrs. J. I must have the broad-seal ring too, or I stir not' ^ 

She goes away at last, having extorted all, and Lucy plays the innocent, 
seems to think that Gripe is a dancing-master, and asks for a lesson. 
What scenes, what double meanings ! At last she calls out, her mother, 
Mrs Crossbite, breaks open the door, and enters with men placed there 
beforehand ; Gripe is caught in the trap ; they threaten to call in the 
censtable, they swindle him out of five hundred pounds. Need I 
recount the plot of the Country Wife ? It is useless to wish to skim 
the subject only ; one sinks deeper and deeper. Horner, a man returned 
from France, spreads the report tliat he is no longer able to trouble the 
peace of husbands. You may imagine what becomes of such a subject in 
Wycherley's hands, and he draws from it all that it contains. Women 
converse about Horner's condition, even before him ; they «.uffer them- 
selves to be undeceived, and boast of it. Three of them come to him and 
hold a feast, drink, sing — such songs ! The excess of orgie triumphs, 

Act iii, 8. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 433 

adjudges itself the crown, sets itself forth in maxims. * Oni virtue,' says 
one of them, ' is like the statesman's religion, the quakei's word, the 
gamester's oath, and the great man's honour ; but to cheat those that 
trust us. * In the last scene, the suspicions which had been arou.ied 
are set at rest by a new declaration of Horner. All the marriages are 
polluted, and the carnival ends by a dance of deceived husbands. To 
crown all, Horner recommends his example to the public, and the actress 
who comes on to recite the epilogue, completes the shamefulness of the 
piece, by warning gallants that they must look what they are doing ; for 
that if they can deceive men, * we women — there's no cozening us.'* 

But the special and most extraordinary sign of the times is, that 
amid all these provocatives, no repellent circmnstance is omitted, and 
that the narrator seems to aim as much at disgusting as at depraving 
us,^ The fine gentlemen, even the ladies, introduce into their con- 
versation the ways and means by which, since the sixteenth century, 
love has endeavoured to adorn itself. Dapperwit, when making an 
offer of Lucy, says, in order to account for the delay : 

* Pish ! give her but leave to . . . put on . . . the long patch under the left 
eye ; awaken the roses on her cheeks with some Spanish wool, and warrant, her 
breath with some lemon-peel.'* 

Lady Flippant, alone in the park, cries out : 

* Unfortunate lady that I am ! I have left the herd on purpose to be chased, and 
have wandered this hour here ; but the park affords not so much as a sat}T for me ; 
and no Burgundy man or drunken scourer will reel my way. The rag-women 
and cinder- women have better luck than I.' * 

If these are the sweetest morsels, judge of the rest! Wycherley 

mskes it liis business to revolt even the senses ; the nose, the eyes, every- 
thing suffers in his plays; the audience must have had the stomach of a 
sailor. And from this abyss English literature has ascended to the 
severity of morality, the excessive decency which it now possesses ! This 
stage is a declared war against beauty and delicacy of every kind. If 
Wycherley borrows a character anywhere, it is only to do it violence, 
or degrade it to the level of his own characters. If he imitates the 

• The (Jimntry Wife, v. 4. ' 

' Read the epilogue, and see what words and details authors dared then tc 
put in the mouths of actresses. 

2 ' Tliat spark, who has his fruitless designs upon the bed-ridden rich widow, 
down to the sucking heiress in her . . . clout.' — Love in a Wood. 1. 3. 

Mrs. Flippant : ' Though I had married the fool, I thought to have reserved 
the wit as well as other ladies.' — Ihid. 

Dapperwit : * I will contest with no rival, not with my old rival your coach- 
man.' — Ibid. 

' She has a complexion like a Holland cheeae, and no more teeth left thafe 
such as give a haut gout to her breath.' — Ihid^ ii. 1. 

* The Country T^V^, iii. 2. * Ibid, v. 2L 



4:84 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

Agnes of Moliere,' as he does in the Country Wife^ he marries her in 
order to profane marriage, deprives lier of honour, still more of shame, 
still more of grace, and changes her artless tenderness into shamelesi 
instincts and scandalous confessions. If he takes Shakspeare's Viola, 
as in the Plain Dealer, it is to drag her through the vilenoss of infamy, 
amidst brutalities and surprises. If he translates the part of Celimene, 
he wipes out at one stroke the manners of a great lady, the woman's 
delicacy, the tact of the lady of the house, the politeness, the refined 
air, the superiority of wit and knowledge of the world, in order to 
substitute the impudence and cheats of a foul-mouthed courtesan. If 
he invents an almost innocent girl, Hippolita,^ he begins by putting 
into her mouth words that will not bear transcribing. Whatever he 
does or says, whether he copies or originates, blames or praises, his stage 
is a defamation of mankind, which repels even when it attracts, and 
■which sickens one while it corrupts. 

A certain gift hovers over all — namely, vigour — which is never 
absent in England, and gives a peculiar character to their virtues as 
to their vices.. When we have removed the oratorical and heavily 
constructed phrases in the French manner, we get at the genuine 
English talent — a deep sympathy with nature and life. Wycherley had 
that lucid and vigorous perspicacity which in any particular situation 
seizes upon gesture, physical expression, evident detail, which pierces to 
the depths of the crude and base, which hits off, not men in general, and 
passion as it ought to be, but an individual man, and passion as it is. 
He is a realist, not of set purpose, as the realists of our day, but 
naturally. In a violent manner he lays on his plaster over the grinning 
and pimpled faces of his rascals, in order to bring under our very eyes 
the stern mask to which the living imprint of their ugliness has clung 
in a fleeting manner. He crams his plays with incident, he multiplies 
action, he pushes comedy to the verge of dramatic effect ; he hustles 
his characters amidst surprises and violence, and all but stultifies them 
in order to exaggerate his satire. Observe in Olivia, a wpy of Celi- 
mene, the fury of the passions which he depicts. She paints her fri^-inds 
as does Celimene, but with what insults I Novel, a coxcomb, si^ys - 

^ The letter of Agnes, in Molifere's VEcole des Femmes, iii. 4, begins thus : ' Js 
veux vous ecrire, et je suis bien en peine par on je m'y prendrai. J'ai des penseef 
que je desirerais que vous sussiez ; mais je ne sais comment faire pour vous lei 
dire, et je me defie de mes paroles,' etc. Observe how Wycherley translates it: 
'Dear, sweet Mr. Homer, my husband would have me send you a base, ruds^ 
unmannerly letter ; but I won't — and would have me forbid you loving me ; but 
I won't — and would have me say to you, I hate you, poor Mr. Horner ; but I 
won't tell a lie for him — for I'm sure if you and I were in the country at cards 
together, I could not help treading on your toe under the table, or rubbing knees 
with you, and staring in your face, till you saw me, and then looking down, and 
flushing for an hour together,' etc. — Country Wife, iv. 2, 

^ In the Gentleman Dancing- Master, 



^AP I.] THE RESTORATION. 435 

' But, as I was saymg, madam, I have been treated to-day with all the 

ceremony and kindness imaginable at my lady Autumn's. But the 
oauseous old woman at the upper hand of her table' . . . Olivia: 
'Revives the old Grecian custom, of serving in a death's head with 
iheir banquets. ... I detest her hollow cherry cheeks : she looks like 
»n old coach new painted. . , . She is still most splendidly, gallantly 
ugly, and looks like an ill piece of daubing in a rich frame.' ^ The 
scene is borrowed from Moliere's Misanthrope and the Critique de VEcoU 
des Femmes; but how transformed! Our modern nerves would not 
endure the portrait Olivia draws of Manly, her lover; he hears her 
unawares ; she forthwith stands before him, laughs at him to his face, 
declares herself to be married ; tells him she means to keep the dia- 
monds which he has given her, and defies him. Fidelia says to her : 

* But, madam, what coiild make you dissemble love to him, when 'twas so hard 
a tiling for you ; and flatter his love to you ? ' Olivia. ' That which makes all the 
world flatter and dissemble, 'twas his money : I had a real passion for that. . . . 
As soon as I had his money, I hastened his departure like a wife, who when she 
has made the most of a dying husband's breath, pulls away his pillow. ' * 

The last phrase is rather that of a morose satirist than an accurate 
observer. The woman's impudence is like a professed courtesan's. In 
love at first sight with Fidelia, whom she takes for a young man, she 
hangs upon her neck, ' stuffs her with kisses,' gropes about in the dark, 
crying, * Where are thy lips?' There is a kind of animal ferocity in 
her love. She sends her husband off by an improvised comedy ; then 
skipping about like a dancing girl, cries out : 

* Go husband, and come up, friend : just the buckets in the well ; the absence 
»f one brings the other.' 'But I hope, like them-too, they will not meet in the 
way, jostle, and clash together. ' ^ 

Sui prised in flagrante delicto., and having confessed all to her cousin, aa 
8oon as she sees a chance of safety, she swallows her avowal with the 
effiontery of an actress : — 

* Eliza. "Well, cousin, this, I confess, was reasonable hypocrisy ; you were th« 
h^tl^r for 't. 

Dlivia. What hypocrisy ? 

K Why, this last deceit of your husband was lawful, since in your >wb 
defence. 

O. What deceit ? I'd have you know I never deceived my husband. 

E. You do not understand me, sure ; I say, this was an lionest come-ofF, and a 
g-jod one. But 'twas a sign your gallant had had enough of your conversation, 
since he could so dexterously cheat your husband in passing for a woman. 

O. What d'ye mean, once more, with my gallant, and passing for a wor^an ? 

E. What do you mean ? you see your husband took him for a woman 1 

O. Whom? 

' The Plain Dealer, ii. 1. 2 jt^^yz. iv. 2. ^ ihii. 



486 THE CLASSIC AGE. 

E. Heyday ! why, the man he found you with. . • • 

O. Lord, yo« rave sure ! 

E. "VVhy, did you not tell me last night . . . Fy, this fooling is so indpld, *til 
•Sensive. 

0. And fooling with my honour will be more offensive. . . . 

E. admirable confidence ! . . . 

0. Confidence, to me ! to me such language ! nay, then I'll never see yo^ir 
face again. . . . Lettice, where are you i Let us begone from this censorious iU 
uroman. . . . 

E. One word first, pray, madam ; can you swear that whom your husband 
found you with . . . 

0. Swear ! ay, that whosoever 'twas that stole up, unknown, into my rooicu 
when 'twas dark, I know not, whether man or woman, by heavens, by all that'* 
good ; or, may I never more have joys here, or in the other world ! Nay, may 
I eternally — 

E. Be damned. So, so, you are damned enough already by your oaths. . . , 
Yet take this advice with you, in this plain -dealing age, to leave oflf forswearing 
yourself. . . . 

O. hideous, hideous advice 1 let us go out of the hearing of it. She will 
gpoil. us, Lettice. ' ^ 

Here is animation ; and if I dared relate the boldness and the assevera- 
tion in the night scene, it would easily appear that Mme. Marneffe^ had 
a sistor, and Balzac a ])redecessor. 

There is a character who shows in a concise manner Wycherley*8 
talent and his morality, wholly formed of energy and indelicacy, — 
Manly, the ' plain dealer,' so manifestly the author's favourite, that hig 
contemporaries gave him the name of his hero for a surname. Manly is 
copied after Alceste, and the great diiFerence between the two heroes 
shows the difference between the two societies and the two countries.* 
Manly is not a courtier, but a ship -captain, with the bearing of a sailor 
of the time, his cloak stained with tar, and smelling of brandy, "* ready 
with blows or foul oaths, calling those he came across dogs and slaves, 
and when they displeased him, kicking them down stairs. And he 
speaks in this fashion to a lord with a voice like a mastiff. Then, when 
Ihe poor nobleman tries to whisper something in his ear, 

* My lord, all that you have made me know by your wliispering which 1 kr.oW 
iiot before, is that you have a stinking breath ; there's a secret for your secre t. ' 

^ The Plain Dealer, v. 1. " See note 2, p. 256. 

^ Compare with the sayings of Alceste, in Molifere's Misanthrope^ such tirades 
aa this : ' Such as you, like common whores and pickpockets, are only dangerous 
to those you embrace.' And with the character of Philinte, in the same French 
play, such phrases as these : ' But, faith, could you think I was a fiiend to those 
I hugged, kissed, flattered, bowed to ? When their backs were turned, did not I 
tell you they were rogues, villains, rascals, whom I despised and hated ? ' 

* Olivia says : ' I shall not have again my alcove smell like a cabin, my cham- 
ber perfumed with his tarpaulin Brandenburgh ; and hear vollies of brandy sighs, 
enough to make a fog in one's room. — Tfie Plain Dealer, ii. 1. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 4g7 

When he is in Olivia's drawing-room, with * these fluttering parnots of 
the town, these apes, these echoes of men,' he bawls out as if he were 
on his quarter-deck, * Peace, you Bartholomew, fair buffoons 1 He 
leizes them by the collar, and says : 

' "Wliy, you impudent, pitiful wretches, . . . you are iu all things so like woraeuj, 
that you may think it in me a kind of cowardice to beat you. Begone, I say. . . . 
No chattering, baboons ; instantly begone, or ' . . . 

Then he turns them out of the room. These are the manners of a 
plain-dealing man. He has been ruined by Olivia, whom he loves, and 
who dismisses him. Poor Fidelia, disguised as a man, and whom he 
takes for a timid youth, comes and finds him while he is venting hi^ 
anger: 

* F. I warrant you, sir ; for, at worst, I could beg or steal for you, 
M. Nay, more bragging ! . . . You said you'd beg for me. 

F. I did, sir. 

M. Tlien you shall beg for me. 

F. "With all my heart, sir. 

M. That is, pimp for me. 

F. How, sir ? 

M. D' ye start? ... No more dissembling : here, (I say,) yon must go nse it 
for me to Olivia. . . . Go, flatter, lie, kneel, promise, anything to get her for me : 
I cannot live unless I have her. ' ^ 

And when Fidelia returns to him, saying that Olivia has embraced him, 
by force, with an abandonment of love, he exclaims : 

* Her love! — a whore's, a witch's love ! — But what, did she not kiss well, sir? 
I'm sure, I thought her lips — but I must not think of 'em more — but yet they 
are such I could still kiss, — grow to, — and then tear off with my teeth, grind 'em 
into mammocks, and spit 'em into her cuckold's face.'' 

These savage words indicate savage actions. He goes by night to enter 
Olivia's house with Fidelia, and under her name ; and Fidelia tries to 
prevent him, through jealousy. Then his blood boils, a storm of fury 
mounts to his face, and he speaks to her in a whispering, hissing voice : 

* "\ATiat, you are my rival, then ! and therefore you shall stay, and keep the 
ioor for me, whilst I go in for you ; but when I'm gone, if you dare to stir off 
fn»n this very board, or breathe the least murmuring accent, I'll cut her thioat 
fiist ; and if you love her, you will not venture her life. — Nay, then I'll cut your 
fchroat too, and I know you love your own Ufe at least, , • . Not a word more, lest 
I befp^n my revenge on her by killing you. ' ' 

He knocks over the husband, another traitor, seizes from Olivia the 
casket of jewels he had given her, casts her one or two of them, saying, 
* Here, madam, I never yet left my wench unpaid,' and gives this same 
casket to Fidelia, whom he marries. All these actions then appeared 
natural. Wycherley took to himself in his dedication the titl^ of his 
hero, Plain Dealer ; he fancied he had drawn the portrait of a frank, 

» The Plain Dealer, iii. 1. ^ 7^,^-^, iy. 1. 3 ^^^^/^ i^, ^^ 



188 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

honest man, and praised himself for having set the public a fine example; 
he had only given them the model of an avowed and energetic brute. 
That was all that was left of manliness in this pitiable world. Wycherlcy 
deprived man of his ill-fitting French cloak, and displayed him with hii 
framework of muscles, and in his naked shamelessness. 

And in their midst, a great poet, blind, and fallen, his soul saddened 
by the misery of the times, thus depicted the madness of the iuieroAJ 
rout: 

* Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd 

Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love 

Vice for itself . . . who more oft than he 

In temples and at altars, when the priest 

Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who fiU'd 

"With lust and violence the house of God! 

In courts and palaces he also reigns, 

And in luxurious cities, where the noise 

Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, 

And injury, and outrage : and when night 

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.' * 

2. The Worldlings. 



In the seventeenth century a new mode of life was inaugurated in 
Europe, the worldly, which soon took the lead of and shaped every 
other. In France especially, and in England, it appeared and gained 
ground, from the same causes and at the same time. 

In order to people the drawing-rooms, a certain political condition 
is necessary ; and this condition, which is the supremacy of the king in 
combination with a regular system of police, was established at the 
same period on both sides of the Channel. A regular police brings 
about peace among men, draws them out of their feudal independence 
and provincial isolation, increases and facilitates intercommunication, 
confidence, union, conveniences, and pleasures. The kingly supremacy 
calls into existence a court, the centre of intercourse, from which nil 
favours flow, and which calls for a display of pleasure and splendour. 
The aristocracy thus attracted to one another, and attracted to the thrane 
by security, curiosity, amusement, and interest, meet together, and 
become at once men of the world and men of the court. They are no 
longer, like the barons of a preceding age, standing in their lofty balls, 
armed and stern, possessed by the idea that they might perhaps, when 
they quit their palace, cut each other to pieces, and that if tliey fall to 
blows in the precincts of the court, the executioner is ready to cut oflf 
their hand and stop the bleeding with a red-hot iron; knowing, mere- 
Paradise Lost, book i. v. 490-502. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 4i;g 

over, that the king may probably have them beheaded to-morrow, and 
ready accordingly to cast themselves on theii knees and break out into 
protestations of faithful submissiveness, but counting under their breath 
the number of swords that will be mustered on their side, and the 
trusty men who keep sentinel behind the drawbridge of their castles,,^ 
The rights, privileges, constraints, and attractions of feudal life havo 
dif;app eared. There is no more need that the manor should be a fort- 
te^. These men can no longer experience the joy of reigning there as 
in a petty state. It has palled on them, and they quit it. Having no 
further cause to quarrel with the king, they go to him. His court is a 
drawing-room, most agreeable to the sight, and most serviceable to 
those who frequent it. Here are festivities, splendid furniture, a 
decked and chosen company, news and tittle-tattle ; here they find 
pensions, titles, places for them and theirs ; they receive both amuse- 
ment and profit; it is all gain and all pleasure. Here they attend 
the levee, assist at dinners, return to the ball, sit down to play, are 
there Avhen the king goes to bed. Here they cut a dash with their 
half-French dress, their wigs, their hats loaded with feathers, their 
trunk-hose, their cannions, the large rosettes on their shoes. The ladies 
paint and patch their faces, display robes of magnificent satin and velvet, 
laced ap with silver and dragging behind, and above you may see their 
white busts, whose brilliant nakedness is extended to their shoulders and 
arms. They are gazed upon, saluted, approached. The king rides on 
horseback to Hyde Park ; by his side canter the queen, and with hex 
the two mistresses. Lady Castlemaine and JSIrs. Stewart : * the queen in 
a white-laced waistcoate and a crimson short pettycoate, and her hair 
drejsed a la negligence ; . . . Mrs. Stewart with her hat cocked and a 
red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent taille.'* 
Then they returned to Whitehall, 'where all the ladies walked, talking 
and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one 
another's by one another's heads, and laughing.'^ In such fine company 
there wa.s no lack of gallantry. Perfumed gloves, pocket mirrors, work- 
boxes fitted up, apricot paste, essences, and other little love-tokens, came 
over every week from Paris. London furnished more substantial gifts, 
ear -rings, diamonds, brilliants, and golden guineas ; the fair ones put 
Uj) with these, as if they had come from a greater distance.* Intrigues 
ahounded — Heaven knows how many or of what kind. Nat-'^'-ally, also, 
conversation takes a similar tone. They did not mince the adventures 
of Miss Warmestr^ the haughty, who, 'deceived apparently by a bad 
reckoning, took the liberty of lying-in in the midst of the court.' ' 
They spDke in whispers about the attempts of Miss Hobart, or the 
happy misfortune of Miss Churchill, who, being very plain, but having 



* Consult all Shakespeare's historical plays. 

» Pepys' Diary, ii. July 13, 1663. ^ jjyi^ 

* Memaires de Orammont, by A. Hamiliou, ^ Ihid. ch. ix. 



i90 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

the wit to fall from her horse, touched the eyes and heart of the 
Duke of York. The Chevalier de Grammont related to the king the 
history of Termes, or of Poussatin the almoner : every one leaves the 
dance to hear it ; and when it is over, every one bursts out laughing, 
We perceive that this is not the world of Louis xiv., and yet it is a 
world ; and if it has more froth, it runs with the identical currenl, 
The great object here also is selfish amusement, and to put en aji« 
pearances; people strive to be men of fashion ; a coat gives sicry, 
Grammont was in despair when the roguery of his valet obliged him 
to wear the same suit twice over. Another courtier piques himself on 
his songs and his guitar-playing. * Russell had a collection of two or 
three hundred quadrilles in tablature, all of which he used to dance 
without ever having studied them.' Jermyn was known for his success 
with the fair. 'A gentleman,' said Etheredge, 'ought to dress well, dance 
v/ell, fence well, have a talent for love-letters, a pleasant voice in a room, 
to be always very amorous, sufficiently discreet, but not too constant.' 
These are already the court manners as they continued in France up to 
the time of Louis xvi. With such manners, words take the place of 
deeds. Life is passed in visits and conversations. The art of conversing 
became the chief of all ; of course, to converse agreeably, to employ an 
hour, twenty subjects in an hour, hinting always, without going deep, 
in such a fashion that conversation should not be a labour, but a pro- 
menade. It was followed up by letters written in the evening, by 
madrigals or epigrams to be read in the morning, by drawing-room 
tragedies, or caricatures of society. In this manner a new literature 
was produced, the work and the portrait of the world, which was at 
once its audience and its model, which sprung from it, and ended in it. 

II. 

The art of conversation being then a necessity, people set themselves 
to acquire it. A revolution was effected in mind as well as in manners. 
As soon as circumstances assume new aspects, thought assumes a new 
form. The Renaissance is ended, the Classic Age begins, and the artist 
makes room for the author. Man is returned from his first voyage 
round the world of facts ; the enthusiasm, the labour of a stirred ima- 
gination, the tumultuous sensation of new ideas, all the faculties which 
a first discovery calls into play, have become satiated, then depressed. 
The incentive is blunted, because the work is done. The strangeness, 
the far vistas, the unbridled originality, the all-powerful flights of genius 
aimed at the centre of truth through the extremes of folly, all the 
characteristics of the great discovery, are lost to sight. The imagination 
is tempered ; the mind is disciplined : it retraces its steps ; it walks its 
a»wn domain once more with a satisfied curiosity, an acquired experience, 
Judgment, as it were, chews the cud and corrects itself. It finds a 
religion, an art, a philosophy, to reform or to form anew. It is no 
longer the minister of inspired intuition, but of a regular process of 



r 



VRAP. I.] THE RESTORATION 491 

decom position. It no longer feels or looks for the generality ; it handles 
and observes the specialty. It selects and classifies ; it refines and 
regulates. It ceases to be the creator, and becomes the commentator. 
It quits the province of invention and settles down into criticism. It 
enters upon that magnificent and confused aggregate of dogmas and 
forms, in Avhich the preceding age has gathered up indiscriminately its 
dreams and discoveries ; it draws thence the ideas which it modifies and 
verifies. It arranges them in long chains of ^simple ratiocination, wiiich 
descend 1 nk by link to the vulgar apprehension. It expresses them in 
exact terms, which present a graduated series, step by step, to the vul^'ar 
reasoning power. It marks out in the entire field of thought a series of 
compartments and a network of passages, which, excluding error and 
digression, lead gradually every mind to every object. It becomes at 
last clear, convenient, charming. And the world lends its aid; con- 
tingent circumstances finish the natural revolution ; the taste becomes 
changed through a declivity of its own, but also through the influence 
of the court. When conversation becomes the chief business of life, it 
modifies style after its own image, and according to its peculiar needs. 
It repudiates digression, excessive metaphor, impassioned exclamations, 
all loose and overstrained ways. We cannot bawl, gesticulate, dreara 
aloud, in a drawing-room ; we restrain ourselves ; we criticise and keep 
watch over ourselves ; we pass the time in narration and discussion ; 
we stand in need of concise expression, exact language, clear and con- 
nected reasoning ; otherwise we cannot fence or comprehend each other. 
Correct style, good language, conversation, are self- generated, and very 
quickly perfected ; for refinement is the aim of the man of the world : 
he studies to render everything more becoming and more service- 
able, his chattels and his speech, his periods and his dress. Art and 
artifice are there the distinguishing mark. People pride themselves on 
neing perfect in their mother tongue, never to miss the correct sense of 
any word, to avoid vulgar expressions, to string together their antitheses, 
to develop their thoughts, to employ rhetoric. Nothing is more marked 
than the contrast of the conversations of Shakspeare and Fletcher with 
those of Wycherley and Congreve. In Shakspeare the dialogue re- 
sembles an assault of arms; we could imagine men of skill fencing 
with words as it were in a fencing- school. They play the buffoon, sing, 
'.hink aloud, burst out into a laugh, into puns, into fish women's talk 
and into poets' talk, into quaint whimsicalities ; they have a taste for the 
ridiculous, the sparkling ; one of them dances while he speaks ; they 
would willingly walk on their hands; there is not one grain of calcula- 
tion to more than three grains of folly in their heads. Here, on the 
other hand, the characters are steady ; they reason and dispute ; ratioci- 
nation is the basis of their style ; they are so perfect that the thing is 
overdone, and we see through it all the author stringing his phrases. 
They arrange a tableau, multiply ingenious comparisons, balance well- 
ordeied periods. One character delivers a satire, another servos up a 



i92 '''HE CLASSIC A(i£. [BOOK HI 

little essay on morality. We might draw from the comedies of the 
time a volume of sentences ; they are charged with literary morjels 
which foreshadow the Spectator} They hunt for clever and humorous 
expressions, they clothe indecent circumstances with decent words; they 
skip nimbly over the fragile ice of decorum, and leave their mark with- 
out breaking it. I see gentlemen, seated in gilt arm-chairs, of quiet wit 
«nd studied speech, cool in observation, eloquent sceptics, expert in the 
(lishions, lovers of elegance; dainty of fine talk as much from vanity as 
from taste, who, while conversing between a compliment and a lever- 
euce, will no more neglect their good style than their neat gloves or 
their hat 

III. 

Amongst the best and most agreeable specimens of this new refine - 
ment, appears Sir William Temple, a diplomatist and man of the world^ 
prudent, wise, and polite, gifted with tact in conversation and iu busi- 
ness, expert in the knowledge of the timeSj and in not compromising 
himself, adroit in pressing forward and in standing aside, who knew 
how to attract to himself the favour and the expectations of England, 
to obtain the eulogies of men of letters, of savants, of politicians, of the 
people, to gain a European reputation, to win all the crowns appro- 
priated to science, patriotism, virtue, genius, without having too much 
of science, patriotism, genius, or virtue. Such a life is the masterpiece 
of that age : fine externals on a foundation not so fine ; this is its 
abstract. His mode as an author agrees with his maxims as a politician. 
His principles and style are homogeneous ; a genuine diplomatist, such 
as one meets in the drawing-rooms, having probed Europe and touched 
everywhere the bottom of things ; tired of everything, specially of 
enthusiasm, admirable in an arm-chair or at a levee, a good story- 
teller, waggish if need were, but in moderation, accomplished in the 
art of maintaining the dignity of his station and of enjoying himself. 
In his retreat at Sheen, afterwards at Moor Park, he employs his leisure 
in writing ; and he writes as a man of his rank would speak, very 
^'ell, that is to say, with dignity and facility, particularly when he writes 
of the countries he has visited, of the incidents he has seen, the noble 
amusements which serve to pass his time.^ He has an income of fifteen 
hundred a y»)ar, and a nice sinecure in Ireland. He retired from public 
life during momentous struggles, siding neither with the king nor 
against him, resolved, as he tells us himself, not to set himself against 
the current when the current is irresistible. He lives peacefully in 
the country with his wife, his sister, his secretary, his dependants, 
receiving the visits of strangers, who are anxious to see the negotiator 

* Take, for example, Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem, ii. 1. 

* Consult especially. Observations upon the United Provinces of the I^eth&f 
Ainds ; Of Gardening. 



THE RESTORATION. 493 

of the Triple Alliance, and sometimes of the new King William, who, 
unable to obtain his services, comes occasionally to seek his counsel. 
He plants aiiid gardens, in a fertile soil, in a country the ciimate of 
which agrees with him, amongst regular flower-beds, by the side of a 
very straight canal, bordered by a straight terrace; and he lauds himself 
in set terms, and with suitable discreetness, for the character he possesses 
and the part he has chosen : — 

■* I have often wondered how such sharp and violent invectives come to be made 
80 generally against Epicurus, by the ages that followed him, whose admirable wit, 
felicity of expression, excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, temperance 
of life and constancy of death, made him so beloved by his friends, admired by 
bis scholars, and honoured by the Athenians.' ^ 

He does well to defend Epicurus, because he has followed his precepts, 
avoiding every great disorder of the intelligence, and installing himself, 
like one of Lucretius' gods, in the interspace of worlds ; as he says : 

* Where factions were once entered and rooted iu a state, they thought it 
madness for good men to meddle with public affairs. ' 

And again : 

* The true service of the public is a business of so much labour and so much 
care, that though a good and wise man may not refuse it, if he be called to it by 
his Prince or his country, and thinks he may be of more than vulgar use, yet he 
will seldom or never seek it ; but leaves it commonly to men who, under the dis- 
guise of public good, pursue their own designs of wealth, power, and such bastard 
honours as usually attend them, not that which is the true, and only true, reward 
of viitue. ' ^ 

This is how he reveals himself. Thus presented to us, he goes on to 
talk of the gardening Avhich he practises, and first of the six grand 
Epicureans who have illustrated the doctrine of their master — Caesar, 
Atticus, Lucretius, Horace, Msecenas, Vii-gil ; then of the various sorts 
of gardens which have a name in the world, from the garden of Eden, 
and the garden of Alcinous, to those of Holland and Italy ; and all this 
at some length, like a man who listens to himself and is listened to by 
others, who does rather profusely the honours of his house and of his 
"Tvit to his guests, but does them with grace and dignity, not dogmati- 
cally nor haughtily, but in varied tones, aptly modulating his voice and 
gsstures. He recounts the four kinds of grapes which he has introduced 
into England, and confesses that he has been extravagant, yet does not 
regret it ; for five years he has not once wished to see London. He 
intersperses technical advice with anecdotes; whereof one relates to 
Charles ii., who praised the English climate above all others, saying : 

* He thought that was the best climate, where he could be abroad in the aii 
with pleasure, or at least without trouble or inconvenience, the most days of the 
year, and the most hom-s of the day. ' 

Another about the Bishop of Munster, who, unable to grow anything 
» Temple's Works: Of Gardening, ii. 190. « Ibid. 184. 



494 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

but cherries in his orchard, had collected all the varieties, ind so per- 
fected the trees that he had fruit from May to September. The reader 
feels an inward gratification when he hears an eycAvitness relate minute 
details of such great men. Our attention is aroused immediately ; we 
in consequence imagine ourselves denizens of the court, and smile com- 
placently : no matter if the details be slender ; they serve passably wt-ll, 
they constitute *a half hour with the aristocracy,' like a lordly way of 
taking snuff, or shaking the lace of one's ruffles. Such is the interest 
of courtly conversation ; it can be held about nothing ; the excellence 
of the manner lends this nothing a peculiar charm ; you hear the sound 
of the voice, you are amused by the half smile, abandon yourself to the 
fluent stream, forget that these are ordinary ideas ; you observe the 
narrator, his wig, the cane he toys with, the ribbons on his shoes, his 
easy walk over the smooth gravel of his garden paths between the 
faultless hedges ; the ear, the mind even is charmed, captivated by the 
appropriateness of his diction, by the abundance of his ornate periods, 
by the dignity and fulness of a style which is involuntarily regular, 
which, at first artificial, like good breeding, ends, like true good breed- 
ing, by being changed into a real necessity and a natural talent. 

Unfortunately, this talent occasionally leads to blunders ; when a man 
speaks well about everything, he thinks he has a right to speak of every- 
thing. He plays philosopher, critic, even man of learning ; and indeed 
becomes so actually, at least with the ladies. Such a man writes, like 
Temple, Essays on the Nature of Government^ on Heroic Virtzie,^ on 
poetry ; that is, little treatises on society, on the beautiful, on the philo- 
sophy of history. He is the Locke, the Herder, the Bent ley of the 
drawing-room, and nothing else. Now and then, doubtless, his mothei 
wit leads him to fair original judgments. Temple was the first to dis- 
cover a Pindaric glow in the old chant of Ragnar Lodbrog, and to 
place Don Quixote in the first rank of modern fictions ; and moreover, 
when he handles a subject within his range, like the causes of the power 
and decline of the Turks, his reasoning is admirable. But otherwise, 
he is simply the scholar; nay, in him the pedant crops out, and the 
worst of pedants, who, being ignorant, wishes to seem wise, who quotes 
the history of every land, hauling in Jupiter, Saturn, Osiris^ Fo-hi^ 
Confucius, Manco-Capac, Mahomet, and discourses on all these obscura 
and unknown civilisations, as if he had laboriously studied them, on 
his own behalf, at their source, and not at second hand, through the 
extracts of his secretary, or the books of others. One day he came to 
grief; having plunged into a literary dispute, and claimed superiority 
for the ancients over the moderns, he imagined himself a Hellenir.t, ar 
antiquarian, related the voyages of Pythagoras, the education of Orphei*^ 
and remarked that the Greek sages 



- Compare this essay witli that of Ch,rlyle, on Heroes and Hero- Worship ; the 
litle and subject are similar ; it is curious to note tlie difference of the two cen 
turies. 



"HAP. 1.1 THE RESTORATION. 4yR 

•were commonly excellent poets, and great physicians: they wtre so learned 
in natural philosophy, that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but 
earthquakes at land and storms at sea, great droughts and great plagues, much 
plenty or much' scarcity of certain sorts of fruits or grain ; not to mention the 
magical powers attribiited to several of them, to allay storms, to raise gales, to 
appease commotions of people, to make plagues cease. ' ^ 

Admirable faculties, which we no longer possess. Again he regretted 
tlie decay of music, ' by which men and beasts, fislies, fowls, and ser- 
pents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed ; 
by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest heif;ht and 
violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so as they might be justly 
said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the 
powers and charms of this admirable art.'* He wished to enumerate 
the greatest modern writers, and forgot to mention in his catalogue, 

* amongst the Italians,^ Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso ; in his list 
of French, Pascal, Bossuet, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, and Boileau ; 
in his list of Spaniards, Lope and Calderon; and in his list of English, 
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton;' though, by way of com- 
pensation, he inserted the names of Paolo Sarpi, Guevara, Sir Philip 
Sidney, Selden, Voiture, and Bussy-Rabutin, * author of the Amours d6 
Gaul.'' To cap all, he declared the fables of JEsop a dull Byzantine 
compilation, and the letters of Phalaris a wretched sophistical forgery, 
admirable and authentic : — 

* It may perhaps he further affirmed, in favour of the ancients, that the oldest 
books we have are still iu their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know 
of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are JSsop's Fables and Phalaris' 
Ejnstles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. 
As tlie first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest master in his kind, 
and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original ; so I think the 
Epistles of Phalaris to have more grace, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, 
than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern.' 

And then, in order to commit himself beyond remedy, he gravely 

remarked : 

* I know several learned men (or that usually pass for sach, under the name of 
eritics) have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian with some others have attri- 
buted them to liUcian ; but I think he must have little skill in painting tha*^ 
cannot find out this to be an original : such diversity of passions, upon suclj 
variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, 
such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, 
such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such 
contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could 
never be represented but by him that possessed them ; and I esteem Lucian to have 
been no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, 
you find the scholar or the sophist ; and in all the other, the tyrant and th« 
eommander.'* 

* Temple's Works, ii : An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, 155 

* Ibid. 165. ^ Macaulay's Works, vi. 319 ; Essay on Sir William Temple 

* An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, 173. 



496 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

Fine rhetoric truly ; it is sad that a passage so aptly turned should 
cover so many stupidities. All this appeared very triumphant; and the 
universal applause with which this fine oratorical bombast was greeted 
demonstrates the taste and the culture, the hollowness and the politeness^ 
of the elegant world of which Temple was the marvel, and v/hich, like 
Temple, loved only the varnish of truth. 

IV. 

Such were the ornate and polished manners which gradually pierce 
through debauchery and assume the ascendant. Insensibly the current 
grows clearer, and marks out its course like a stream, which forcibly 
entering a new bed, moves with difficulty at first through a heap of 
mud, then pushes forward its still murky waters, which are purified 
little by little. These debauchees try to be men of the world, and 
sometimes succeed in it. Wycherley writes well, very clearly, without 
the least trace of euphuism, almost in the French manner. He makes 
Dapperwit say of Lucy, in measured phrase, * She is beautiful without 
affectation, amorous without impertinence, . . . frolic without rudeness.'^ 
When he desires it he is ingenious, and his gentlemen exchange happy 
comparisons. * Mistresses,' says one, * are like books: if you pore upon 
them too much, they doze you, and make you unfit for company ; but 
if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by 'em.' * Yes,' 
says another, * a mistress should be like a little country retreat near the 
town ; not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away, to taste 
the town the better when a man returns.'^ These folk have style, even 
out of place, and in spite of the situation or condition of the persons. 
A shoemaker in one of Etheredge's plays says : ' There is never a man in 
the town lives more like a gentleman with his wife than I do. I never 
mind her motions; she never inquires into mine. We speak to one 
another civilly, hate one another heartily.' There is perfect art in this 
little speech; everything is complete, even to the sjrmmetrical antithesis 
of words, ideas, sounds : what a fine talker is this same satirical shoe- 
maker I After a satire, a madrigal. In one place a certain character 
exclaims, in the very middle of a dialogue, and in sober prose, ' Pretty 
pouting lips, with a little moisture hanging on them, that look like the 
Province rose fresh on the bush, ere the morning sun has quite drawn 
up the dew.' Is not this the graceful gallantry of the court? Eochester 
himself sometimes migh^> furnish a parallel. Two or three of his songs 
are still to be found in the expurgated books of extracts in use amongst 
modest young girls. It matters nothing that such men are really scamps; 
they must be every moment using compliments and salutations : before 
women whom they wish to seduce they are compelled to warble tender 
words hTxd insipidities : they acknowledge but one check, the necessity 
to appear weF-bred; yet this check suffices to restrain them. Rocliestei 

» Love in a Wood, iii. 2. » The Couniry Wife, i. 1. 



CHAP. I.J THE RESTORATION. 497 

is correct even in the midst of his filth ; if he talks lewdly, it is in the 
able and exact manner of Boileau. All these roisterers aim at being 
wits and men of the world. Sir Charles Sedley ruins and pollutes him- 
self, but Charles li. calls him * the viceroy of Apollo.' Buckingnam 
extols 'the magic of his style.' He is the most charming, the most 
sought after of talkers ; he makes puns and verses, always agreeable, 
sometimes refined ; he handles dexterously the pretty jargon of mytho- 
logy; he insinuates into his airy, flowing verses all the dainty and 
somewhat affected prettinesses of the drawing-room. He sings thus 
to Chloris: 

• My passion with your beauty grew, 

"While Cupid at my heart, 
Still as his mother favour'd j'ou. 
Threw a new flaming dart. ' 
And then sums up : 

* Each gloried in their wanton part : 

To make a lover, he 
Employ'd the utmost of his art ; 
To make a beauty, she.'^ 

There is no love whatever in these pretty things ; they are received 
tts they are presented, with a smile ; they form part of the conventional 
language, the polite attentions due from gentlemen to ladies. I suppose 
they would send thfem in the morning with a nosegay, or a box of 
preserved fruits. Roscommon indites some verses on a dead lapdog, on 
a young lady's cold; this naughty cold prevents her singing — cursed be 
the winter! And hereupon he takes the winter to task, abuses it at 
length. Here you have the literary amusements of the worldling. 
They first treat love, then danger, most airily and gaily. On the eve 
of a naval contest, Dorset, at sea, amidst the pitching of his vessel, 
addresses a celebrated song to the ladies. There is nothing weighty in 
it, either sentiment or wit ; people hum the couplets as they pass ; they 
emit a gleam of gaiety ; the next moment they are forgotten. Dorset 
at sea writes to the ladies, on the night before an engagement : 

* Let's hear of no inconstancy. 

We have too much of that at sea. ' 
And again: 

* Should foggy Opdam chance to know 

Our sad and dismal story. 
The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe, 

And quit their fort at Goeree. 
For what resistance can they find 
From men who've left their liearts behind ?* 

Then come jests too much in the English style : 

* Then if we write not by each post, 
Think not we are unkind ; . . . 

Sii Charles Sedley's Works, ed. Briscoe, 1778,2 vols.: llie Mulberry GardejiAS 

21 



498 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Oiir tears well send a speedier way ; 
The tide shall bring them twice a day.* 

Such tears can hardly flow from sorrow ; the lady regards them as the 
lover sheds them, good-naturedly. She is * at a play ' (he thinks so. 
aud tells her so) : 

* Wliilst yon, regardless of our woe, 
Sit careless at a play, 
Perhaps permit some happier man 
To kiss your hand, or flirt your fan.' * 

Dorset hardly troubles himself about it, plays with j oetry withcut excess 
or assiduity, with a rapid pen, writing to-day a verse against Dorinda, 
to-morrow a satire against Mr. Howard, always easily and without 
study, like a true gentleman. He is an earl, a chamberlain, and rich ; 
he pensions and patronises poets as he would flirts — to amuse himself, 
without binding himself. The Duke of Buckingham does the same, 
and also the contrary ; caresses these, parodies those ; is flattered, 
mocked, and ends by receiving his portrait at Di-yden's hands, — a chef 
d!ceiivre^ but not flattering. We have seen such pastimes and such 
bickerings in France ; we find here the same manners and the same 
literature, because we find here also the same society and the same spirit. 
Among these poets, and in the front rank, is Edmund Waller, who 
lived and wrote in this manner to his eighty-second year: a man of 
wit and fashion, well-bred, familiar from his youth with great people, 
endued with tact and foresight, quick at repartee, not easy to put out 
of countenance, but selfish, of indifferent feelings, having changed 
sides more than once, and bearing very well the memory of his ter- 
giversations ; in short, a good model of the worldling and the courtier. 
It was he who, having once praised Cromwell, and afterward Charles ii., 
but the latter more feebly than the former, said by way of excuse : 
* Poets, your Majesty, succeed better in fiction than in truth.' In 
this kind of existence, three-quarters of the poetry is written for the 
occasion; it is the small change of conversation or flattery; it resembles 
the little events or the little sentiments from which it sprang. One 
piece is written on tea, another on the queen's portrait ; it is necessary 
to pay one's court ; moreover, ' His Majesty has requested some verses.* 
One lady makes him a present of a silver pen, straight he throws his 
gratitude into rhyme; another has the power of sleeping at will, straight 
a sportive stanza ; a false report is spread tliat she has just had her 
portrait painted, straight a copy of verses on this grave affair. A little 
further on there are verses to the Countess of Carlisle on her chamber, 
condolences to my Lord of Northumberland on the death of his wife, a 
pretty thing on a lady * passing through a crowd of people,' an answer, 
verse for verse, to some rhymes of Sir John Suckling. He seizes any- 
thing frivolous, new, or convenient, on the wing ; and his poetry is only 

* y^orks of the Earls of Rochester, Roscommon, and Dorset, 3 vols., 1731 , ii. 54 



.-•LAP. I.J THE RESTOKATION. 49S 

a written conversation, — I mean the conversation whicli goes on al a 
ball, when people speak for the sake of speaking, lifting a lock of one's 
wig, or twisting about a glove. Gallantry, as he confesses, holds the 
chkf place here, and one may be pretty certain that the love is not 
over-sincere. In fact, Waller sighs on purpose (Sacharissa hud a fine 
dowry), or at least for the sake of good manners ; that which is most 
evident in his tender poems is, that he aims at a flowing style and good 
rhymes. He is affected, he exaggerates, he strains after wit, ho is 
always an author. Not venturing to address Sacharissa herself, hn 
addresses Mrs. Braghton, her attendant, * his fellow-servant : * 

* So, in those nations which the Sun adore, 
Some modest Persian, or some weak-eyed Moor, 
No higher dares advance his dazzled sight 
Than to some gilded cloud, which near the light 
Of their ascending god adorns the east. 
And, graced with his beam, outshines the rest.' ^ 

A fine comparison 1 That is a well-made courtesy ; I hope Sacharissa 
responds with one equally correct. His despairs bear the same flavour; 
he pierces the groves of Penshurst with his cries, * reports his flame to 
the beeches,' and the well-bred beeches ' bow their heads, as if they 
felt the same.'* It is probable that, in these mournful walks, his 
greatest care was lest he should wet the soles of his high-heeled shoes. 
These transports of love bring in the classic machinery, Apollo and 
the Muses. Apollo is annoyed that one of his servants is ill-treated, 
and bids him depart ; and he departs, telling Sacharissa thai she is 
harder than an oak, and that she was certainly produced from a rock.* 
There is one genuine reality in all this — sensuality ; not ardent, but 
light and gay. There is a certain piece. The Fall, which an abbe of the 
court of Louis xv. might have written: 



' The Poets of Oreat Britain, ed. R. Anderson, 14 vols., 1792, v. ; Waller 
Epistle X. 478. 

•^ Ibid. 452. 

8 * While in this park I sing, the list'ning deer 
Attend my passion, and forget to fear ; 
When to the beeches I report my flame, 
They bow their heads, &s if fliey felt the same. 
To gods appealing, when I reach their bow'rs 
With loud complaints, they answer me ir showrs 
To thee a wild and cruel soul is giv'u, 
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heav'n. 

. . . The rock, 
That cloven rock, produc'd thee. . . . 
This last complaint th' indulgent ears did pierce 
Of just Apollo, president of verse ; 
Highly concerned that the Muse should bring 
Damage to one whom he had taught to sin^.' — Ibi i p. 452. 



&0G THE CLx^SSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

* Then blush not, Fair! or on him frown, . . . 
How could the yonth, alas ! but bend 
When his whole Heav'n upon him lean'd ; 
If aught by him amiss were done, 
'Twas that he let you rise so soon.' * 

Other pieces smack of their surroundings, and are not so polished • 

* Amoret ! as sweet, as good, 
As the most delicious food, 
Which but tasted does impart 
Life and gladness to the heart. * ■ 

I should not be pleased, were I a woman, to be compared to a beef- 
steak, though that be appetising ; nor should I like any more to find 
myself, like Sacharissa, placed on a level with good wine, which fliei 
to the head : 

* Sacharissa's beauty's wine. 
Which to madness doth incline ; 
Such a liquor as no brain 

That is mortal can sustain.' • 

This is too much honour for port wine and meat. The English back- 
ground crops up here and elsewhere ; for example, the beautiful 
Sacharissa, having ceased to be beautiful, asked Waller if he would 
write again verses for her ; he answered, ' Yes, madame, when you 
are as young and as handsome as you Avere formerly.' Here is some- 
thing to shock a Frenchman. Nevertheless Waller is usually amiable ; 
a sort of brilliant light floats like a halo round his verses ; he is always 
elegant, often graceful. His gracefulness is like the perfume exhaled 
from the world ; fresh toilettes, ornamented drawing-rooms, the abund* 
ance and all those refined and delicate comforts give to the soul a sort 
of sweetness which is breathed forth in obliging compliments and smiles. 
Waller has such, and that most flattering, apropos of a bud, a girdle, 
a rose. Such bouquets become his hands and his art. He pays an 
excellent compliment ' To young Lady Lucy Sidney ' on her age. And 
what could be more attractive for a denizen of the drawing-rooms, than 
this bud of still unopened youth, but which blushes already, and is dq 
the point of expanding ? 

* Yet, fairest blossom ! do not slight 
That age which you may know so soon. 
The rosy morn resigns her liglit 
And milder glory to the noon.' * 

All his verses flow with a continuous harmony, clearness, facility, 
though his voice is never raised, or out of tune, or rough, nor loses 
its true accent, except by the worldling's affectation, which regularly 
varies all tones in order to soften them. His poetry resembles one 

' The Poets of GreM Britain, Waller, v. 458. 

' Ihid. 479. 3 Ihid, * Md. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION 501 

of those pretty, affected, bedizened women, busy in inclining their 
head on one side, and murmuring with a soft voice commonplace things 
which they cannot be said to think, yet agreeable in their beribboned 
dress, and who would please altogether if they did not dream of always 
pleasing. 

It is not that these men cannot handle grave subjects; but they handle 
them in their own fashion, without gravity or depth. What the courtier 
most lacks is the genuine sentiment of a discovered and personal idea. 
That which interests him most is the correctness of the adornment, and 
the perfsction of external form. They care little for the foundation, 
much for the outer shape. In fact, it is form which they take for their 
subject in nearly all their serious poetry ; they are critics, they lay 
down precepts, they compose Poetic Arts. Denham, and afterwards 
Roscommon, teach in complete poems the art of translating poetry well 
The Duke of Buckingham versified an Essay on Poetry, and an Essay 
on Satire. Dry den is in the first rank of these pedagogues. Like 
Dryden again, they turn translators, amplifiers. Roscommon translated 
the Ars Poetica of Horace, Waller the first act o£ Pompee, Denham some 
fragments of Homer and Virgil, and an Italian poem on Justice and 
Temperance. Rochester composed a satire against Mankind, in the style 
of Boileau, and also an epistle on Nothing ; the amorous Waller wrote a 
didactic poem on The Fear of God, and another in six cantos on Divine 
Love. These are exercises of style. They take a theological thesis, an 
open question of philosophy, a poetic maxim, and develop it in jointed 
prose, furnished with rhymes ; they discover nothing, invent nothing, 
feel little, and only aim at expressing good arguments in classical 
metaphors, in exalted terms, after a conventional model. Most of their 
verses consist of two nouns, furnished with epithets, and connected by 
a verb, like one's college Latin verses. The epithet is good : they had 
to hunt through the Gradus for it, or, as Boileau wills it, they had to 
carry the line unfinished in their heads, and had to think about it an 
hour in the open air, until at last, at the corner of a wood, they found 
the word which had escaped. I yawn, but applaud. At this price a 
generation ends by forming the sustained style which is necessary to 
support, make public, and demonstrate great things. Meanwhile, with 
their ornate, official diction, and their borrowed thought, they are like 
formal chamberlains, in embroidered coats, present at a royal marriage 
or an august baptism, empty of head, grave in manner, admirable foj 
dignity and bearing, with the punctilio and the ideas of a dummy. 



One of them only (Dryden always excepted) rose to talent, Sir John 
Denham, Charles the First's secretary. He was employed in public 
affairs, and after a dissolute youth, turned to serious habits; and leaving 
behind him satiric verse and party tricks, attained in riper years a lof*^y 
oratr rical style. His best poem, Cooper'^s Hill^ is the description of 9 



i)U2 THE CLASSIC AGE. (BOOK III 

hill and its suiToiinclings, blended with the historical ideas which the 
sigM recalls, and the moral reflections which its appearance naturally 
suggests. All these subjects are in accordance with the noblLty and 
the limitation of the classical spirit, and display his vigour without 
betraying his weaknesses; the poet could show off his whole talent 
without forcing it. His fine language exhibits all its beauty, because 
it is sincere. We find pleasure in following the regular progress ol 
these copious passages in which his ideas, opposed or combined, attain 
for the first time their definite place and full clearness, where symmetry 
only brings out the argument more clearly, expansion only completes 
thought, antithesis and repetition do not induce trifling and affectation, 
where the music of the verse, adding the breadth of sound to the fulness 
of sense, conducts the chain of ideas, without effort or disorder, by an 
appropriate measure to a becoming order and movement. Gratification 
is united with solidity ; the author of Cooper''s Hill knows how to please 
as well as to impress. His poem is like a king's park, dignified and 
level without doubt, but arranged for the pleasure of the sight, and full 
of choice prospects. It leads us by easy digressions across a multitude 
of varied thoughts. It shows us here a mountain, yonder a memorial 
of the nymphs, a classic memorial, like a portico filled with statues, 
further on a wide river-course, and by its side the ruins of an abbey ; 
each page of the poem is like a distinct alley, with its distinct perspective. 
Further on, our thoughts are turned to the superstitions of the ignorant 
middle-ages, and to the excesses of the recent revolution ; then comes 
the picture of a royal hunt ; we see the trembling stag brought to a 
stand in the midst of the leaves : 

* He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed. 
His will; .id heels, and then his armed head ; 
With th<. se t' avoid, with that his fate to meet ; 
But fear prevails, and bids him ti-ust his feet. 
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye 
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry.* * 

These are the worthy spectacles and the studied diversity of the grounds 
of a nobleman. Every object, moreover, receives here, as in a king's 
palace, all the adornment which can be given to it ; elegant epithets 
are introduced to embellish a feeble substantive ; the decorations of 
art transform the commonplace of nature : vessels are 'floating toAvers;' 
the Thames is the most loved of all the Ocean's sons ; the airy mountain 
hides its proud head among the clouds, whilst a shady mantle clothes 
its sides. Among different kinds of ideas, there is one kingly, full of 
stately and magnificent ceremonies, of self-contained and studied ges- 
tures, of correct yet commanding figures, uniform and imposing like 
the appointments of a palace ; hence the classic writers, and Denham 
amongst them, draw all their poetic tints. From this every object and 

' Ihe Poets of Great Britain, v. Denham, 675. 



CHAP. LI THE RESTORATION. 503 

circumstance takes its colouring, because constrained to come into 
contact with it. Here the object and circumstances are compelled to 
traverse other things. Denham is not a mere courtier, he is an 
Englishman ; that is, preoccupied by moral emotions. He often quits 
his landscape to enter into some grave reflection ; politics, religion, 
come to disturb the enjoyment of his eyes ; in reference to a hill or a 
forest, he meditates upon man ; externals lead him inward ; imjjressions 
of the senses to contemplations of the soul. The men of this race 
are by nature and custom esoteric. When he sees the Thames throw 
itself into the sea, he compares it with 'mortal life hasting to meet 
eternity.' The face of a mountain, beaten by storms, reminds him of 
'the common fate of all that's high or great.' The course of the river 
suggests to him ideas of inner reformation : 

' O could I flow like thee ! and make thy stream 
My great example, as it is my theme ! 
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull; 
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full. 

But his proud head the airy mountain hides 
Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides 
A shady mantle clothes ; his curled brows 
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows ; 
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat, 
The common fate of all that's high or great.' ' 

There is in the English mind an indestructible stock of moral instincts, 
and grand melancholy ; and it is the greatest confirmation of this, that 
we can discover such a stock at the court of Charles n. 

These are, however, but rare openings, and as it were levellings of 
the original rock. The habits of the worldling are as a thick layer which 
cover it throughout. Manners, conversation, style, the stage, taste, all 
is French, or tries to be ; they imitate France as they are able, and go 
there to mould themselves. Many cavaliers went there, driven away 
by Cromwell. Denham, Waller, Eoscommon, and Rochester resided 
there ; the Duchess of Newcastle, a poetess of the time, was married at 
Paris ; the Duke of Buckingham served a campaign under Tiirenne ; 
Wycherley was sent to France by his father, who wished to rescue him 
from the contagion of Puritan opinions ; Vanbrugh, one of the best 
comic j)lay Wrights, went thither to contract a polish. The two courts 
were allied almost always in fact, and always in heart, by a com- 
munity of interests, and of religious and monarchical ideas. Charles n. 
accepted from Louis xiv. a pension, a mistress, counsels, and examples; 
the nobility followed their prince, and France was the model of the 
English court. Her literature and manners, the finest of the classic 
age, led the fashion. We perceive in English writings that French 
authors are their masters, and that they were in the hands of all well- 

1 The Poets of Great Britain^ v., Denham, 674. 



50i THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ID 

educated people. Tliey consulted Bossuet, translated Corneille, imitated 
Moliere, respected Boileau. It went so far, that the greatest gallants of 
them tried to be altogether French, to mix some scraps of French in 
every phrase. ' It is as ill-breeding now to speak good English,' says 
Wycherley, * as to write good English, good sense, or a good hand.* 
These Frenchified coxcombs^ are compliment-mongers, always pow- 
dered, perfumed, ' eminent for being bien gantes.' They affect delicacy, 
they are fastidious ; they find the English coarse, gloomy, stiff ; they try 
to be giddy and thoughtless ; they giggle and pl-ate at random, placing 
the glory of man in the perfection of his wig and his bows. The 
theatre, which ridicules these imitators, is an imitator ai'ter their 
fashion. French comedy, like French politeness, becomes their model. 
They copy both, altering without equalling them ; for monarchical and 
classic France is, amongst all nations, the best fitted from its instincts 
and institutions for the modes of Avorldly life, and the works of an 
oratorical mind. England follows it in this course, being carried aw^ay 
by the universal current of the age, but at a distance, and drawn aside 
by its national peculiarities. It is this common direction and this 
particular deviation which the society and its poetry have proclaimed, 
and which the stage and its characters will display. 

VI 

Four principal writers established this comedy — Wycherley, Con- 
greve, Vaubrugh, Farquhar:^ the first gross, and in the first irruption 
of vice ; the others more sedate, possessing more a taste for urbanity 
than debauchery ; yet all men of the world, and priding themselves on 
their good breeding, on passing their days at court or in fine company, 
on having the tastes and bearing of gentlemen. ' I am not a literary 
man,' said Congreve to Voltaire, ' I am a gentleman.' In fact, as Pope 
said, he lived more like a man of quality than a man of letters, was 
noted for his successes with the fair, and passed his latter years in the 
house of the Duchess of Marlborough. I have said that Wycherley, 
under Charles ii., was one of the most fashionable courtiers. He served 
in the army for some time, as did also Vanbrugh and Farquhar; nothing 
is more gallant than the name of Captain which they employed, the 
military stories they brought back, and the feather they stuck in their 
hats. They all wrote comedies on the same worldly and classical 
model, made up of probable incidents such as we observe around us 
every day, of well-bred characters such as we commonly meet in a draw- 
ing-room, correct and elegant conversations such as well-bred men can 
carry on. This theatre, wanting in poetry, fancy, and adventures, imita- 
tive and discursive, was formed at the same time as that of Moliere, bj- 

' Etheredge's Sir Fojilinff Flutter ; Wycherley' s The Gentleman Dancing 
master, i. 3. 

2 From 1072 to 172G. 



I 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 505 

the same causes, and on his model, so that in order to comprehend it 
we must compare it with that of Moliere. 

'Moliere belongs to no nation,' said a great English actor (Kemlle); 
*one day the god of comedy, wishing to write, became a man, and 
happened to fall into France.' I accept this saying ; but in becoming 
man he found himself, at the same time, a man of the seventeenth century 
aad a Frenchman, and that is how he was the god of comedy. 'To 
amuse honest folk,' said Moliere, 'what a strange task I' Only the French 
art of the seventeenth century could succeed in that ; for it consists in 
leading by an agreeable path to general notions; and the taste for these 
notions, as well as the custom of treading this path, is the peculiar mark 
of honest folk. Moliere, like Racine, expands and develops. Open any 
one of his plays that comes to hand, and the first scene in it, chosen at 
random; after three replies you are carried away, or rather led away. 
The second continues the first, the third carries out the second, the 
fourth completes .ill ; a current is created which bears us on, which 
bears us away, which does not release us until it is exhausted. There 
is no check, no digression, no episodes to distract our attention. Tc 
prevent the lapses of an absent mind, a secondary character intervenes, 
a lackey, a lady's-maid, a wife, who, couplet by couplet, repeat in a 
different fashion the reply of the principal character, and by means 
of symmetry and contrast restrain us in the path laid down. Arrived 
at the end, a second current seizes us and acts like the first. It is com- 
posed hke the other, and with regard to the other. It throws it out by 
contrast, or strengthens it by resemblance. Here the valets repeat the 
dispute, there the reconciliation of their masters. In one place, Alceste, 
drawn in one direction through three pages by anger, is drawn in a 
contrary direction, and through three pages, by love. Further on, 
tradesmen, professors, neighbours, domestics, relieve each other scene 
after scene, in order to bring out in clearer light the pretentiousness 
and guUibility of M. Jourdain. Every scene, every act, brings out in 
greater relief, comj>letes, or prepares another. All is united, and all i? 
simple; the action progresses, and progresses only to carry on the idea; 
there is no complication, no incidents. One comic event suffices for the 
story. A dozen conversations make up the play of the Misanthrope. 
The same situation, five or six times renewed, is the whole of VEcole 
des Femnies. These pieces are made out of nothing. They have no 
need of incidents, they find ample space in the compass of one room 
and one day, without surprises, without decoration, with a carpet and 
four arm-chairs. This paucity of matter throws out the ideas morr 
clearly and quickly ; in fact, their whole aim is to bring those ideas 
prominently forward ; the simplicity of the subject, the progress of the 
action, the relation of the scenes, — to this everything tends. At every 
step the clearness increases, the impression is deepened, the viciousness 
stands out : ridicule is piled up until, before so many apt and united 
app-eals, laughter forces its way and breaks forth. And this laughtei 



506 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK UT 

is not a mere outburst of physical amusement ; it is tht judgment whicl 
incites it. The writer is a pliilosopher, who brings us into contact with 
a universal truth by a particular example. We understand thiough 
him, as through La Bruyere or Nicole, the force of prejudice, the 
obstinacy of conventionality, the blindness of love. The couplets ol 
his dialogue, like the arguments of their treatises, are but the worked 
out proof and the logical justification of a preconceived conclusion. 
We philosophise with him on humanity; we think because he has 
thought. And he has only thought thus in the character of a French- 
man, for an audien^^e of French men of the world. In him we taste a 
national pleasure. French refined and systematic intelligence, the most 
exact in seizing on the subordination of ideas, the most ready in sepa- 
rating ideas from matter, the most fond of clear and tangible ideas, 
finds in him its nourishment and its echo. None who has sought to 
show us mankind, has led us by a straighter and easier mode to a more 
distinct and speaking portrait. 

I Avill add, to a more pleasing portrait, — and this is the main talent 
of comedy : it consists in keeping back what is hateful ; and mark, in 
the world that which is hateful abounds. As soon as you will paint 
the world truly, philosophically, you meet with vice, injustice, and 
everywhere indignation ; amusement flees before anger and morality. 
Consider the basis of Tartufe ; an obscene pedant, a red- faced hypo- 
critical wretch, who, palming himself off on an honest and refined 
family, tries to drive the son away, marry the daughter, corrupt the 
wife, ruin and imprison the father, and almost succeeds in it, not by 
clever plots, but by vulgar mummery, and by the coarse audacity of 
his caddish disposition.' What could be more repellent ? And how 
is amusement to be drawn from such a subject, where Beaumarchais 
and La Bruyere^ failed? Similarly, in the Misanthrope^ is not the 
spectacle of a loyally sincere and honest man, very much in love, 
whom his virtue finally overwhelms with ridicule and drives irom 
society, a sad sight to see? Rousseau was annoyed that it should 
produce laughter; and if we were to look upon the subject, not in 
Moliere, but in itself, we should find enough to revolt our natural 
generosity. Recall his other plots: Georges Dandin mystified, Geronte 
beaten, Arnolphe duped, Harpagon plundered, Sganarelle married, girls 
seduced, louts thrashed, simpletons turned financiers. There are sorrows 
here, and deep ones ; many would rather weep than laugh at them. 
Arnolphe, Dandin, Harpagon, are almost tragic characters ; and when 
we see them in the world instead of the theatre, we are not disposed to 
sarcasm, but to pity. Picture to yourself the originals from whom 
Moliere has taken his doctors. Consider this venturesome experimenta- 
list, who, in the interest of science, tries a new saw, or inoculates a 

* Ovuphre, in La Bruyere's Caractercs, ch. xiii. de la Mode; JBegreat^/ii 
Bf-aiimarchaia' la Mere CoupaUe. 



»;HAP. I.J THE KESTORATIOM. 507 

virus ; think of his long nights at the hospital, the wan patient carried 
on a mattress to the operating table, and stretching out his leg to the 
knife ; or again of the peasant's bed of straw in the damp cottage, wh^re 
an old dropsical mother lies choking,^ while her children grudgingly 
count up the crowns she has already cost them. You quit such scenes 
vath a swelling heart, charged with sympathy for human misery ; you 
discover that life, seen near and face to face, is a mass of trivial harsh- 
nerises and of grievous passions ; you are tempted, if you wish to depict 
it, to enter into the mire of sorrows whereon Balzac and Shakspeare 
have built: you see in it no other poetry than that audacious reasoning 
power which from such a confusion abstracts the master-forces, or the 
light of the genius which flickers over the throes and the falls of so 
many polluted and murdered wretches. How all changes under the 
hand of a mercurial Frenchman 1 how all this human ugliness is blotted 
out! how amusing is the spectacle which Moliere has arranged for usl 
how we ought to tliank the great artist for having transformed his sub- 
ject so well I At last we have a laughing world, on canvas at least; 
we could not have it otherwise, but this we have. How pleasant it is to 
forget truth I what an art is that which divests us of ourselves! what a 
point of view which converts the contortions of suffering into ridiculous 
grimaces 1 Gaiety has come upon us, the dearest of a Frenchman's 
possessions. The soldiers of Villars used to dance that they might 
forget they had no longer any bread. Of all French possessions, too, 
it is the best. This gift does not destroy thought, but it masks it. In 
Moliere, truth is at the bottom, but concealed; he has heard the sobs 
of human tragedy, but he prefers not to echo them. It is quite enough 
to feel our wounds ; let us not go to the theatre to see them again. 
Philosophy, while it reveals them, advises us not to think of them too 
much. Let us enliven our condition with the gaiety of free conversa- 
tion and light wit, as we would the chamber of sickness. Let us muffle 
up Tartufe, Harpagon, the doctors, with outrageous ridicule: ridicule 
will make us forget their vices ; they will afford us amusement instead 
of causing horror. Let Alceste be grumpy and awkward. It is in the 
first place true, because our more valiant virtues are only the outbreaks 
A a temper out of harmony Avith circumstances ; but, in addition, it will 
bo amusing. His mishaps will cease to make him the martyr of justice; 
they Avill be only the consequences of a cross-grained character. As to 
the mystifications of husbands, tutors, and fathers, I fancy that we are 
not to see in them a concerted attack on society or morality. For one 
evening we are entertaining ourselves, nothing more. The syrmges 
and thrashings, the masquerades and dances, prove that it is a sheer 
piece of buffoonery. Do not be afraid that philosophy will perish in a 
pantomime ; it is present even in the Manage force, even in the Malade 
iraaginaire. It is the mark of a Frenchman and a man of the world to 

Consultations of ^ganarcllc in the Mtdc.dn malc/re hi 



508 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

clothe everything, even that which is serious, in laughter. When he 
is tliinking, he does not always wish to show it. In his most violent 
moments he is still the master of the house, the polite host ; he talks 
to you of his thoughts or of his suffering. Mirabeau, when in agony, 
said to one of his friends with a smile, ' Come, you who take an interest 
in plucky deaths, you shall see mine I' The French talk in this style 
when they are depicting life ; no other nation know? how tc philosophise 
lightly, and die with good taste. 

This is the reason why in no other nation comedy, Avhile it con- 
tinues comic, affords a moral ; Moliere is the only man who gives U8 
models without getting pedantic, without trenching on the tragic, 
without growing solemn. This model is the * honest man,' as the 
phrase was, Philinte, Ariste, Clitandre, Eraste ; ^ there is no other 
who can at the same time instruct us and amuse. His talent has 
reflection for its basis, but it is cultivated by the world. His character 
has honesty for its basis, but it is in harmony with the world. You 
may imitate him without transgressing either reason or duty; he is 
neither a coxcomb nor a roisterer. You can imitate him without 
neglecting your interests or making yourself ridiculous ; he is neither 
an ignoramus nor unmannerly. He has read and understands the 
jargon of Trissotin and M. Lycidas, but in order to pierce them through 
and through, to beat them with their own arguments, to set the gallery 
in a roar at their expense. He will discuss even morality and religion, 
but in a style so natural, with proofs so clear, with warmth so genuine, 
that he interests women, and is listened to by men of the world. He 
knows man, and reasons upon him, but in such brief sentences, such 
living delineations, such pungent humour, that his philosophy is the 
best of entertainments. He is faithful to his ruined mistress, his 
calumniated friend, but gracefully, without fuss. All his actions, even 
noble ones, have an easy way about them which adorns them ; he does 
nothing without diversion. His great talent is knowledge of the world; 
he wears it not only in the trivial circumstances of every-day life, but 
in the most moving scenes, the most embarrassing positions. A noble 
swordsman wants to take this 'honest man' as his second in a duel ; he 
reflects a moment, excuses himself in a score of phrases, and ' without 
playing the Hector,' leaves the bystanders convinced that he is no 
coward. Armande insults him, then throws herself in his arms ; he 
politely averts the storm, declines the offer with the most loyal frank- 
ness, and without employing a single falsehood, leaves the spectators 
convinced that he is no boor. When he loves Eliante,^ who prefers 
Alceste, and whom Alceste may possibly marry, he proposes to her with 
a complete delicacy and dignity, without lowering liimself, without 
recrimination, without wronging himself or his friend. When Oronta 

* Amongst women, ifeliante, Henriette, EHse, Uranie, Ehnire. 

* Compare the admirable tact and coolness of ifeliante, Henriette, and Ehnire. 



CHAP. I.} THE RESTOKATION. 509 

reads him a sonnet, he dees not assume in the fop a nature ■which lie has 
not, but praises the conventional verses in conventional language, and is 
not so chimsy as to display a poetical judgment which would be out ot 
place. He takes at once his tone from the circumstances ; he percei\e8 
'nstantly what he must speak and what be silent about, in what degree 
and .o what shade, what exact expedient will reconcile truth and con- 
ventiotal propriety, how far he ought to go or where to take his stand, 
vvhat faint line separates decorum from flattery, truth from awkward- 
ness. On this narrow path he proceeds free from embarrassment or 
mistak^j aever put out of his way by the shocks or changes of circum- 
stance, never allowing the calm smile of politeness to quit his lips, 
never omitting to receive with a laugh of good humour the nonsense 
of his neighbour. This cleverness, entirely French, reconciles in him 
fundamental honesty and worldly breeding ; without it, he would be 
altogether on the one side or the other. In this way comedy finds iti 
hero half-way between the roue and the preacher. 

Such a theatre depicts a race and an age. This mixture of solidity 
and elegance belongs to the seventeenth century, and belongs to France. 
The world does not deprave, it develops Frenchmen ; it polished then 
not only their manners and their homes, but also their sentiments and 
ideas. Conversation provoked thought ; .it was no mere talk, but an 
inquiry ; with the exchange of news, it called forth the interchange of 
reflections. Theology entered into it, as did also philosophy ; morals, 
and the observation of the heart, formed its daily pabulum. Science 
kept up the sap, and lost only the thorns. Diversion cloaked reason, 
but did not smother it. Frenchmen never think better than in society; 
the play of features excites them ; their ready ideas flash into lightning, 
in their shock with the ideas of others. The varied movements of 
conversation suit their fits and starts ; the frequent change of subject 
fosters their invention ; the pungency of piquant speeches reduces truth 
t > small but precious coin, suitable to the lightness of their hands. And 
I he heart is no more tainted by it than the intelligence. The French- 
mar, is of a sober temperament, with little taste for the brutishness of 
the drunkard for violent joviality, for the riot of loose suppers ; he is 
moreover gentle, obliging, always ready to please ; to set him at ease, 
he needs that flow of goodwill and elegance which the world supplies 
and cherishes. And in accordance therewith, he shapes his temperate 
and amiable inclinations into maxims ; it is a point of honour with hira 
to be serviceable and refined. Such is the honest man, the product of 
society in a sociable race. It was not so with the people in England. 
Their ideas do not spring up in chance conversation, but by the con- 
centration of solitary thought ; this is the reason why ideas were then 
wanting. Honesty is not the fruit of sociable instincts, but of personal 
reflection ; that is why honesty was then at a discount. The brutish 
foundation remained; the outside alone was smooth. Manners were 
gentle, sentiments harsh ; speech was studied, ideas frivolouSr thought 



510 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lil 

and refinement of soul were rare, talent and fluent wit abundant, 
There was politeness of manner, not of heart ; they had only the sej 
rules and the conventionalisms of life, its giddiness and heedlessness. 

VIL 

The English comedy writers paint these vices, and possess them. 
Their talent and their stage are tainted by them. Art and philosoj)hy 
are absent. The authors do not advance upon a general idea, and they 
do not proceed by the most direct method. They put together ill, and 
are embarrassed by materials. Their pieces have generally two inter- 
mingled plots, manifestly distinct,^ combined in order to multiply inci- 
dents, and because the public demands a multitude of characters and 
facts. A strong current of boisterous action is necessary to stir up their 
dense appreciation ; they do as the Romans did, who packed several 
Greek plays into one. They grew tired of the French simplicity of 
action, because they had not the French taste and quick apprehension. 
The two series of actions mingle and jostle one with another. We 
cannot see where we are going ; every moment we are turned out of 
our path. The scenes are ill connected ; they change twenty times 
from place to place. When one subject begins to develop itself, a 
deluge of incidents interrupts. An irrelevant dialogue drags on be- 
tween the incidents, suggesting a book with the notes introduced pro- 
miscuously into the text. There is no plan carefully conceived and 
rigorously carried out ; they took, as it were, a plan, and wrote out the 
scenes one after another, pretty much as they came into their head. 
Probability is not well cared for. There are poorly arranged disguises, 
ill simulated folly, mock marriages, and attacks by robbers worthy of 
the comic opera. To obtain a sequence of ideas and probability, one 
must set out from some general idea. The conception of avarice, 
hypocrisy, the education of women, disproportionate marriages, arranges 
and binds together by its individual power the incidents which are to 
reveal it. Here we look in vain for such a conception. Congreve, 
Farquhar, Vanbrugh, are only men of wit, not thinkers. They slip 
over the surface of things, but do not penetrate. They play with their 
characters. They aim at success, at amusement. They sketch carica- 
tures, they spin out in lively fashion a vain and railing conversation ; 
they make answers clash with one another, fling forth paradoxes ; their 
nimble fingers manipulate and juggle with the incidents in a hundred 
ingenious and unlooked-for ways. They have animation, they abound 
in gesture and repartee ; the constant bustle of the stage and its lively 
spirit surround them with continual excitement. But the pleasure is 
only skin-deep ; you liave seen nothing of the eternal foundation and 
the real nature of mankind ; you carry no thought away ; you have 

> Dry den boasts of this. With him we always find a complete comedT 
grossly amalgamated with a complete tragedy. 



CHAP, l.t THE RESTORATION. 511 

passed an hour, and tnat is all ; the amusement leaves you vacant, and 
serves only to fill up the evenings of coquettes and coxcombs. 

Moreover, this pleasure is not real; it has no resemblance to the 
hearty laughter of Moliere. In English comedy there is always an 
undercurrent of tartness. We have seen this, and more, in Wycherley ; 
the others, though less cruel, joke sourly. Their characters in a joke 
say harsh things to one another; they amuse themselves by hurting 
each other ; a Frenchman is pained to hear this interchange of mock 
politeness; he does not go to blows by way of fun. Their dialogue turns 
naturally to virulent satire ; instead of covering vice, it makes it pro- 
minent; instead of making it ridiculous, it makes it odious: 

* Clarima. Prithee, tell me how you have passed the night ? . . . 

Araminta. Why, I have been studying all the ways my brain could producf 
to plague my husband. 

CI. No wonder indeed you look as fresh this morning, after the satisfactioi 
of such pleasing ideas all night.'* 

These women are veritably wicked, and that too openly. Throughout 
the vice is crude, pushed to extremes, served up with material ad- 
juncts. Lady Fidget says : * Our virtue is like the statesman's religion. 
the quaker's word, the gamester's oath, and the great man's honour ; 
but to cheat those that trust us.' ^ Or again : ' If you'll consult the 
widows of this town,' says a young lady who wdll not marry again, 
' they'll tell you, you should never take a lease of a house you can 
hire for a quarter's warning.' ^ Or again : * My heart cut a caper up 
to my mouth,' says a young heir, * when I heard my father was shot 
through the head."* The gentlemen collar each other on the stage, 
treat the ladies roughly before spectators, contrive an adultery not iar 
off between the wings. Base or ferocious parts abound. There are 
furies like Mrs. Loveit and Lady Touchwood. There are swine like 
parson Bull and the go-between Coupler. Lady Touchwood wants to 
stab her lover on the stage.^ Coupler, on the stage, uses gestures which 
recall the court of Henry iii. of France. Wretches like Fainall and 
Maskwell are unmitigated scoundrels, and their hatefulness is not even 
cloaked by the grotesque. Even honest women like Silvia and Mrs. 
Sullen are plunged into the most shocking situations. Nothing shocked 
that, public ; they had no real education, but only its varnish. 

There is a forced connection between the mind of a writer, the 
world which surrounds him, and the characters which he produces ; for 
it is from this world that he draws the materials out of which he com- 
poses them. The sentiments which he contemplates in others and feels 

* Vanbrugh, Confederaxiy , 11. 1. ^ Wycherley, The Country Wife, v. 4. 

' Vanbrugh, Melap.se, ii. end. ■* Ibid. 

^ She says to Maskwell, her lover : * You want but leisure to invent fresh 
falsehood, and soothe me to a fond belief of all your fictions ; but I will slat 
the lie that's forming in your heart, and save a sin, in pity to your soul.'— 
Cougreve, Double Dealer, v. 17. 



512 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ill 

himself are gradually arranged into characters ; he can cnly invent 
after his given model and his acquired experience ; and his characters 
only manifest what he is, or abridge what he has seen. Two features 
are prominent in this Avorld ; they are prominent also on this stage. 
All the successful characters can be reduced to two classes — natural 
beings on the one part, and artificial on the other ; the first with the 
coarseness and shamelessness of their primitive inclinations, the second 
with the frivolities and vices of worldly habits : the first uncultivated, 
their simplicity revealing nothing but their innate baseness ; the second 
cultivated, their refinement instilling into them nothing but a new cor- 
ruption. And the talent of the writers is suited to the painting of these 
two groups : they have the grand English faculty, which is the know- 
ledge of exact detail and real sentiments ; they see gestures, surround- 
ings, dresses ; they hear the sounds of voices, and they have the courage 
to exhibit them ; they have inherited, very little, and at a great dis- 
tance, and in spite of themselves, still they have inherited from Shak- 
speare ; they manipulate openly, and without any softening, the coarse 
harsh red colour which alone can bring out the figures of their brutes. 
On the other hand, they have animation and a good style ; they can 
express the thoughtless chatter, the foolish affectations, the inexhaustible 
and capricious abundance of drawing-room stupidities ; they have as 
much liveliness as the most foolish, and at the same time they speak 
as well as the best instructed ; they can give the model of witty con- 
versations; they have lightness of touch, brilliancy, and also facility, 
exactness, without which you cannot draw the portrait of a man of 
the world. They find naturally on their palette the strong colours which 
suit their barbarians, and the pretty tints which suit their exquisites. 

VIII. 

First there is the blockhead, Squire Sullen, a low kind of sot, of 
whom his wife speaks in this fashion : ' After his man and he had 
rolled about the room, like sick passengers in a storm, he comes flounce 
into bed, dead as a salmon into a fishmonger's basket ; his feet cold as 
ice, his breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and his face as greasy as 
his flannel nightcap. O matrimony 1 He tosses up the clothes with j» 
barbarous swing over his shoulders, disorders the whole economy of 
my bed, leaves me half naked, and my whole night's comfort is the 
tuneable serenade of that wakeful nightingale, his nose ! ' ^ Sir John 
Brute says : * What the plague did I marry her (his wife) for ? I knew 
she did not like me ; if she had, she would have lain with me.' ^ He 
turns his drawing-room into a stable, smokes it foul to drive the women 
away, throws his pipe at their heads^ drinks, swears, and curses. Coarse 
words and oaths flow through his conversation like filth through a 

' Fai-quhar, The Beaux Stratagem, ii. 1. 
• Vanbrugh, Provoked W'/e, v 6. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 513 

gutter., He drinks himself drunk at the tavern, and howls out, * Damn 
morality I and damn the watch ! and let the constable be married.' ^ 
He cries out that he is a free-born Englishman ; he wants to go out and 
break everything. He leaves the inn with other besotted scamps, and 
attacks the women in the street. He robs a tailor who was carrying a 
doctor's gown, puts it on, thrashes the guard. He is seized and taken 
by the constable ; on the road he breaks out into abuse, and ends by 
proposing to him, amid the hiccups and stupid reiterations of a drunken 
Bian, tc go and find out somewhere a bottle and a girl. He returns 
at last, covered with blood and mud, gro\Yling like a dog, with red 
swollen eyes, calling his wife a slut and a liar. He goes to her, 
forcibly embraces her, and as she turns away, cries, * I see it goes 
damnably against your stomach — and therefore — kiss me again. (Kisses 
and tumbles her.) So, now you being as dirty and as nasty as myself. 
we may go pig together.' ^ He Avants to get a cup of cold tea out of 
the closet, kicks open the door, and discovers his wife's and niece's 
gallants. He storms, raves madly with his clammy tongue, then sud- 
denly falls asleep. His valet comes and takes the insensible burden on 
his shoulders.^ It is the portrait of a mere animal, and I fancy it is 
not a nice one. 

That is the husband ; let us look at the father, Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, 
a country gentleman, elegant, if any of them were. Tom Fashion knocks 
at the door of the mansion, whicli looks like 'Noah's ark,' and where 
they receive people as in a besieged city. A servant appears at a 
window with a blunderbuss in his hand, who is at last unwillingly 
persuaded that he ought to let his master know. * Kalpb, go thy weas, 
and ask Sir Tunbelly if he pleases to be waited upon. And dost hear ? 
call to nurse, that she may lock up Miss Hoyden before the geat's open.'* 
You see in this house they keep a watch over the giils. Sir Tunbelly 
comes up with his people, armed with guns, pitchforks, scythes, and 
clubs, m no amiah>le mood, and wants to know the name of his visitor. 
*Till I know your name, 1 shuU not ask you to come into my house; 
and when I know your name — 'tis six to four I don't ask you neither.' ^ 
He is like a watchdog growling and looking at the calves of an intruder. 
But he presently learns that this intruder is his future son-in-law ; he 
utters some exclamations, and makes his excuses. ' Cod's my life I I 
Bsk your lordship's pardon ten thousand times. (To a servant) Here, 
1 un in a-doors quickly. Get a Scotch-coal fire in the great parlour ; 
s^.t all the Turkey- work chairs in their places; get the great bras«» 
candlesticks out, and be sure stick the sockets full of laurel, liun 1 . . . 
And do you hear, run away to nurse, bid her let Miss Hoyden loose 

» Vanbrugli, Provoked Wife, iii. 2. « lUd. v. 2. 

3 The valet Rasor says to hid master : ' Come to your kennel, yr r cuclioldj 
drunken sot you.' — Ibid, 

* Yauhrugh's Relapse, iii. 3. ^ Ibid. 

2 K 



514 THE CLASSIC AGE [BOOK Til 

again, and if it was not shifting-day, let her put on a clean tucker, 
quick ! ' ^ The false son-in-law wants to marry Hoyden straight ofF. 
* Not so soon neither ! that's shooting my girl before you bid her stand 
. . . Besides, my wench's wedding-gown is not come home yet.'* The 
other suggests that a speedy marriage will save money. Spare money? 
says the father, 'Udswoons, I'll give my wench a wedding-dinner, though 
I go to grass with the king of Assyria for't. . . . Ah ! poor girl, she'll be 
scared out of her wits on her wedding-night ; for, honestly speaking, 
she does not know a man from a woman but by his beard and his 
breeches.'* Foppington, the true son-in-law, arrives. Sir Tunbelly, 
taking him for an impostor, calls him a dog ; Hoyden proposes to drag 
him in the horse-pond ; they bind him hand and foot, and thrust him 
into the dog-kennel ; Sir Tunbelly puts his fist under his nose, and 
threatens to knock his teeth down his throat. Afterwards, having 
discovered the impostor, he says, ' My lord, will you cut his throat ? 
or shall I ? . . . Here, give me my dog-whip. . . . Here, here, here, let 
me beat out his brains, and that will decide all.'* He behaves like a 
lunatic, and wants to fall upon him with his fists. Such is the country 
gentleman, landlord and farmer, boxer and drinker, brawler and beast. 
Tiiere steams up from all these scenes a smell of cooking, the noise of 
riot, the odour of a dunghill. 

Like father like child. What a candid creature is Miss Hoyden I 
She grumbles to herself, ' It's well I have a husband a-coming, or, ecod, 
I'd marry the baker; I would so ! Nobody can knock at the gate, but 
presently I must be locked up ; and here's the young greyhound bitch 
can run loose about the house all the day long, she can ; 'tis very well.'* 
When the nurse tells her her future husband has arrived, she leaps for 
joy, and kisses the old woman. * O Lord I I'll go put on my laced smock, 
though I'm whipped till the blood run down my heels for't.' ® Tom 
comes himself, and asks her if she will be his wife. ' Sir, I never disobey 
ray fiither in anything but eating of green gooseberries.' But your 
father wants to wait . . . *a whole week.' * A week ! — why, I shall be an 
old woman by iLat time.' ' I cannot give all her answers. There is the 
spirit of a she-godt under her kitchen-talk. She marries Tom secretly 
on the spot, and ihe chaplain wishes them many children. * Ecod,' she 
says, * with all my heart I the more the merrier, I say ; ha 1 nurse 1 ' * 



* Vanbrugh's Rdapsey iii. 3. * Ibid, iii 5. ' Ibid. * Ihid. v. 6. 
» Ihid. iii. 4. 6 ma, 7 Ihid. iv. 1. 

* Ihid. iv. 4. The character of the nurse is excellent. Tom Fashion thanks her 
for the training she has given Hoyden : *Alas, all I can boast of is, I gave her pure 
good milk, and so your honour would have said, an you had seen how the poor 
thing sucked it. — Eh ! God's blessing on the sweet face on't ! how it used to hang 
ftt this poor icat, and suck and squeeze, and kick and sprawl it would, till the 
Uftlly on't was so full, it would drop off like a leech.* 

This is genuine, even after Juliet's nurse in Shakspeare. 



CHAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 515 

But Lord Foppington, the true intended, turns up, and Tom makes5 off, 
Instantly her plan is formed. She bids the nurse and chaplain hold 
their tongues. * If you two will be sure to hold your tongues, and not 
uay a word of what's past, I'll e'en marry this lord too.' ' What,' says 
Hurse, ' two husbands, my dear ? ' * Why, you had three, good nurse, 
you may hold your tongue.' ^ She nevertheless takes a dislike to the 
lord, and very soon ; he is not Avell made, he hardly gives her enough 
pocket-money ; she hesitates between the two. ' If I leave my lord, 
I must leave n.y lady too ; and when I rattle about the streets in my 
coach, they'll only say. There goes mistress — mistress — mistress what ? 
What's tiiis man's name I have married, nurse ? ' ' Squire Fashion. 
* Squire Fashion is it ? — Well, 'Squire, that's better than nothing.* . . . 
Love him ! why do you think I love him, nurse? ecod, I would not 
care if he were hanged, so I were but once married to him I — No — 
that which pleases me, is to think what work I'll make when I get to 
London ; for when I am a wife and a lady both, nurse, ecod, I'll flaunt 
it with the best of 'em.' ^ But she is cautious all the same. She 
knows that her father has his dog's whip handy, and that he will give 
her a good shake. 'But, d'ye hear?' she says to the nurse. ' Pray, 
take care of one thing : when the business comes to break out, be sure 
you get between me and my father, for you know his tricks ; he'll 
knock me down.' * Here is your true moral ascendency. For such a 
character, there is no other, and Sir Tunbelly does well to keep her 
tied up, and to let her taste a discipline of daily stripes.* 

IX. 

Let us accompany this modest character to town, and place her with 
her equals in fine society. All these candid folk do wonders there, 
both in the way of actions and maxims. Wycherley's Country Wife 
gives us the tone. When one of them happens to find herself half 
honest,* she has the manners and the boldness of a hussar. Others 
seem horn with the souls of courtesans and procuresses. ' If I marry 
my lord Aimwell,' says Dorinda, ' there will be title, place, and pre- 
cedence, the Park, the play, and the drawing-room, splendo\ir, equipage, 
noise, and flambeaux. — Hey, my lady Aimwell's servants there I Lights, 
lights to the stairs ! my lady Aimwell's coach put forward ! Stand by, 
make room for her ladyship ! — Are not these things moving?' ^ She is 
open, and so are others — Corinna, Miss Betty, Belinda, for example. 
Belinda says to her aunt, whose virtue is tottering : ' The sooner you 
capitulate the better.'® Further on, when she has decided to marry 

• Vanbrugh's Relapse, iv. 6. '^ Ibid. v. 5. ^ Ibid. iv. 1. ^ Ibid. v. 5. 
^ See also the character of a young stupid blockhead, Squire Humphrey 
(Vanbrugh's Journey to Loiido.i.) He has only a single idea, to be always eating 
8 Wycherley's Hippolita ; Farquhar's Silvia. 
' Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem, iv. 1. ^ Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, hi. 3 



516 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Heartfree, to save her aunt who is compromised, slie makes a confes- 
sion of faith which promises well for the future of her new spouse : 
* Were't not for your affair in the balance, I should go near to pick 
up some odious man of quality yet, and only take poor Heartfree for a 
gallant.' ^ These young ladies are clever, and in all cases apt to follow 
good instruction. Hear Miss Prue: *Look you here, madam, then, 
what Mr, Tattle has given me. — Look you here, cousin, here's a snuff- 
box ; nay, there's snuff in't ; — here, will you have any ? — Oh, good I 
how sweet it is ! — Mr. Tattle is all over sweet ; his peruke is sweet, 
and his gloves are sweet, and his handkerchief is sweet, pure sweet, 
sw'ieter than roses. — Smell him, mother, madam, I mean. — He gave me 
this ring for a kiss. . . . Smell, cousin ; he says, he'll give mo something 
that will make my smocks smell this way. Is not it pure ? — It's better 
than lavender, mun. — I'm resolved I won't let nurse put any more 
lavender among my smocks — ha, cousin?'^ It is the silly chatter of 
a young magpie, who flies for the first time. Tattle, alone with her, 
tells her he is going to make love : 

* 3fiss P. Well ; and how will you make love to me ? come, I long to have you 
begin. Must I make love too ? you must tell me how. 

T. You must let me speak, miss, you must not speak first ; I must ask you 
questions, and you must answer. 

^Ifiss P. What, is it like the catechism ? — come then, ask me. 

T. D'ye think you can love me ? 

Miss P. Yes. 

T. Pooh ! pox ! you must not say yes already ; I shan't care a farthing for you 
then in a twinkling. 

Miss P. What must I say then ? 

T. Why, you must say no, or you believe not, or you can't tell 

Miss P. Why, must I tell a lie then ? 

T. Yes, if you'd be well-bred ; — all well-bred persons lie. — Besides, yon arc a 
woman, you must never speak what you think : your words must contradict your 
thoughts ; hut your actions may contradict your words. So, when I ask you, if you 
can love me, you must say no, but you must love me too. If I tell you you are 
handsome, you mu&t deny it, and say I flatter you. But you must think yourself 
m Ji e charming than I speak you : and like me, for the beauty Avhich I say you 
hive, as much as if I had it myself. If I ask you to kiss me, you must be angry, 
but you must not refuse me. . . . 

Miss P. Lord, I swear this is pure ! — I like it better than our old-fashioned 
country way of speaking one's mind ; — and must not you lie too ? 

T. Hum ! — Yes ; but you must believe I speak truth. 

Miss P. Gemini ! well, I always had a great mind to tell lies ; but they 
frighted me, and said it was a sin. 

T. Well, my pretty creature ; will you make me happy by giving me a kiss ? 

Miss P. No, indeed ; I'm angry at you. {Puns and kisses him.) 

T. Holl, hold, that's pretty well ; — but you should not have given it me, but 
have suffered me to have taken it. 



> Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife v. 2. '-' Centre ve's Love for Love, ii, 10. 



CHAP. I.] THP: RESTORAIIO^. 5] 7 

Miss P. Well, we'll do it again. 

T. With all my heart. Now, then, my little angel. {Kisses her.) 
Miss P. Pish! 

T. That's right — again, my charmer ! {Kisses again.) 
Miiis P. f y ! nay, now I can't abide you. 

T. Admirable ! that was as well as if you had been bom and bred in Covenfo 
9«den.'i 

She makes such rapid progress, that we must stop the quotation 
forthwith. And mark, what is bred in the bone will come out in the 
flesh. All these charming characters soon employ the language of 
kitchen-maids. When Ben, the dolt of a sailor, wants to make love 
tv- Miss Prue, she sends him off with a flea in his ear, raves, lets loose 
a string of cries and coarse expressions, calls him a ' great sea-calf.^ 
* What does father mean,' he says, * to leave me alone, as soon as I come 
home, with such a dirty dowdy ? Sea-calf ! I an't calf enough to lick 
your chalked face, you cheese-curd, you.' Moved by these amenities, 
she breaks out into a rage, weeps, calls him ' a stinking tar-barrel.'^ 
They come and put a stop to this first essay at gallantry. She fires up 
declares she will marry Tattle, or else Robin the butler. Her father 
says, ' Hussy, you shall have a rod.' She answers, ' A fiddle of a rod ! 
I'll have a husband : and if you won't get me one, I'll get one for my- 
self. I'll marry our Robin the butler.'^ Here are pretty and prancing 
mares if you like ; but decidedly, in these authors* hands, the natural 
man becomes nothing but a waif from the stable or the kennel. 

Will you be better pleased by the educated man ? The worldly 
life which they depict is a regular carnival, and the heads of their 
heroines are full of wild imaginations and unchecked gossip. You 
may see in Congreve how they chatter, with what a flow of words 
and affectations, with what a shrill and modulated voice, with what 
gestures, what twisting of arms and neck, what looks raised to heaven, 
what genteel airs, what grimaces. Lady Wishfort speaks : 

* But art thou sure Sir Rowland will not fail to come ? or will he not fail wher. 
he does come ? Will he be importunate, Foible, and push ? For if he should not 
be importunate, I shall never break decorums : — I shall die with confusion, if I 
am forced to advance. — Oh no, I can never advance ! — I shall swoon, if he should 
expect advances. No, I hope Sir Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the 
necessity of breaking her forms. I won't be too coy neither — I won't give him 
despair — but a httle disdain is not amiss ; a little scorn is alluring.' Foible. 'A 
littli scorn becomes your ladyship. ' Lady W. * Yes, but tenderness becomes me 
best — a sort of dyingness — you see that picture has a sort of a — ha, Foible ! l 
fiwimmingness in the eye — yes, I'll look so — my niece affects it ; but she wantj. 
featm-es. Is Sir Rowland handsome ? Let my toilet be removed — I'll dress above. 
rU receive Sir Rowland here. Is he handsome ? Don't answer me. I ^^on't know 
rU be surprised, I'll be taken by surprise.* . . And how do I look, Foible? 



» Congreve's Love for Love, ii. 11. '^ Ibid. iii. 7. ^ Ibid. v. 6t 

* Congreve, The Way of the World, iii. 5. 



518 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK !I1 

/*. * Most killing well, madam.' Lady W. * WeU, and how shall I receiire himi 

in what figure shall I give his heart the first impression? . . . Shall I sit? — no, 1 
Vi^on't sit — I'll walk— ay, I'll walk from the door upon his entrance ; and then turn 
full upon him — no, that will be too sudden. I'll lie — ay, I'll lie down — 111 
receive him in my little dressing-room ; there's a couch — yes, yes, I'll give tha 
first impression on a couch. I won't lie neither, but loll and lean upon one elbow : 
with one foot a little dangling off, jogging in a thoughtful way — yes — and ttta 
as soon as he appears, start, ay, start, and be surprised, and rise to me«t him Ln a 
pretty disorder. * * 

These hesitations of a finished coquette become still more vehement 
at the critical moment. Lady Plyant thinks herself beloved by Mellefont, 
who does not love her at all, and tries in vain to undeceive her. 

Mel, * For Heaven's sake, madam.' Lady P, '0, name it no more! — Blesa 
me, how can you talk of heaven ! and have so much wickedness in your heart 1 
May be you don't think it a sin. — They say some of you gentlemen don't think it 
a sin. — May be it is no sin to them that don't think it so ; indeed, if I did not 
think it a sin — but still my honour, if it were no sin. — But then, to marry my 
daughter, for the conveniency of frequent opportunities, I'll never consent to that; 
as sure as can be, I'll break the match.' Mel. ' Death and amazement. — Madam, 
upon my knees. ' Lady P. ' Nay, nay, rise up ; come, you shall see my good 
nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion : 'tis not your 
fault ; nor I swear it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms ? and how 
can you help it if j^'ou are made a captive ? I swear it is pity it should be a fault. 
But my honour, — well, but your honour too — but the sin ! — well, but the necessity 
— Lord, here is somebody coming, I dare not stay. "Well, you must consider of 
your crime ; and strive as much as can be against it, — strive, be sure— but don't 
be melancholic, don't despair. — But never think that I'll grant you anything ; 
Lord, no. — But be sure you lay aside all thoughts of the marriage : for though 1 
know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind to your passion for me, yet it will 
make me jealous. — Lord, what did I say ? jealous ! no, no ; I can't be jealous, 
for I must not love you — therefore don't hope, — but don't despair neither. — 0, 
they're coming ! I must fly. ' • 

She escapes, and we will not follow her. 

This giddiness, this volubility, this pretty corruption, these reckless 
and affected airs, are collected in the most brilliant, the most worldijf 
portrait of the stage we are discussing, that of Mrs. Millamsiit^ ' a fiii« 
lady,' as the Dramatis Personee say.^ She enters, * with her fan 
spread and hrr streamers out,' dragging a train of furbelow3 and 
ribbons, passing through the crowd of laced and bedizened fcps, in 
splendid perukes, who flutter about her path, haughty and wanton, 
witty and scornful, toying with gallantries, petulant, with a horror of 
every grave word and sustained action, falling in only with changa 
and pleasure. She laughs at the sermons of Mirabel], her suitor : 



1 Congreve, The Way of the World, 17 
« Congreve, T7ie Double-dealer, ii. 5. 
* Congreve, The Way of the World. 



HAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 51C, 

* Seutentiong MiraVell ! — Prithee don't look with that violent and inflexible 

wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in an old tapestry -hanging.^ . . . 
Ha ! ha ! ha! — pardon me, dear creature, though I grant you 'tis a little harbaroTu^ 
ha ! ha ! ha ! ' « 

She breaks out into laughter, then gets into a rage, then banters, 
then sings, then makes faces. Her attractions change at every motion 
while you look at her. It is a regular whirlpool ; all turns round ia 
her brain as in a clock when the mainspring is broken. Nothing can 
be prettier than her fashion of entering on matrimony: 

Mill. * Ah ! I'll never marry unless I am first made sure of my will and pleasure I 
, , . My dear liberty, shall I leave thee ? my faithful solitude, my darling con- 
templation, must I bid you then adieu ? Ay — h — adieu — my morning thouglits, 
agreeable wakings, indolent slumbers, all ye douceurs, ye sommeils du mating 
adieu? — I can't do it; 'tis more than impossible — positively, Mirabell, I'll lie 
a-bed in a morning as long as I please.' Mir. * Then I'U get up in a morning as 
early as I please.' Mill. *Ah ! idle creature, get up when you will— and d'ye hear, 
T won't be called names after I'm married ; positively I won't be called names.' 
Mir. *Kames ! ' Mill. *Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweetheart, 
and the rest of that nauseous cant, in Avhich men and their wives are so fulsomely 
familiar — I shall never bear that — good Mirabell, don't let us be famihar or fond, 
nor kiss before folks, Hke my Lady Fadler, and Sir Francis. . . . Let us never visit 
together, nor go to a play together ; but let us be very strange and well-bred : let 
us be as strange as if we had been married a great while ; and as well-bred as if wa 
were not married at aU.' . . . Mir. * Shall I kiss your hand upon the contract ? ' ' 
Mill. 'Fainall, Avhat shaU I do? shall I have him? I think I must have him.' 
Fain. *Ay, ay, take him. What should you do?' Mill. 'WeU then — I'll take 
my death I'm in a horrid fright — Fainall, I shall never say it — well — I think — 
I'll endure you.' Fain. * Fy ! fy ! have him, have him, and tell him so in plain 
terms : for I am sure you have a mind to him.' Mill. 'Are you ? I think I have — 
and the honid man looks as if he thought so too — well, you ridiculoiis thing you, 
I'll have you — I won't be kissed, nor I won't be thanked — here kiss my hand 
though. — So, hold your tongue now, don't say a word.' * 

The agreement is complete. I should like to see one more article to 
it — a divorce * a mensd et thoro :' this would be the genuine marriage 
of the worldlings, that is, a decent divorce. And I answer for it ; in 
two years, Mirabell and Millamant will come to this. Hither tends 
the whole of this theatre ; for, with regard to the women, but particu- 
larly with regard to the married women, I have only presented their 
m<i:st amiable aspects. Deeper down it is all gloomy, bitter, above all^ 
pernicious. It represents a household as a prison, marriage as a warfare, 
l\romac as a rebel, adultery as the result looked for, disorder as the 
light condition, extravagance as pleasure.* A woman of fashion goes 



* C!ongreve's Way of the World, ii. 6. * Hid. iii. 11, 

* Ibid. iv. 5. * Ibid. iv. 6. 

* Amanda. 'How did you live together?* Berinthia. 'Like man and wife, 
isunder. — He loved the country, I the town. He hawks and hounds, I coaches and 
equipage. He eating and drinking, I carding and playing. He the sound of a 



520 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOB ID 

to bed in the morning, rises at mid-day, curses her husband, listens^ bo 
obscenities, frequents balls, haunts the plays, ruins reputations, turns hei 
home into a gambling-house, borrows money, allures men, associates 
her honour and fortune with debts and assignations. 'We are as wicked 
(as men),' says Lady Bute, * but our vices lie another way. Men hava 
more courage than we, so they commit more bold, impudent sins. They 
quarrel, fight, swear, drink, blaspheme, and the like; whereas we 
being cowards, only backbite, tell lies, cheat at cards, and so forth." 
Excellent catalogue, where the gentlemen are included with the rest i 
The world has done nothing but arm them with correct phrases and 
elegant dresses. In Congreve especially they have the best style ; 
above all, they know how to hand ladies about and entertain them with 
news ; they are expert in the fence of retorts and replies ; they are 
never out of countenance, find means to make the most ticklish notions 
understood ; they discuss veiy well, speak excellently, salute still better ; 
but to sum up, they are blackguards, epicureans on system, professed 
seducers. They set forth immorality in maxims, and reason out their 
vice. * Give me,' says one, ' a man that keeps his five senses keen and 
bright as his sword, that has 'em always drawn out in their just order 
and strength, with his reason, as commander at the head of 'em, that 
detaches 'em by turns upon whatever party of pleasure agreeably offers, 
and commands 'em to retreat upon the least appearance of disadvantage 
or danger. ... I love a fine house, but let another keep it; and just so 
I love a fine woman.' ^ One deliberately seduces his friend's wife; 
another under a false name gets possession of his brother's intended 
A third hires false witnesses to secure a dowry. I must ask the reader 
to consult for himself the fine stratagems of Worthy, Mirabell, and 



horn, I the squeak of a fiddle. We were dull company at table, worse a-hed. 
Whenever we met, we gave one another the spleen ; and never agreed but once, 
"wliicli was about lying alone.' — Vanbrugh, Relapse, Act ii. ad Jin. 

Compare Vanbrugh, A Journey to London. Rarely has the repulsiveness and 
corruption of the brutish or worldly nature been more vividly displayed. Little 
Betty and her brother, Squire Humphry, deserve hanging. 

Again. Mrs. Foresight. * Do you think any woman honest ? * Scandal. * Yes, 
ieveral very honc;jt ; they'll cheat a little at cards, sometimes ; but that's nothing.' 
Mrs. F. * Pshaw ! but virtuous, I mean.' S. * Yes, faith ; I believe some women 
»re virtuous too ; but 'tis as I believe soma men are valiant, through fear. Fcr 
why should a man court danger or a woman shun pleasure ? ' — Congreve, Love f of 
Love, iii. 14. 

^ Vanbrue-h. Provoked Wife. v. 2. Comnare also in this niece the characiei 
of Mademoiselle, the French chambermaid. They represent Frencli vice at 
even more shameless than English vice. 

^ Farquhar's The Beaux Stratagem, i. 1 ; and in the same piece here is the 
(jatecbism of love : * What are the objects of that passion? — youth, beauty, and 
clean linen.' And from the Mock Astrologer of Dryden : ' As I am a gentleman 
a man about town, one tbat wears good cloths, eats, drinks, f ud wenches sutfi 



CHAP. I.J THE RESTORATION. 521 

Others. They are coldblooded rascals who commit treachei/, adultery 
scoundr^lism, like trained experts. They are represented hevre as men 
of fashion ; they are young leaders, heroes, and as such they manage 
to get hold of an heiress. We must go to Mirabell for an example of 
this medley of corruption and elegance. Mrs. Fainall, his old mistress, 
married by him to a common friend, a miserable wretch, complains 
to him of this hateful marriage. He appeases her, gives her advice, 
shows her the precise mode, the true expedient for setting things on 
a comfortable footing. *You should have just so much disgust for 
your husband, as may be sufficient to make you relish your lover.* Sh« 
cries in despair, ' Why did you make me marry this man ? ' He smiles 
calmly, * Why do we daily commit disagreeable and dangerous actions ? 
to save that idol, reputation.' How tender is this argument I How 
can a man better console a woman whom he has plunged into bitter 
unhappiness 1 What a touching logic in the insinuation which follows : 
*If the familiarities of our loves had produced that consequence of which 
you were apprehensive, where could you have fixed a father's name with 
credit, but on a husband ? ' He insists on his reason in an excellent 
style ; listen to the distinction of a man of feeling : * A better man 
ought not to have been sacrificed to the occasion; a worse had not 
answered to the purpose. When you are weary of him, you know your 
remedy.' ^ Thus are a woman's feelings to be considered, especially a 
woman whom we have loved. To cap all, this delicate conversation is 
meant to force the poor deserted Mrs. Fainall into an intrigue which 
shall obtain for Mirabell a pretty wife and a good dowry. Certainly 
this gentleman knows the world ; no one could better employ a former 
mistress. Such are the cultivated characters of this theatre, as dishonest 
as the uncultivated ones : having transformed their evil instincts into 
systematic vices, lust into debauchery, brutality into cynicism, perversity 
into depravity, deliberate egotists, calculating sensualists, with rules for 
their immorality, reducing feeling to self-interest, honour to decorum, 
happiness to pleasure. 

The English Restoration altogether was one of those great crises 
which, while warping the development of a society and a literature, 
show the inward spirit which they modify, but which contradicts them. 
Society did not lack vigour, nor literature talent ; men of the world 
were polished, writers inventive. There was a court, drawing-rooms, 
conversation, worldly life, a taste for letters, the example of France, 
peace, leisure, the influence of the sciences, politics, theology, — in short, 
all the happy circumstances which can elevate the intellect and civilise 
manners. There was the vigorous satire of Wycherley, the sparkling 
dialogue and fine raillery of Congreve, the frank nature and animation 
of Vanbnigh, the manifold inventions of Farquhar, in brief, all the 
resources which might nourish the comic element, and add a genuinf 

' Congreve, The Way of the World, ii. 4, 



622 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ID 

theatre to the best constructions of human intelligence. Nothing canM 
to a head ; all was abortive. The age has left nothing but the memory 
of corruption ; their comedy remains a repertory of viciousness ; society 
had only a soiled elegance, literature a frigid wit. Their manners wer« 
gross and trivial; their ideas are futile or incomplete. Through disgust 
and reaction, a revolution was at hand in literary feeling and moral 
habits, as well as in general beliefs and political institutions. Man wag 
to change altogether, and at a single turn. The same repugnance and 
the same experience was to detach him from every aspect of his old 
condition. The Englishman discovered that he was not monarchical, 
Papistical, nor sceptical, but liberal, Protestant, and devout. He came 
to understand that he was not a roisterer nor a worldling, but reflective 
and introspective. He contains a current of animal life too violent to 
suffer him without danger to abandon himself to enjoyment ; he need* 
a barrier of moral reasoning to repress his outbreaks. He contains a 
current of attention and will too strong to suffer himself to rest content 
with trifles ; he needs some weighty and serviceable labour on which to 
expend his power. He needs a barrier and an employment. He 
needs a constitution and a religion which shall restrain him by duties 
which must be performed, and rights which must be defended. He is 
content only in a serious and orderly life ; there he finds the natural 
groove and the necessary outlet of his passions and his faculties. From 
this time he enters upon it, and this theatre itself exhibits the token. 
It remakes and transforms itself. Collier threw discredit upon it; 
Addison condemned it. National sentiment awoke from the dream ; 
French manners are jeered at; the prologues celebrate the defeats of 
Louis XIV. ; the licence, elegance, religion of his court, are presented 
under a ridiculous or odious light.* Immorality gradually diminishes, 
marriage is more respected, the heroines go no further than to the 
verge of adultery ;^ the roisterers are pulled up at the critical moment ; 
one of them suddenly declares himself purified, and speaks in verse, the 
better to mark his enthusiasm ; another praises marriage;* some aspire 
in the fifth act to an orderly life. We shall soon see Steele writing a 
moral treatise called The Christian Hero. Henceforth comedy declines, 
and literary talent flows into another channel. Essay, romance, pam- 
phlet, dissertation, displace the drama ; and the English classical spirit, 
abandoning the kinds of writing which are foreign to its nature, enters 



* The part of Chaplain Foigard in Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem; of Mademoi* 
Belle, and generally of all tlie French people. 

* The part of Amanda in Vanbnigli's Relapse ; of Mrs. Sullen ; the converaioi 
of two roisterers, in the Beavx Stratagem. 

^ ' Thongli marriage be a lottery in which there are a wondrous many blank% 
yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven upon earth is written.' 

'To be capable of loving one, doubtless, is better than to pwsess a thori 
sand." — VANr.RUGn. 



UHAP. I.j THE RESTORATION. 52a 

upon the great works which are destined to immortalise it and give it 
expression. 

X. 

Nevertheless, in this continuous decline of dramatic invention, and 
in the great change of literary vitality, some shoots strike out at dis- 
tant hitervals towards comedy ; for mankind always seeks for entertain- 
ment, and the theatre is always a place of entertainment. The tree 
once planted grows, feebly without a doubt, with long intervals of almost 
total dryness and almost constant barrenness, yet subject to imperfect 
renewals of life, to passing partial blossomings, sometimes to an inferior 
fruitage bursting forth from the lowest branches. Even when the great 
subjects are worn out, there is still room here and there for a happy idea. 
Let a wit, clever and experienced, take it in hand, he will catch up a 
few oddities on his way, he will introduce on the scene some vice or 
fault of his time ; the public will come in crowds, and ask no better 
than to recognise itself and laugh. There was one of these successes 
when Gay, in the Beggars' Opera^ brought out the rascaldom of the 
great world, and avenged the public on Walpole and the court; 
another, when Goldsmith, inventing a series of mistakes, led his here 
and his audience through five acts of blunders.^ After all, if true 
comedy can only exist in certain ages, ordinary comedy can exist in 
any age. It is too near akin to the pamphlet, novels, satire, not to 
raise itself occasionally by its propinquity. If I have an enemy, in- 
stead of attacking him in a brochure, I can take my fling at him on 
the stage. If I am capable of painting a character in a story, I am not 
far from having the talent to bring out the pith of this same character 
in a few turns of a dialogue. If I can quietly ridicule a vice in a copy 
of verses, I shall easily arrive at making this vice speak out from the 
mouth of an actor. At least I shall be tempted to try it ; I shall be 
seduced by the wonderful eclat which the footlights, declamation, 
scenery give to an idea ; I shall try and bring my own into this strong 
light ; I shall go in for it even when it is necessary that my talent be a 
little or a good deal forced for the occasion. If need be, I shall delude 
myself, substitute expedients for fresh originality and true comic genius. 
If on a few jxiints I am inferior to the great masters, on some, it may be„ 
I surpass them ; I can work up my style, refine upon it, discover 
happier words, more striking jokes, livelier exchange of brilliant 
repartees, newer images, more picturesque comparisons ; I can take 
from this one a character, from the other a situation, borrow of a 
neighbouring nation, out of old plays, good novels, biting pamphlets, 
pointed satires, and small newspapers ; I can accumulate effects, serve 
up to the public a stronger and more appetising stew; above all, I 
can perfect my machine, oil the wheels, plan the surprises, the staga 

' Site /Stoops to Ccnquer, 



524 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

•ffects, the see-sav/ of the plot, like a consummate playwright. The 
art of constructing plays is as capable of development as the art of 
clockmaking. The farce-writer of to-day sees that the catastrophe of 
half of Moliere's plays is ridiculous ; nay, many of them can produce 
effects better than Moliere ; in the long run, they succeed in stripping 
the theatre of all awkwardness and circumlocution. A piquant style, 
and perfect machinery ; pungency in all the words, and animation in 
all the scenes; a superabundance of wit, and marvels of ingenuity; over 
all this, a true physical activity, and the secret pleasure of depicting 
and justifying oneself, of public self-glorification : here is the founda- 
tion of the School for Scandal^ here the source of the talent and thf 
success of Sheridan. 

He was the contemporary of Beanmarchais, and resembled him in 
his talent and in his life. The two epochs, the two schools of drama, 
the two characters, correspond. Like Beanmarchais, he was a lucky 
adventurer, clever, amiable, and generous, reaching success through 
scandal, who flashed up and shone in a moment, scaled with a rush the 
empyrean of politics and literature, settled himself, as it were, among 
the constellations, and, like a brilliant rocket, presently went out in the 
darkness. Nothing failed him; he attained all at the first leap, without 
apparent effort, like a prince who need only show himself to win his 
place. All the most surpassing happiness, the most brilliant in art, the 
most exalted in worldly position, he took as his birthright. The poor 
unknown youth, wretched translator of an unreadable Greek sophist, 
who at twenty walked about Bath in a red waistcoat and a cocked hat, 
destitute of hope, and ever conscious of the emptiness of his pockets, 
had gained the heart of the most admired beauty and musician of her 
time, had carried her off from ten rich, elegant, titled adorers, had 
fought with the best-hoaxed of the ten, beaten him, had carried by 
storm the curiosity and attention of the public. Then, challenging 
glory and wealth, he placed successively on the stage the most diverse 
and the most applauded dramas, comedies, farce, opera, serious verse; 
he bought and worked a large theatre without a farthing, inaugurated 
a reign of successes and pecuniary advantages, and led a life of elegance 
amid the enjoyments of social and domestic joys, surrounded by univer- 
sal admiration and wonder. Thence, aspiring yet higher, he conquered 
power, entered the House of Commons, showed himself a match for the 
first orators, opposed Pitt, accused Warren Hastings, supported Fox, 
jeered at Burke ; sustained with eclat^ disinterestedness, and constancy, 
a most difficult and generous part; became one of the three or four most 
noted men in England, an equal of the greatest lords, the friend of a 
royal prince, in the end even Keceiver-General of the Duchy of Corn- 
wall, treasurer to the fleet. In every career he took the lead. A« 
Byron said of him : 

' Whatsoever Sheridan has done, or chosen to do has been,7>ar excellence, ol 
cvays the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy {T7ie Scliool foi 



'JklAP. I.] THE RESTORATION. 525 

Scandal), the best drama (in my mind far before that St. Giles lampoon Ths 
Beggar's Opera), the best farce {The Critic — it is only too good for a farce), and 
the best Address (3Ionologue on Oarrick), and, to crown al^, delivered the very beat 
©ration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in tYAs country. ' * 

All ordinary rules were reversed in his favour. He was forty-four 
years old, debts began to shower down on him ; he had supped and 
drink to excess ; his cheeks were purple, his nose red. In this state 
he met at the Duke of Devonshire's a charming young lady with whom 
he fell in love. At the first sight she exclaimed, 'What an ugly man, 
a regular monster!' He spoke to her; she confessed that he was very 
ugly, but that he had a good deal of wit. He spoke again, and again, 
and she found him very amiable. He spoke yet again, and she loved 
him, and resolved at all ha^rd to marry him. The father, a prudent 
man, wishing to end the affair, gave out that his future son-in-law must 
provide a dowry of fifteen thousand pounds; the fifteen thousand pounds 
were deposited as by magic in the hands of a banker ; the young couple 
set off into the country ; and Sheridan, meeting his son, a fine strapping 
son, ill-disposed to the marriage, persuaded him that it was the most 
reasonable thing a father could do, and the most fortunate event that a 
son could rejoice over. Whatever the business, whoever the man, he 
persuaded ; none withstood him, every one fell under his charm. What 
is more difficult than for an ugly man to make a young girl forget 
his ugliness ? 

There is one thing more difldcult, and that is to make a creditor 
forget you owe him money. There is something more difficult still, 
and that is, to borrow money of a creditor who has come to demand it. 
One day one of his friends was arrested for debt ; Sheridan sends for 
Mr. Henderson, the crabbed tradesman, coaxes him, interests him, 
moves him to tears, lifts him out of himself, hedges him in with general 
considerations and lofty eloquence, so that Mr. Henderson offers his 
purse, actually wants to lend two hundred pounds, insists, and finally, 
to his great joy, obtains permission to lend it. No one was ever more 
EKiiable, quicker to win confidence than Sheridan; rarely has the sympa- 
thetic, affectionate, and fascinating character been more fully displayed; 
he was literally seductive. In the morning, creditors and visitors filial 
the rooms in which he lived ; he came in smiling, with an easy manner, 
w ith so much loftiness and grace, that the people forgot their wants and 
their claims, and looked as if they had only come to see him. His 
animation was irresistible ; no one had a more dazzling wit ; he had an 
inexhaustible fund of puns, contrivances, sallies, novel ideas. Lord 
Byron, who was a good judge, said that he had never heard nor con- 
ceived of a more extraordinary conversation. Men spent nights in listen- 
ing to him ; no one equalled him during a supper ; even when drunk 
he retained his wit. One day he was picked up by the watch, and 

• The Works of Lord Byron, 18 vols., ed. Moore, 1833, ii. p. 303. 



526 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 1I\ 

they asked him his name ; he gravely answered, * Wilberforce.' With 
Itrangers and inferiors he had no arrogance or stiiFness ; he possessed 
in an eminent degree that unreserved character which always exhibits 
itself complete, which holds back none of its light, which abandons and 
gives itself up ; he wept when he received a sincere eulogy from Lord 
Byron, or in recounting his miseries as a plebeian parvenu. Nothing is 
more charming than these effusions ; they set out by placing people on a 
footing of peace and amity ; men suddenly desert their defensive and 
precautionary attitude ; they perceive that he is giving himself up to 
them, and they give themselves up to him ; the outpouring of his heart 
excites the outpouring of theirs. A minute later, Sheridan's impetuoui 
and sparkling individuality flashes out ; his wit explodes, rattles like a 
discharge of fire-arms ; he takes the conversation to himself, with a 
sustained brilliancy, a variety, an inexhaustible vigour, till five o'clock 
in the morning. Against such a necessity for launching out in uncon- 
sidered speech, of indulgence, of self-outpouring, a man had need be 
well on his guard ; life cannot be passed like a holiday ; it is a strife 
against others and against oneself; people must think of the future, 
mistrust themselves, make provision ; there is no subsisting without the 
precaution of a shopkeeper, the calculation of a tradesman. If you 
sup too often, you will end by not having wherewithal to dine upon ; 
when your pockets have holes in them, the shillings wnll fall out; 
nothing is more of a truism, but it is true. Sheridan's debts accumu- 
lated, his digestion failed. He lost his seat'in Parliament, his theatre 
was burned ; sheriff's officer succeeded sheriff's officer, and they had 
long been in possession of his house. At last, a bailiff arrested the 
dying man in his bed, and was for taking him off in his blankets; 
nor would he let him go until threatened with a laAvsuit, the doctor 
having declared that the sick man would die on the road. A certain 
newspaper cried shame on the great lords who suffered such a man 
to end so miserably ; they hastened to leave their cards at his door. In 
the funeral procession two brothers of the king, dukes, earls, bishops, 
tlie first men in England, carried or followed the body. A singular 
contrast, picturing in abstract all his talent, and all his life : lords at his 
funeral, and bailiffs at his death-bed. 

His theatre was in accordance ; all was brilliant, but the metal was 
not all his own, nor was it of the best quality. His comedies were 
comedies of society, the most amusing ever written, but merely comedies 
i)f society. Imagine the exaggerated caricatures artists are wont to 
improvise, in a drawing-room where they are intimate, about eleven 
o'clock in the evening. His first play, TJie Rivals, and afterwards 
his Duenna, and The Critic, are loaded with these, and scarce any- 
thing else. There is Mrs Malaprop, a silly pretentious woman, who 
uses grand words higgledy-piggledy, delighted with herself, in * a nice 
derangement of epitaphs' before her nouns, and declaring that her niece 
us * as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.' There is 



CHAP I.l THE RESTORATION. 52*^ 

Mr. Acres, who suddenly becomes a hero, gets engaged in a duel, 
end being led on the ground, calculates the effect of the balls, thinks 
of his will, burial, embalmment, and wishes he were at home. There 
is another in the person of a clumsy and cowardly servant, of an 
irascible and brawling father, of a sentimental and romantic young 
lady, of a touchy Irish duellist. All this jogs and jostles on, with- 
out much order, amid the surprises of a twofold plot, by aid of ex- 
pedient? and rencontres, without the full and regular government of 
a dominating idea. But in vain one perceives it is a patchwork ; the 
high spirit carries off everything : we laugh heartily ; every single scene 
has its facetious and rapid movement ; we forget that the clumsy valet 
makes remarks as witty as Sheridan himself,^ and that the irascible 
gentleman speaks as well as the most elegant of writers.* The play- 
wright is also a man of letters ; if, through mere animal and social spirit, 
he wished to amuse others and to amuse himself, he does not forget the 
interests of his talent and the care for his reputation. He has taste, 
he appreciates the refinements of style, the worth of a new image, of a 
striking contrast, of a witty and well-considered insinuation. He has, 
above all, wit, a wonderful conversational wit, the art of rousing and 
sustaining the attention, of being sharp, varied, of taking his hearers un- 
awares, of throwing in a repartee, of setting folly in relief, of accumu- 
lating one after another witticisms and happy phrases. He brought 
himself to perfection subsequently to 'his first play, having acquired 
theatrical experience, writing and erasing; trying various scenes, re- 
casting, arranging; his desire was that nothing should arrest the 
mterest, no improbability shock the spectator ; that his comedy might 
glide on with the precision, certainty, uniformity of a good machine. 
He invents jests, replaces them by better ones; he whets his jokes, binds 
them up like a sheaf of arrows, and writes at the bottom of the last 
page, * Finished, thank God.— Amen.' He is right, for the work costs 
him some pains ; he will not write a second. This kind of writing, 
artificial and condensed as the satires of La Bruyere, is like a cut 
phial, into which the author has distilled without reservation all his 
reflections, his reading, his understanding. 

What is there in this celebrated School for Scandal f And what is 
there, that has cast upon English comedy, which day by day was being 



* Acres. Odds blades ! David, no gentleman will ever risk the loss of hie honour * 

David. I say, then, it would be but civil in honour never to risk the loss of a 

gentlBman. — Look ye, master, this honour seems to me to be a marvellous false 

friend; ay, truly, a very courtier-hke servant. — The Dramatic Works of Richard 

Brinsley Sheridan, 1828 : The Rivals, iv. 1. 

2 Sir Anthony.— Nay, but Jack, such eyes! &o innocently wild ! so bashfully 
Irresolute i Not a glance but speaks and kindles some thought of love ! Then, 
Jack, her cheeks ! so deeply blushing at the insinuations of her tell-tale eyes ! 
Then, Jack, her lips ! Jack, lips, smiling at their own discretion ! and if not 
imiiing, more sweetly pouting, more lovely in suUenness !— 7'Ac Sivals, iii. 1- 



528 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

more and more forgotten, the radiance of a last snccess? Sheridan 
took two characters from Fielding, Blifil, and Tom Jones ; two plays of 
Moli^re, Le Misanthrope and Tartufe; and from these puissant materials, 
condensed with admirable cleverness, he has constructed the most 
brilliant firework imaginable. Moliere has only one female slanderer, 
Celimene ; the other characters serve only to give her a cue : there ii 
quite enough of such a jeering woman; she rails on within certain 
bounds, without hurry, like a true queen of the drawing-room, who has 
time to converse, who knows that she is listened to, who listens to 
herself: she is a woman of society, who preserves the tone of refined 
conversation ; and in order to smooth down the harshness, her slanders 
are interrupted by the calm reason and sensible discourse of the amiable 
Eliante. Moliere represents the malice of the world without exaggera- 
tion; but here they are rather caricatured than depicted. * Ladies, 
your servant,' says Sir Peter ; * mercy upon me 1 the whole set — » 
character dead at every sentence.' ^ In fact, they are ferocious : it is a 
regular quarry ; they even befoul one another, to deepen the outrage. 
Mrs. Candour remarks : 'Yesterday Miss Prim assured me, that Mr, and 
Mrs. Honeymoon are now become mere man and wife, like the rest of 
their acquaintance. She likewise hinted, that a certain widow in the 
next street had got rid of her dropsy, and recovered her shape in a 
most surprising manner. ... I was informed, too, that Lord Flimsy- 
caught his wife at a house of no extraordinary fame ; and that Tom 
Saunter and Sir Harry Idle were to measure swords on a similar 
occasion.' ^ Their animosity is so bitter that they descend to the part 
of buffoons. The most elegant person in the room, Lady Teazle, shows 
her teeth to ape a ridiculous lady, draws her mouth on one side, and 
makes faces. There is no pause, no softening ; sarcasms fly like pistol- 
shots. The author had laid in a stock, he had to use them up. It is he 
speaking through the mouth of each of his characters ; he gives them 
all the same wit, that is his own, his irony, his harshness, his picturesque 
vigour ; whatever they are, clowns, fops, old women, girls, no matter, 
the author's main business is to break out into twenty explosions in a 
minute : 

* Mrs Candour. Well, I will never join in the ridicule of a friend ; so I tell mx 
eousin Ogle, and ye all know what pretensions she has to beauty. 

Crab. She has the oddest countenance — a collection of featurea from all tlM 
jwmers of the globe. 

Sir Benjamin. She has, indeed, an Irish front. 

Crab. Caledonian locks. 

Sir B. Dutch nose. 

Crah. Austrian lips. 

Sir B. The complexion of a Spaniard. 

Crab. And teeth d la Chinoise. 



» The Scliool for Scandal, 11. 2. * Md. i. 1 



CHAP. L] THE RESTORATION. 5g^ 

Sir B. In short, her face resembles a table d'Jidte at Spa, where no two guests 
are of a nation. 

Cr9b. Or a congress at the close of a general war, where every member seems t« 
have a diiTerent interest, and the nose and chin are the only parties likely to joio 
issue.' 1 

Or again : 

* Crab. Sad news npoE his arrival, to hear how yonr brother has gone on I 
Jo9sph Surface. I hope no busy people have already prejudiced his uncle against 

kim — he may reform, 

Sir Benjamin. True, he may ; for my part, I never thought him so utterly void 
A principle as people say, and though he has lost all his friends, I am told nobody 
is better spoken of amongst the Jews. 

Crab. Foregad, if the Old Jewry was a ward, Charles would be an alderman, 
for he pays as many annuities as the Irish Tontine ; and when he is sick, they havs 
prayers for his recovery in all the Synagogues. 

Sir B. Yet no man lives in greater splendor. — They tell me, when he enter- 
tains his friends, he can sit down to dinner with a dozen of his own securities, 
have a score of tradesmen waiting in the anti-chamber, and an officer behind every 
guest's chair.'* 

And again : 

* Sir B. Mr. Surface, I did not mean to hurt you, but depend on't, your brothet 

is utterly undone. 

Crab. Oh ! undone as ever man was — can't raise a guinea. 

Sir B. Everything is sold, I am told, that was moveable. 

Crah. Not a moveable left, except some old bottles and some pictures, and they 
seem to be framed in the wainscot, egad. 

Sir B. I am sorry to hear also some bad stories of him. 

Crab. Oh ! he has done many mean things, that's certain. 

Sir B. But, however, he's your brother. 

Crab. Ay ! as he is your brother — we'll tell you more another opportunity.' * 

In this manner has he pointed, multiplied, thrust to the quick, the 
measured epigrams of Moliere. And yet is it possible to grow weary 
of such a well-sustained discharge of malice and witticisms ? 

Observe also the change which the hypocrite undergoes under 
his treatment. Doubtless all the grandeur disappears from the part. 
Joseph Surface does not uphold, like Tartufe, the interest of the comedy; 
he does not possess, like his ancestor, the nature of a cabman, the bold- 
ness of a man of action, the manners of a beadle, the neck and shoulders 
of a monk. He is merely selfish and cautious ; if he is engaged in an 
intrigue, it is rather against his will; he is only half-hearted in the 
matter, like a correct young man, well dressed, with a fair income, 
timorous and fastidious by nature, discreet in manners, and without 
violent passions ; all about him is soft and polished, he takes his tone 
from the times, he makes no display of religion, though he decs of 
imorality ; he is a man of measured speech, of lofty sentiments, a dis- 

,» The School for Scandal, ii. 2. « Ibid. i. 1 » Ihid. 

2 L 



530 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

ciple of Johnson or of Rousseau, a dealer in set phrases. There u 
nothing on which to construct a drama in this commonplace person; 
and the fine situations which Sheridan takes from Molifere lose half 
their force through depending on such pitiful support. But how thii 
insufficiency is covered by the quickness, abundance, naturalness of the 
hicidents ! how skill makes up for everything 1 how it seems capable of 
su^jplying everything, even genius! how the spectator laughs to see 
Joseph caught in his sanctuary like a fox in his hole ; obliged to hide 
the wife, then to conceal the husband; forced to run fi-om one to the 
other; busy in hiding the one behind his screen, and the other ia 
his closet ; reduced m casting himself into his own snares, in justifying 
those whom he wished to rain, the husband in the eyes of the wife, the 
nephew in the eyes of the uncle ; to ruin the only man whom he wished 
to justify, namely, the precious and immaculate Joseph Surface ; to 
turn out in the end ridiculous, odious, baffled, confounded, in spite of 
his adroitness, even by reason of his adroitness, step by step, without 
quarter or remedy; to sneak off, poor fox, with his tail between hia 
legs, his skin spoiled, amid hootings and laughter! And how, at the 
same time, side by side with this, the naggings of Sir Peter and his wife, 
the suppers, songs, the picture sale at the spendthrift's house, weave a 
comedy in a comedy, and renew the interest by renewing the attention! 
We cease to think of the meagreness of the characters, as we cease to 
think of the variation from truth; we are willingly carried away by the 
vivacity of the action, dazzled by the brilliancy of the dialogue ; we are 
charmed, applaud; admit that, after all, next to great inventive faculty, 
animation and wit are the most agreeable gifts in the world: we appre- 
ciate them in their season, and find that they also have their place in 
the literary banquet; and that if they are not worth as much as the 
Bubstantial joints, the natural and generous wines of the first course, at 
least they furnish the dessert. 

The dessert over, we must leave the table. After Sheridan, wc- 
Iciave it forthwith. Henceforth comedy languishes, fails; there is 
nothing left but farce, such as Townley's High Life Below Stairs, the 
burlesques of George Colman, a tutor, an old maid, countrymen and 
their dialect ; caricature succeeds painting ; Punch raises a laugh when 
the days of Reynolds and Gainsborough are over. There \b nowhere 
hi Europe, at the present time, a more barren stage; good company 
abandons it to the people. The form of society, and the spirit which 
had called it into being, have disappeared. Vivacity, and the subject 
of original conceptions, had peopled the stage of the Renaissance in 
England, — a surfeit which, unable to display itself in systematic argu- 
ment, or to express itself in philosophical ideas, found its natural outlet 
only in mimic action and talking characters. The wants of polished 
•ociety had nourished the English comedy of the seventeenth centui^, — 
a society which, accustomed to the representations of the court and tho 
displays of the world, sought on the stage the copy of its intercourse 



CHAP. L] THE RESTORATION. 531 

and its drawing-rooms. With the decadence of the court and th€ 
check of mimic invention, the genuine drama and the genuine comedy 
disappeared ; they passed from the stage into books. The reason of it 
18, that people no longer live in public, like the embroidered dukes oi 
Louis XIV. and Charles n., but in their family, or at the study table; 
the novel replaces the theatre at the same time as citizen life replsosc 
^ life of the court. 



HISTORY 



OF 



English Literature 



Youms IL 



CONTENTS OF VOL. IL 



BOOK III.— THE CLASSIC ACE. 




Cdap. II.— Dryden, ...... 


1 


III.— The Revolution, .... 


45 


IV.— Addison, ..... 


89 


v.— SwrPT, ...... 


116 


VI.— The Novelists, ..... 


151 


VII.— The Poets, ..... 


193 



BOOK IV.— MODERN LITE. 



Chap. I, — Ideas and Productions, . 
II. — Lord Byron, 
III. — The Past and The Present, 



223 
271 
313 



BOOK v.— MODERN AUTHORS. 

Introductory Note, .... 

Chap. I. — The Novel. —Dickens, . 

II. — The Novel continued. — Thackeray, 
III. — Criticism and History. — Macaulay, 
rV.— Philosophy and History. — Carlyle, 
V. — Philosophy. — Stuart Mill, 
VI. — PoETBY. — Tennyson, 



. 


337 


. 


338 


. 


367 




4 2 


. 


435 


• 


477 




518 



Index, . 



548 



HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITEUArORE 



BOOK III. 

THE CLASSIC AGE 



CHAPTER 11. 
Dryden. 

i. Dryden's beginnings — Close of the poetic age — Cause of literary decline 
and regeneration. 
IL Family— Education— Studies— Reading— Habits — Position— Character- 
Audience — Friendships — Quarrels — Ham. -xy of his life and talent. 

III. The theatres re-opened and transformed — The new public and the new 

taste— Dramatic theories of Dryden— His judgment of the old English 
theatre— His judgment of the nev/ French theatre— Composite works- 
Incongruities of his drama — Tyrannic Love — Crossness of his charactera— 
The Indian Emperor, Aureng-zehe, Almanzor. 

IV. Style of his drama — Rhymed verse— Flowery diction — Pedantic tirades — 

Want of agreement between the classical style and romantic events — 
How Dryden borrows and mars the inventions of Shakspeare and Miltcn 
— ^Why this drama fell to the ground. 
V. Merits of this drama — Characters of Antony and Don Sebastian — Otway— 
Life — Works. 
"VI. Dryden as a writer — Kind, scope, and limits of his mind — Clumsiness in 
flattery and obscenity — Heaviness in dissertation and discussion — Vigoui 
and fundamental uprightness. 
■VU. How literature in England is occupied with politics and religion — Political 
poems of Dryden, Absalom ami Achitophel, The Medal — Ueligiom 
poems, Eeliyio Laid, The Hind and tJie Panther— Biitevness and vim* 
lence of these poems — Mac Flecknoe. 
nil. Rise of the art of writing— Difference between the stamp of mind of th« 
artistic and classic ages — Dryden's manner of writing — Sustained and 
oratorical diction. 
IX. Lack of general ideas in this age and this stamp of mind— Dryden's transla- 
tions — Adaptations -Imitations — Tales and letters — Faults — Merits— 
VOL. II. A 



2 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

Granty of his character, brilliancy of his inspiration, fits and starts of 
poetic eloquence — Alexander's Feast, a song in honour of S. Cecilia's 
Day. 
X. Dryden's latter days — ^Wretchedness — Poverty — Wherein his work is in* 
comple te — Death. 

COMEDY has led us a long way ; we must return and oonsidet 
other kind of writings. A higher spirit moves amidst the great 
current. In the history of this talent we shall find the history of the 
English classical spirit, its structure, its gaps and its powers, its forma 
tion and its development. 

t 

The subject is a young man, Lord Hastings, who died of smallpox 
at the age of nineteen : 

* His hody was an orb, his sublime soul 
Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole ; 
, . . Come, learned Ptolemy, and trial make 
If thou this hero's altitude canst take. 

. . . Blisters with pride swell'd, which through 's flesh did sprout 

Like rose-buds, stuck i' the lily skin about. 

Each little pimple had a tear in it, 

To wail the fault its rising did commit. . • • 

Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin. 
The cabinet of a richer soul within ? 
No comet need foretel his change drew on 
Whose corpse might seem a constellation.'* 

With such a fine specimen, Dryden, the greatest poet of the classical 
age, made his appearance. 

Such enormities indicate the close of a literary age. Excess of 
folly in poetry, like excess of injustice in political matters, lead up to 
and foretell revolutions. The Renaissance, unchecked and original, 
abandoned the minds of men to the fire and caprices of imagination, 
the oddities, curiosities, outbreaks of an inspiration which cares only 
to content itself, breaks out into singularities, has need of novelties, 
and loves audacity and extravagance, as reason loves justice and 
truth. After the extinction of genius folly remained; after the re- 
moval of inspiration nothing was left but absurdity. Formerly the 
internal disorder and dash produced and excused concetti and wild 
flights ; thenceforth men threw them out in cold blood, by calcula- 
tion and without excuse. Formerly they expressed the state of the 
mind, now they belie it. So are literary revolutions accomplished. 
Ihe form, no longer original or spontaneous, but imitated and passed 
from hand to hand, outlives the old spirit which had created it, 

» Dryden's Works, ed. Sir Walter Scott, 2d ed., 18 vols., 1821, xi. 94 



DRYDEN. 3 

and is in opposition to the new spirit which destroys it. This pie- 
liminary strife and progressive transformation make up the life of 
Dryden, and account for his impotence and bis falls, his talent and his 

success. 

n. 

Dry den's beginnings are in striking contrast with those of the poets 

of the Renaissance, actors, vagabonds, soldiers, who were tossed about 
from the first in all the contrasts and miseries of active life. He was 
born in 1631, of a good family; his grandfather and uncle were baronets ; 
Sir Gilbert Pickering, his relative, was a knight, member of Parlia- 
ment, one of Cromwell's council of twenty-one, one of the great office- 
holders of the new court. Dryden was brought up in an excellent 
school, under Dr. Busby, then in high repute ; after which he passed 
four years at Cambridge. Having inherited by his father's death a 
small estate, he used his liberty and fortune only to maintain him in 
his studious life, and continued in seclusion at the University for three 
years more. Here you see the regular habits of an honourable and 
well-to-do family, the discipline of a connected and solid education, 
the taste for classical and exact studies. Such circumstances announce 
and prepare, not an artist, but a man of letters. 

I find the same inclination and the same signs in the remainder of 
his life, private or public. He regularly spends his mornings in writing 
or reading, then dines with his family. His reading was that of a 
man of culture and a critical mind, who does not think of amusing or 
exciting himself, but who learns and judges. Virgil, Ovid, Horace, 
Juvenal, and Persius were his favourite authors ; he translated several ; 
their names were always on his pen ; he discusses their opinions 
and their merits, feeding himself on this reasoning which oratorical 
customs had imprinted on all the works of the Roman mind. He is 
familiar Avith the new French literature, the heir of the Latin, with 
Corneille and Racine, Boileau, Rapin and Bossu ; ^ he reasons with 
them, often in their spirit, writes reflectively, seldom fails to arrange 
some good theory to justify each of his new works. He knew very 
well the literature of his own country, though sometimes not very 
accurately, gave to authors their due rank, classified the different 
kinds of writing, went back as far as old Chaucer, whom he tran- 
scribed and put into a modern dress. His mind thus filled, he would 
go in the afternoon to AVill's coffeehouse, the great literary rendezvous: 
young poets, students fresh from the University, literary dilettante 
crowded round his chair, carefully placed in summer near the balcony, 



' Rapin (1G21-1687), a Frencli Jesuit, a modern Latin poet and literary critic 
Bossu, or properly Lebossu (1631-1680), wrote a Trcdte die Poern^ epique. 
whicli bad a great success in its day. Both critics are now completely for 
gotten — Tii, 



4 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lit 

in winter by the fireside, thinking themselves fortunate to get in a word, 
or a pinch of snuff respectfully extracted from his learned snuff-box. 
For indeed he was the monarch of taste and the umpire of letters j 
he criticised novelties — Racine's last tragedy, Blackmore's heavy epic, 
Swift's first poems; slightly vain, praising his own writings, to th« 
extent of saying that ' no one had ever composed or will ever compose 
a finer ode ' than his on Alexander's Feast ; but gossipy, fond of that 
interchange of ideas which discussion never fails to produce, capable 
of enduring contradiction, and admitting his adversary to be in the 
right. These manners show that literature had become a matter of 
study rather than of inspiration, an employment for the taste rather 
than for the enthusiasm, a source of distraction rather than of emotion. 
His audience, his friendships, his actions, his strifes, had the same 
tendency. He lived amongst great men and courtiers, in a society of 
artificial manners and measured language. He had married the 
daughter of Thomas Earl of Berkshire ; he was historiographer, then 
poet-laureate. He often saw the king and the princes. He dedicated 
each of his works to some lord, in a laudatory, flunkeyish preface, bear- 
ing witness to his intimate acquaintance with the great. He received a 
purse of gold for each dedication, went to return thanks ; introduces 
some of these lords under pseudonyms in his Essay on the Dramatic A rt ; 
wrote introductions for the works of others, called them Maecenas, 
Tibullus, or Pollio ; discussed with them literary works and opinions. 
The re-establishment of the court had brought back the art of conver- 
sation, vanity, the necessity for appearing to be a man of letters and of 
possessing good taste, all the company-manners which are the source of 
classical literature, and which teach men the art of speaking well.^ On 
the other hand, literature, brought under the influence of society, entered 
into society's interests, and first of all in petty private quarrels. Whilst 
men of letters learned etiquette, courtiers learned how to write. They 
soon became jumbled together, and naturally fell to blows. The Duke 
of Buckingham wrote a parody on Dryden, The Rehearsal, and took 
infinite pains to teach the chief actor Dryden's tone and gestures. 
Later, Rochester took up the cudgels against the poet, supported Settle 
against him, and hired a band of ruffians to beat him. Besides this, 
Dryden had quarrels with Shadwell and a crowd of others, and finally 
with Blackmoie and Jeremy Collier. To crown all, he entered into 
the strife of political parties and religious sects, fought for the Tories 
and Anglicans, then for the Roman Catholics ; wrote The Medal, Ab- 
salom and Achitophel, against the Whigs ; Beligio Laid against Dissenters 
and Papists; then Tlie Hind and Panther for James ii,, with the logic of 
controversy and the bitterness of party. It is a long way from this 

* In his Defence of the Epilogue of the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada 
V. 226, Dryden says : * Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversatior 
is 80 much refined ? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the sourt. 



CHAP. II.] DRYDEM. g 

combative and argamentative existence to the reverit« and seclusion of 
tJie true poet. Such circumstances teach the art of writing clearly and 
soundly, methodical and connected discussion, strong and exact style, 
banter and refutation, eloquence and satire : these gifts are necessary 
to make a man of letters heard or believed, and the mind enters 
?ompulsorily upon a track when it is the only one that can conduct 
it to its goal. Dryden entered upon it spontaneously. In his seconci 
piaduction,' the abundance of well-ordered ideas, the oratorical energy 
and harmony, the simplicity, the gravity, the heroic and Roman spirit, 
announce a classic genius, the relative not of Shakspeare, but of Cor- 
m dlle, capable not of dramas, but of discussions. 

III. 

And yet, at first, he devoted himself to the drama : he wrote twenty- 
seven pieces, and signed an agreement with the actors of the King's 
Theatre to supply them with three every year. The theatre, forbidden 
under the Commonwealth, had just re-opened with extraordinary magni- 
ficence and success. The rich scenes made moveable, the women's parts 
no longer played by boys, but by women, the novel and splendid wax- 
lights, the machinery, the recent popularity of actors who had become 
heroes of fashion, the scandalous importance of the actresses, who were 
mistresses of the aristocracy and of the king, the example of the court 
and the imitation of France, drew spectators in crowds. The thirst for 
pleasure, long repressed, knew no bounds. Men indemnified themselves 
lor the long abstinence imposed by fanatical Puritans ; eyes and ear, 
disgusted with gloomy faces, nasal pronunciation, official ejaculations 
on sin and damnation, satiated themselves with sweet singing, sparkling 
dress, the seduction of voluptuous dances. They wished to enjoy life, 
and that in a new fashion ; for a new world, that of the courtiers and 
the idle, had been formed. The abolition of feudal tenures, the vast 
increase of commerce and wealth, the concourse of landed proprietors, 
who let their lands and came to London to enjoy the pleasures of the 
town and to court the favours of the king, had installed on the summit 
of society, in England as in France, rank, authority, the manners and 
tastes of the world of fashion, of the idle, the drawing-room frequenters, 
lovers of pleasure, conversation, wit, and breeding, occupied with the 
piece in vogue, less to amuse themselves than to criticise it. Thus was 
Dryden's drama built up ; the poet, greedy of glory and pressed for 
money, found here both money and glory, and w^as half an innovator, 
with a large reinforcement of theories and prefaces, diverging from the 
old English drama, approaching the new French tragedy, attempting a 
compromise between classical eloquence and romantic truth, accommo- 
dating himself as well as he could to the new public, which paid and 
applauded him. 

' Heroic stanzas to the memory of Oliver Gromicell. 



6 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

* The langnage, wit. and conversation of our age, are improved and refined abort 
the last. . . . Let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally 
consists ; that is, " either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, -which are ill- 
Bounding or improper ; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, 
find more significant. "... Let any man, who understands English, read diligently 
the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake, that he will find in 
every page either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense. . . . 
Many of (their plots) were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in 
one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 
Perihles Prince of Tyre, nor the historical plays of Shakesj eare ; besides many of 
the rest, as the Winter's Tale, Love's Labour Lost, Measure for Measure, which 
were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the 
comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment. ... I 
'o.ould easily demonstrate, that our admired Fletcher neither undei stood correct 
plotting, nor that which they call the decorum of the stage. . . . The reader will 
see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself. . . • 
His shepherd falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women.' * 

Fletcher nowhere permits kings to retain the royal dignity. Moreover, 
the action of these authors' plays is always barbarous. They introduce 
battles on the stage ; they transport the scene in a moment to a distance 
of twenty years or five hundred leagues, and a score of times consecu- 
tively in one act; they jumble together three or four different actions, 
especially in the historical dramas. But they sin most in style. Dryden 
says of Shakspeare : 

* Many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those 
which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse ; and his whole style 
is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure. ' ^ 

Ben Jonson himself often has bad plots, redundancies, barbarisms : 

* Well-placing of words, for the sweetness of pronunciation, was pot known till 
Mr. Waller introduced it. ' * 

All, in short, descend to quibbles, low and common expressions: 

* In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours. 
. . . Besides the want of education and learning, they wanted the benefit of con- 
verse. Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other ; and, 
though they allow Cob and Tibb to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased 
with their tankard, or with their rags.'* 

For these gentlemen we must now write, and especially for * reasonable 
men;' for it is not enough to have wit or to love tragedy, in order to be 
a good critic: we must possess a solid knowledge and a lofty reason, know 
Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, and pronounce judgment according to then 
rules.* These rules, based upon observation and logic, prescribe unity 
of action ; that this action should have a beginning, middle, and end j 

» Defence of the Epilogue of the' Second Part of the Conquest of Granada 
W. 213. ^ Preface to Troilus and Gressida, vi. 239 

3 Defence of the Epilogue of the Conquest of Granada, iv. 219. 

* Ibid. 225. 5 Preface to All for Love, v. 30G. 



c^HAP. II.J I>RYDEN. ^ 

that its parts should i.Toceed naturally one from the other; that it 
should excite terror and pity, so as to inform and improve us; that the 
characters should be distinct, harmonious, conformable with tradition 
or the design of the poet. Such, says Dryden, will be the new 
tragedy, closely allied, it seems, to the French, especially as he quotes 
Bossu and Rapin, as if he took them for instructors. 

Yet it differs from it, and Dryden enumerates all that an English 
pit can blame in the French stage. He says : 

* The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, 
hecause not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and 
passions. . . . He who will look upon their plays which have been written till these 
last ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or 
three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what 
has he produced except the Liar ? and you know how it was cried up in France ; 
but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated, . . . the most 
favourable to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben 
Jonson's. . . . Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read, . . . their 
speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be re- 
formed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply 
with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey ; they 
are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses of reasons of state ; and 
Polieude, in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. 
Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, 
like our parsons. ... I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French ; 
for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, 
who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious. ' ' 

As for the tumults and combats which they relegate behind the scenes, 
' nature has so formed our countrymen to fierceness, . . . they will 
scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to be taken from 
them.'^ Thus the French, by fettering themselves with these scruples,^ 

1 An Essay ofJ)ramatic Poesy, xv. 337. * Ibid. 343. 

'In the preface of All for Love, v. 308, Dryden says: 'In this nicety of 
manners does the excellency of French poetry consist Their heroes are the most 
civil people breathing, but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense ; 
all their wit is in their ceremony ; they want the genius which animates our 
stage. . . . Thus, their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency, that he 
will rather expose himself to death than accuse his step-mother to his father ; and 
my clitics, I am sure, will commend him for it : But we of grosser apprehensions 
are apt to think, that this excess of generosity is not practicable, but with fools 
and madmen. . . . But take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he 
would think it a wiser part, to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse rather 
to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man, than to die with the in. 
famy of an incestuous villain. . . . (The poet) has chosen to give him the turn 
of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, 
and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolite.' Thi« 
driticism shows in a small compass all the common sense and freedom of 
thouo-ht of Dryden : but, at the same time, all the coarseness of his educatioi 
aud of his «i?e 



b THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

and confining themselves in their unities and their rules, have removt^ 
action from their stage, and brought themselves down to unbearable 
monotony and dryness. They lack originality, naturalness, varietyi 
fulness. 

• . . . Contented to be thinly regular. ... 

Their tongue enfeebled is refined too much, 

And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch. 

Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey, 

More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay.' • 

Let them laugh as much as they like at Fletcher and Shakspeare; thew 
is in them * a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing 
than thera is in any of the French.' 

Though exaggerated, this criticism is good; and because it is good, 1 
mistrust the works which the writBr is to produce. It is dangerous for 
an artist to be excellent in theory ; the creative spirit is hardly con- 
sonant with the criticising spirit : he who, quietly seated on the shore, 
discusses and compares, is hardly capable of plunging straight and 
boldly into the stormy sea of invention. Moreover, Dryden holds 
himself too evenly poised betwixt the moods; original artists love 
solely and without justice a certain idea and a certain world ; the rest 
disappears from their eyes ; confined in oiie region of art, they deny or 
scorn the other ; it is because they are limited that they are strong. 
We see beforehand that Dryden, pushed one way by his English mind, 
will be drawn another way by his French rules; that he will alternately 
venture and restrain himself; that he will attain mediocrity, that is, 
platitude ; that by reason of his faults he will fall into incongruities, 
that is, into absurdities. All original art is self-regulated, and no original 
art can be regulated from without : it carries its own counterpoise, and 
does not receive it from elsewhere ; it constitutes an inviolable whole ; 
it is an animated existence, wliich lives on its own blood, and which 
languishes or dies if deprived of some of its blood and supplied from 
the veins of another. Shakspeare's imagination cannot be guided by 
Racine's reason, nor Racine's reason be exalted by Shakspeare's imagina- 
tion ; each is good in itself, and excludes its rival ; to unite them would 
be to produce a bastard, a sick child and a monster. Disorder, violent 
and sudden action, harsh words, horror, depth, truth, exact imitation 
of reality, and the lawless outbursts of mad passions, — these features of 
Shakspeare become each other. Order, measure, eloquence, aristocratic 
refinement, worldly urbanity, exquisite painting of delicacy and virtue, 
all Racine's features suit each other. It woiild destroy the one to 
attenuate, the other to inflame him. Their whole being and beauty 
consist in the agreement of their parts : to mar this agreement would 
be to abolish their being and their beauty. In order to produce, we 
must invent a personal and harmonious conception ; we must nol 

' Epistle xiv., to Mr Motteux. xi. 70, 



CHAP. II.] DRYDEN. 9 

mingle two Strang and opposite ones. Dryden has left iindDne what 
he should have done, and has done what he should not have dDne. 

He had, moreover, the worst of audiences, debauched and frivoloua, 
void of individual taste, floundering amid confused recollections of the 
national literature and deformed imitations of foreign literature, ex- 
pecting nothing from the stage but the pleasure of the senses or the 
gratification of their curiosity. In reality, the drama, like every work 
of art, only makes sensible a profound idea of man and of existence ; 
there is a hidden philosophy under its circumvolutions and violences, 
and the audience ought to be capable of comprehending it, as the poet 
is of conceiving it. The hearer must have reflected or felt with energy 
or refinement, in order to take in energetic or refined thoughts; Hamlet 
and Iphigenie will never move a vulgar roisterer or a lover of money. 
The character who weeps on the stage only rehearses our own tears ; 
our interest is but that of sympathy ; and the drama is like an external 
conscience, which shows us what we are, what we love, what we have 
felt. What could the drama teach to gamesters like Saint Albans, 
drunkards like Rochester, prostitutes like Castlemaine, old children like 
Charles 11. ? What spectators were those coarse epicureans, incapable 
even of an assumed decency, lovers of brutal pleasures, barbarians in 
their sports, obscene in words, void of honour, humanity, politeness, 
who made the court a house of ill fame I The splendid decorations, 
change of scenes, the patter of long verse and forced sentiments, the 
observance of a few rules imported from Paris, — such was the natural 
food of their vanity and folly, and such the theatre of the English 
Restoration. 

I take one of these tragedies, very celebrated in time past, Tyrannic 
Love, or the Royal Martyr, — a fine title, and fit to make a stir. The royal 
martyr is Saint Catharine, a princess of royal blood as it appears, who 
is brought before the tyrant Maximin. She confesses her faith, and a 
pagan philosopher Apollonius is set loose against her, to refute her. 
Maximin says : 

' "War is my province ! — Priest, why stand you mute ? 
You gain by heaven, and, therefore, should dispute.* 

Thus encouraged, the priest argues; but St. Catharine replies in the 
following words : 

" . . Reason with your fond religion fights, 
For many gods are many infinites ; 
This to the first philosophers was "ii.rrown. 
Who, under various names, ador'd but one. * * 

Apollonius scratches his ear a little, and then answers that there are 
great truths and good moral rules in paganism. The pious logician 
immediately replies : 

' Tyrannic Love, iii. 3. 1. 



10 THE CLAS;S1C AGE. fbOOK 111 

* Then let the whole dispute concluded be 
Betwixt these rules, and Christianity. ' ^ 

Being nonplussed, Apollonius is converted on the sjM, insults thc^ 
prince, who, finding St. Catharine very beautiful, becomes suddenly 
enamoured, and makes jokes : 

* Absent, I may her martyrdom decree, 

But one look more will make that martyr me." 

In this dilemma he sends Placidius, * a great officer,* to St. Catharine ; 
the great officer quotes and praises the gods of Epicurus ; forthwith 
the saint propounds the doctrine of final causes, which upsets that of 
atoms. Maximin comes himself, and says : 

* Since you neglect to answer my desires, 
Know, princess, you shall burn in other fires.*' 

Thereupon she beards and defies him, calls him a slave, and walks off. 
Touched by these delicate manners, he wishes to marry her lawfully, 
and to repudiate his wife. Still, to omit no expedient, he employs 
a magician, who utters invocations (on the stage), summons the in- 
fernal spirits, and brings up a troop of Spirits : these dance and sing 
voluptuous songs about the bed of St. Catharine. Her guardian-angel 
comes and drives them away. As a last resource, Maximin has a wheel 
brought on the stage, on which to expose St. Catharine and her mother. 
Whilst the executioners are going to strip the saint, a modest angel descends 
in the nick of time, and breaks the wheel ; after which they are carried 
off, and their throats are cut behind the wings. Add to these pretty 
inventions a twofold intrigue, the love of Maximin's daughter Valeria 
for Porphyrius, captain of the Praetorian bands, and that of Porphyrius 
for Berenice, Maximin's wife ; then a sudden catastrophe, three deaths, 
and the triumph of the good people, who get married and interchange 
polite phrases. Such is this tragedy, which is called French-like ; and 
most of the others are like it. In Secret Love^ in Marriage a la Mode^ 
in Aureng-Zebe, in the Indian Emperor^ and especially in the Conquest 
ofGranxida^ everything is extravagant. People cut one another to pieces, 
take towns, stab each other, shout lustily. These dramas have just the 
truth and naturalness of the libretto of an opera. Incantations abound ; 
a spirit appears in the Indian Emperor^ and declares that the Indian gods 
*nre driven to exile from their native lands.' Ballets are also there; 
Vasquez and Pizarro, seated in *a pleasant grotto,' watch like conquerors 
the dances of the Indian girls, who gambol voluptuously about them. 

' Tyrannic Love, iii. 2. 1. * Ibid. 

' Ibid. 3. 1. This Maximin has a turn for jokes. Porphyrius, to whom he 
offers his daughter in marriage, says that ' the distance was so vast ; ' where 
Qpon Maximin replies : ' Yet heaven and earth, which so reaote appear, are 
by the air which flows betwixt them, near.' (3. 1). 



CHAP. II.] DRYDEN. 1] 

Scenes worthy of Liilli ' are not wanting ; Almeria, like Armide, comes 
io slay Cortez in his sleep, and suddenly conceives a love for him. 
Yet the libretti of the opera have no incongruities ; they avoid all which 
might shock the imagination or the eyes ; they are written for men of 
taste, who shun ugliness and heaviness of any sort Would you believe 
it? In the Indian Emperor, Montezuma is tortured on the stag«, and 
to cap all, a priest tries to convert him in the meanwhile.* I recognise 
kc this frightful pedantry "the handsome cavaliers of the time, logicians 
and hangmen, who fed on controversy, and for pleasure went to look 
at the tortures of the Puritans. I recognise behind these heaps of 
improbabilities and adventures the puerile and worn-out courtiers, 
who, sodden with wine, were past seeing discordances, and whose 
nerves were only stirred by the shock of surprises and the barbarity 
of events. 

Let us go still further. Dry den would set up on his stage the 
beauties of French tragedy, and in the first place, nobility of sentiments. 
Is it enough to copy, as he does, phrases of chivalry ? He would need 
a whole world, for a whole world is necessary to form noble souls. 
Virtue, in the French tragic poets, is founded on reason, religion, 
education, philosophy. Their characters have that uprightness of 
mind, that clearness of logic, that lofty judgment, which plant in a man 
settled maxims and self-government. We perceive in their company 
the doctrines of Bossuet and Descartes; with them, reflection aids 
conscience ; the habits of society add tact and finesse. The avoidance 
of violent actions and physical horrors, the meed of order and fable, 
the art of disguising or shunning coarse or low-bred persons, the con- 
tinuous perfection of the most measured and noble style, everything 
contributes to raise the stage to a sublime region, and we believe in 
higher souls by seeing them in a purer air. Can we believe in 
them in Dryden ? Frightful or infamous characters every instant 
drag us down by their crudities in their own mire. Maximin, 

' Lulli (1G33-1687), a renowned Italian composer. Armide is one of hii 
thief works. — Tr. 

'^ Christian Priest. But we by martyrdom our faith avow. 

Montezuma. You do no more than I for ours do now. 
To prove religion true, 
If either wit or sufferings would suflBce, 
All faiths afford the constant and the wise, 
And yet even they, by education svvay'd, 
In age defend what infancy obeyed, 

Christian Priest. Since age by erring childtiood is misled. 
Refer yourself to our unerring head. 

Montezuma. Man, and not err I what reason can you give ? 

Christian P'Hest. Renounce that carnal reason, and believe. . . . 

Pisarro. Inciease their pains, the cords are yet too slack. 

— T'le Indian Emperor, ii. S. 



12 THE CIASISIC AGE. [BOOK LU 

having stabbed Placidius, sits on his body, stabs him twice more^ and 
lays to the guards : 

* Bring me Porphyrius and my empress dead : 

I would brave heaven, in my each hand a head/* 

Nourmahal, repulsed by her husband's son, insists four times with inch 
indecent pedantry as this : 

* And why this niceness to that pleaeure shown. 
Where nature sums up all her joys in one. . • • 
Promiscuous love is nature's general law ; 

For whosoever the first lovers were, 
Brother and sister made the second pair. 
And doubled by their love their piety. . . . 
You must be mine, that you may learn to live. * * 

Illusion vanishes at once ; instead of being in a room with noble cha« 
racters, we meet with a mad prostitute and a drunken savage. Lift 
the masks ; the others are little better, Almeria, to whom a crowo 
is off^;ed, says insolently : 

* I take this garland, not as given by you, 
But as my merit, and my beauty's due. ' * 

Indamora, to whom an old courtier makes love, settles him with tha 
boastfulness of an upstart and the coarseness of a kitchen-maid: 

' Were I no queen, did you my beauty weigh, 
My youth in bloom, your age in its decay. ' * 

None of these heroines know how to conduct themselves ; they look 
on impertinence as dignity, sensuality as tenderness ; they have the 

* Tyrannic Love, iii. 5. 1. When dying Maximin says : ' And shoving back 
this earth on which I sit, I'll mount, and scatter all the Gods I hit.' 

* Aureng-Zebe, v. 4. 1. Dryden thought he was imitating Racine, when six 
lines further on he makes Nourmahal say : 

' I am not changed, I love my husband still ; 
But love him as he was, when youthful grace 
And the first down began to shade his face : 
That image does my virgin flames renew, 
And all your father shines more bright in you.' 

Racine's Phedre (3. 5) thinks her husband Theseus dead, and says to lier step 

Bon Hippolytus : 

' Oui, prince^ je languis, je brule pour Tliesee : 
Je I'aime . . . 

Mais fidele, mais fier, et meme un pen farouche, 
Charmant, jeune, trainant tons les coeurs apres sol, 
Tel qu'on depeint nos dieux, ou tel que je -vous vol. 

II avait votre port, vos yeux, votre langage ; 
Cette noble pudeur colorait son visage.' 

According to a note in Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden's works, Langbain* 
traces this speech also to Seneca's Hippolytus.— Tr. 

» The Indian Eriperor, ii. 3. * Aureng-Zebe, v. 2. 1. 



CHAP. II.] DRYDEN. 13 

recklessness of the courtesan, the jealousies of the grisette, the petti- 
ness of a chapman's wife, the billingsgate of a fish woman. The heroes 
are the most unpleasant of swashbucklers. Leonidas, first recognised 
as hereditary prince, then suddenly forsalien, consoles himself with 
this modest reflection : 

* 'Tis true I am alone. 

So was the godhead, ere he made the world. 

And better served himself than served by nature. 

... I have scene enough within 

To exercise my virtue. ' * 

Shall I speak of that great trumpet-blower Almanzor, painted, aa 
Dryden confesses, after Artaban,* a redresser of wrongs, a battalion- 
smiter, a destroyer of kingdoms?* They are but overcharged senti- 
ments, extemporised devotions, exaggerated gen'jrosities, high-sound- 
ing brag of a clumsy chivalry ; at bottom the characters are clods and 
barbarians, who have tried to deck themselves in French honour and 
fashionable politeness. And such, in fact, was the English court : it 
imitated that of Louis xiv. as a sign-painter imitates an artist. It had 
neither taste nor refinement, and wished to appear as if it possessed 
them. Panders and licentious women, bullying or butchering courtiers, 
who would go and see Harrison drawn, or mutilate Coventry, maids of 
honour who have awkward accidents at a ball,* or sell to the planters 
the convicts presented to them, a palace full of baying dogs and yelling 
gamesters, a king who would bandy obscenities in public with his half- 
naked mistresses,* — such was this illustrious society; from French mode» 
they took but those of dress, from their noble sentiments but high* 
sounding words. 

IV. 

The second point worthy of imitation in classical tragedy is the 
style. Dryden, in fact, purifies his own, and renders it more clear, by 
introducing close reasoning and precise words. He has oratorical 
discussions like Corneille, well-delivered retorts, symmetrical, like a 

^ Marriage d la Mode, iv. 3. 1. 

2 • The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer, the nest 
from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third from the Artabaa of Monsieur Calprsa 
nde.' — Preface to Almanzor. 

3 * The Moors have heaven, and me to assist their cause ' (i. 1). 
• I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me * ^b. \). 

He falls in love, and speaks thus : 

* 'Tis he ; 1 feel him now in every part ; 
Like a new lord he vaunts abouc my heart. 
Surveys in state each corner of my breast, 
While poor fierce I, that -v^d*^, am dispossessed ' (3. 1). 
« See vol. i. 471. 

* Compare the song of the Zainbra dance in the first part of Almanzor and 
Almahide. 8. 1. 



14 "THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

duel of argument. He has maxims vigorously enclosed in the compass 

of a single line, distinctions, developments, and the whole art of special 
pleading. He has happy antitheses, ornamental epithets, finely -wrought 
comparisons, and all the artifices of the literary mind. What is most 
striking is, that he abandons the dramatic and national verse, which is 
without rhyme, and the mixture of prose and verse common to the old 
authors, for a rhymed tragedy like the French, fancying that he is thus 
inventing a new species, which he calls heroic play. But in this trans- 
formation the good perished, the bad remains. For mark, rhyme is 
-a different thing in different races. To an Englishman it resembles 
a song, and transports him at once to an ideal and fairy world. To a 
Frenchman it is only a conventionalism or an expediency, and trans- 
ports him at once to an ante-chamber or a drawing-room ; to him it 
is an ornamental dress and nothing more ; if it mars prose, it ennobles 
't ; it imposes respect, not enthusiasm, and changes a vulgar into a 
high-bred style. Moreover, in French aristocratic verse everything is 
connected ; pedantry, logical machinery of every kind, is excluded from 
it ; there is nothing more disagreeable to well-bred and refined persons 
than the scholastic rust. Images are rare, but always well kept up ; 
bold poesy, real fantasy, have no place in it ; their brilliancy and 
divergencies would derange the politeness and regular flow of tho 
social world. The right word, the prominence of free expressions, are 
not to be met with in it ; general terms, always rather threadbare, 
suit best the caution and niceties of select society. Dryden stumbles 
heavily against all these rules. His rhymes, to an Englishman's ear, 
scatter at once the whole illusion of the stage ; they see that the 
characters who speak thus are but squeaking mannikins ; he himself 
admits that his heroic tragedy is only fit to represent on the stage 
chivalric poems like those of Ariosto and Spenser. 

Poetic dash gives the finishing stroke to all likelihood. Would 
you recognise the dramatic accent in this epic comparison ? 

* As some fair tulip, by a storm oppress'd, 
Shrinks up, and folds its silken arms to rest ; 
And, bending to the blast, all pale and dead, 
Hears, from within, the wind sing round its head, — 
So, shrouded up, your beauty disappears : 
Unveil, my love, and lay aside your fears, 
The storm, that caused your fright, is pass'd and done.' * 

Wliat a singular triumphal song are these concetti of Cortex as hi 

lands : 

* On what new happy climate are we thrown. 
So long kept secret, and so lately known ? 
As if our old world modestly withdrew, 
And here in private had brought forth a new.'* 

* The first part of Ahnanzor ind Almahi<"i, iv. 5 2 
The Indian Emperor, 11. 1. 1. 



CHAP ILj DRYDEN. ig 

Think how these patches of colour would contrast with the sober design 
of French dissertation. Here lovers lay siege with metaphors ; there 
a wooer, in order to magnify the beauties of his mistress, says that 
* bloody hearts lie panting in her hand.' In every page harsh or vulgar 
words spoil the regularity of a noble style. Ponderous logic is broadly 
displayed in the speeches of princesses. *Two ifs,' says Lyndaraxa, 'scarce 
make one possibility.'^ Dryden sets his college cap on the heads of 
these poor women. Neither he nor his characters are well brought up; 
they have taken from the French but the outer garb of the bar and the 
schools ; they have left behind symmetrical eloquence, measured diction, 
elegance and delicacy. A while before, the licentious coarseness of the 
Restoration pierced the mask of the fine sentiments with which it was 
covered ; now the rude English imagination breaks the oratorical mould 
in which it tried to enclose itself. 

Let us turn the picture. Dryden would keep the foundation of the 
old English drama, and retains the abundance of events, the variety of 
plot, the surprise of accident, and the physical representation of bloody or 
violent action. He kills as many people as Shakspeare. Unfortunately, 
all poets are not justified in killing. When they take their spectators 
among murders and sudden accidents, they ought to have a hundred 
hidden preparations. Fancy a sort of rapture and romantic folly, a 
most daring style, eccentric and poetical, songs, pictures, reveries spoken 
aloud, frank scorn of all verisimilitude, a mixture of tenderness, philo- 
sophy, and mockery, all the retiring charms of varied feelings, all the 
whims of a buoyant fancy ; the truth of events matters little. No one 
before Cymbeline or As you Like it was a politician or a historian ; no 
one took these military processions, these accessions of princes, seriously ; 
the spectators were present at dissolving views. They did not demand 
that things should proceed after the laws of nature j on the contrary, they 
willingly did require that they should proceed against the laws of nature. 
The irrationality is the charm. That new world must be all imagination; 
if it was only so by halves, no one would care to rise to it. This is why 
we do not rise to Dryden's. A queen dethroned, then suddenly set up 
again ; a tyrant who finds his lost son, is deceived, adopts a girl in 
his place ; a young prince led to punishment, who snatches the sword 
of a guard, and recovers his crown : such are the romances which con • 
atitute the Maiden Queen and the Marriage a la Mode. ■ We can imagint 
what a display classical dissertations make in this medley ; solid reason 
beats down imagination, stroke after stroke, to the ground. We cannot 
tell if the matter be a true portrait or a fancy painting ; we remain 
suspended between truth and fancy ; we should like either to get up to 

' The first part of Almanzor and Almahide, iv. 2. 1. This same Lyndaraxa 
says also to Abdalla (4. 2), ' Poor women's thoughts are all extempore, and logi- 
cal, and coarse ; ' in Act 2. 1, to the same lovei, who entreats her to make hin? 
' happy, ' If I make y 3u so, you shall pay my price.' 



16 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK in 

heaven or down to earth, and we jump down as quick as possible from 
the clumsy scaiFolding where the poet would perch us. 

On the other hand, when Shakspeare wishes to impress a doctrine, not 
raise a dream, he disposes us to it beforehand, but after another fashion. 
We naturally remain in doubt before a cruel action : we divine that the 
red irons which are about to put out the eyes of little Arthur are 
painted sticks, and that the six rascals who besiege Rome, are super- 
numeraries hired at a shilling a night. To conquer this mistrust we 
must employ the most natural style, circumstantial and rude imitation 
of the manners of the guardroom and of the alehouse; I could only 
believe in Jack Cade's sedition on hearing the dirty words of bes.ial 
lewdness and mobbish stupidity. You must let me have the jests, the 
coarse laughter, drunkenness, the manners of butchers and tanners, to 
make me imagine a mob or an election. So in murders, let me feel the 
fire of bubbling passion, the accumulation of despair or hate which have 
unchained the will and nerved the hand. When the unchecked words, 
the fits of rage, the convulsive ejaculations of exasperated desire, have 
brought me in contact with all the links of the inward necessity which 
has moulded the man and guide 1 the crime, I shall no longer think 
whether the knife ^ bloody, because I shall feel with inner trembling 
the passion which has handled it. Must I verify the death of Shakspeare's 
Cleopatra? The strange laugh that bursts from her when the basket of 
saps is brought, the sudden tension of nerves, the flow of feverish words, 
the fitful gaiety, the coarse language, the torrent of ideas with which she 
overflows, have already made me sound all the depths of suicide,^ and 
I have foreseen it from the beginning. This madness of an imagination, 
fired by climate and despotic power ; these woman's, queen's, prostitute's 
nerves ; this marvellous self-abandonment to all the raptures of invention 
wid desire — these cries, tears, foam on the lips, tempest of insults, actioni^ 

' * He words me, girls ; he words me, that I should not 
Be noble to myself ; but hark thee, Charmian. . . . 
Now, Iras, what thinkest thou ? 
Thou, an Egyptian puppet, slialt be shown 
In Rome, as well as I : mechanic slaves. 
With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall 
Uplift us to the view. . . . 

Saucy Iict6r3 
Will catch at us, like strumpets • and scald rhymers 
Ballad us out o' tune ; the quick comedians 
Extemporally will stage us, and present 
Our Alexandrian revels ; Antony 
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall se« 
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness 
I' the posture of a whore. . . . 

Husband, I come : 
Now to that name my courage prove my title I 
I &m fire and ait ; my other element.% 



JHAi>. ll.l DRYDEN. It 

emotions ; tliis promptitude to murder, announce the rage with which 
she would rush against the least obstacle f.nd be daslied to pieces. 
Wliat does Dryden effect in this matter with his written phrases ? 
What of the maid, speaking in the author's words, who bids her half- 
aiad mi&tress 'call reason to assist you?' What of such a Cleopatra a? 
his, designed after Lady Castlemaine,^ skilled in artifices and whimpering 
voluptuous and a coquette, with neither the nobleness of virtue noi the 
greatness of crime : 

* Nature meant me 
A wife ; a silly, harmless, hoiiseliold dove, 
Fond without art, and kind without deceit.'* 

Nay, certainly, or at least this turtle-dove would not have tamed or kept 
an Antony ; a woman without any prejudices alone could do it, by the 
superiority of boldness and the fire of genius. I can see already from 
the title of the piece why Dryden has softened Shakspeare: All for 
Love ; or^ the World well Lost. What a wretchedness, to reduce such 
events to a pastoral, to excuse Antony, to praise Charles ii. indirectly, 
to bleat as in a sheepfold I And such was the taste of his contempo- 
raries. When Dryden wrote the Tempest after Shakspeare, and the Statt 
iif Lmocence after Milton, he again spoiled the ideas of his masters; he 
turned Eve and Miranda into courtesans ;^ he extinguished everywhere, 
under conventionalism and indecencies, the frankness, severity, delicacy, 
and charm of the original invention. By his side, Settle, Shadwell, 
Sir Robert Howard did Avorse. The Empress of Morocco, by Settle, was 
80 admired, that the gentlemen and ladies of the court learned it by 
heart, to play at Whitehall before the king. And this was not a passing 

I give to baser life. So ; have you done ? 

Come, then, and take the last warmth of my lips. 

Farewell, kind Charmian ; Iras, long farewell. . . . 

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast. 
That sucks the nurse asleep ? ' — Shakspeare's Antony ani Cleopatra, 5. % 
These two last lines, referring to the asp, are sublime as the joke of a cour- 
t <an and an artist. 

' ' Come to me, come, my soldier, to my arms I 
You've been too long away from my embraces ; 
But, when I have you fast, and all my own. 
With broken murmurs, and with amorous sighs, 
I'll say, you were unkind, and punish you. 

And mark you red with many an eager kiss.' — All for Love, v. 3. 1. 
' All for Love, 4. 1. 

* Dryden's Miranda says, in the Tempest (3. 2) : ' And if I can but escape 
with life, I had rather be in pain nine months, as my father threatened, than 
lose my longing. Miranda has a sister ; they quarrel, are jealous of each other, 
and so on. See also in The State of Innocence, 3. l,the description which Eve 
gives of her happiness, and the ideas vvhiA her confidences suggest to Satan. 
VOL. II. B 



18 THE CLASSIC AGE. ^BOOK III 

fancy; although modified, the taste was to endure. In vain poeto 
rejected a part of the French alloy wherewith they had mixed their 
native metal; in vain they returned to the old unrhymed verses ol 
Jonson and Shakspeare : in vain Dryden, in the parts of Antony, Ven- 
tidius, Octavia, Don Sebastian, and Dorax, recovered a portion of the 
old naturalness and energy ; in vain Otway, who had real draraatio 
talent, Lee, or Southern attained a true or touching accent, so that once, 
in Venice Preserved, it was thought that the drama would be regenerated. 
The drama was dead, and tragedy could not replace it ; or rather each 
one died by the other ; and their union, which robbed them of strength 
in Dryden's time, enervated them also in the time of his successors. 
Literary style blunted dramatic truth ; dramatic truth marred literary 
style ; the work was neither sufficiently vivid nor sufficiently well 
written : the author was too little of a poet or of an orator ; he had 
neither Shakspeare's fire of imagination nor Racine's polish and art.' 
He strayed on the boundaries of two dramas, and suited neither the 
half-barbarous men of art nor the well-polished men of the court. Such 
indeed was the audience, hesitating between two forms of thought, fed 
by two opposite civilisations. They had no longer the freshness of sense, 
the depth of im])ression, the bold originality and poetic folly of the cava- 
liers and adventurers of the Renaissance; nor will they ever acquire the 
aptness of speech, sweetness of manners, courtly habits, and cultivation 
of sentiment and thought which adorned the court of Louis xiv. Thoy 
are quitting the age of solitary imagination and invention, which suits 
their race, for the age of reasoning and conversation, which does not 
suit their race : they lose their own merits, and do not acquire the 
merits of others. They were meagre poets and ill-bred courtiers, 
having lost the art of imagination and of good manners, at times dull 
or brutal, at times emphatic or stiff. For the production of line poetry, 
race and age must concur. This race, diverging from its own age, and 
fettered at the outset by foreign imitation, formed its classical literature 
but slowly ; it will only attain it after transforming its religious and 
political condition : the age will be that of English reason, Dryden 
inaugurates it by his other works, and the writers who appear in the 
reign of Queen Anne will give it its completion, its authority, and iti 
splendour. 



But let us pause a moment longer to inquire whether, amid so many 
abortive and distorted branches, the old theatrical stock, abandoned by 
chance to itself, will not produce at some point a sound and living shoot. 
When a man like Dryden, so gifted, so well trained and experienced, 
works with a will, there is hope that he will some time succeed ; and 
once, in part at least, Dryden did succeed. It would be treating him 

' This impotence reminds one of Casimir Delavigne. 



CHAP. II.] DRYDE^\ 1§ 

unjustly to be always comparing him with Shakspeare ; but even on 
Shakspeare's ground, with the same materials, it is possible to create a 
fine work ; only the reader must forget for a while the great inventor, 
the inexhaustible creator of vehement and original souls, and to con- 
sider the imitator on his own merits, without forcing an overwhelming 
comparison. 

There is vigour and art in this tragedy of Dry den, All for Love. 
* He has informed us, that this was the only play written to please 
himself'^ And he had really composed it learnedly, according to his 
tory and logic. And what is better still, he wrote it in a manly style. 
In the preface he says : 

* The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of it ; and the 
unities of time, place, and action, more exactly observed, than perhaps the English 
theatre requires. Particularly, the action is so much one, that it is the only of the 
kind without episode, or underplot ; every scene in the tragedy conducing to the 
main design, and every act concluding with a turn of it. ' 

He did more ; he abandoned the French ornaments, and returned to 
national tradition : 

* In my style I have professed to imitate the divine Shakspeare ; which that I 

might perform more freely, I have disincumbered myself from rhyme. . . . Yet, 
I hope, I may affirm, and without vanity, that, by imitating him, I have excelled 
myself throughout the play ; and particularly, that I prefer the scene bet\vixt 
Vntony and Ventidius in the fii'st act, to anything which I have written in this 
kind.* 

Dryden was right ; if Cleopatra is weak, if this feebleness of conception 
takes away the interest and mars the general effect, if the new rhetoric 
and the old emphasis at times suspend the emotion and destroy the 
likelihood, yet on the whole the drama stands erect, and what is more, 
moves on. The poet is skilful ; he hns planned, he knows how to con- 
struct a scene, to represent the internal struggle by which two passions 
contend for a human heart. We perceive the tragical vicissitude of 
the strife, the progress of a sentiment, the overthrow of obstacles, the 
slow growth of desire or wrath, to the very instant when the resolution, 
rising up of itself or seduced from without, rushes suddenly on one side. 
There are natural words ; the poet thinks and wiites too genuinely not 
to discover them at need. There are manly characters : he himself is a 
man ; and beneath his courtier's pliability, his affectations as a fashion- 
able poet, he has retained his stern and energetic character. Except 
for one scene of recrimination, his Octavia is a Roman matron ; and 
when, even in Alexandria, in Cleopatra's palace, she comes to look fof 
Antony, she does it with a simplicity and nobility, not to be surpassed 
*Csesai''s sister,' cries out Antony, accosting her. Octavia answers: 

• That's unkind. 
Had I been nothing more than Caesar's sister, 

' See the introductory notice, by Sir Walter Scott, of All for Love v. 200. 



2,) ' THE CLASSIC AQE. IBOOK Ul 

Know, I had still remain'd in Caesar's camp • 

But your Octavia, your mucli injur'd wife, 

Though banish'd from your bed, driven from your house 

In spite of Caesar's sister, still is yours. 

'Tis true I have a heart disdains your coldness, 

And prompts me not to seek what you should offer , 

But a wife's virtue still surmounts that pride. 

I come to claim you as my own ; to show 

My duty first, to ask, nay beg, your kindness • 

Your hand, my lord ; 'tis mine, and I will have it.' * 

Antony, humiliated, refuses the pardon Octavia has brought nini, 
and tells her : 

' I fear, Octavia, you have begg'd my life, . . . 

Poorly and basely begg'd it of your brother. 
Octavia. Poorly and basely I could never beg, 

Nor could my brother grant. . . . 

My hard fortune 

Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes. 

But the conditions I have brought are such. 

You need not blush to take : I love your honour, 

Because 'tis mine ; it never shall be said, 

Octavia's husband was her brother's slave. 

Sir, you are free ; free, even from her you loath : 

For, though my brother bargains for your love, 

Makes me the price and cement of your peace, 

1 have a soul like yours ; I cannot take 

Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve. 

I'll tell my brother we are reconciled ; 

He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march 

To rule the east : I may be dropt at Athens ; 

No matter where. 1 never will complain, 

3ut only keep the barren name of wife, 

Ind rid you of the trouble.' * 

This is lofty; this woman has a proud heart, and also a wife's heart. 
she knows how to give and how to bear ; and better, she knows how to 
sacrifice herself without self-assertion, and calmly ; no vulgar mind con- 
ceived such a soul as this. And Ventidius, the old general, who with 
her and before her, comes to rescue Antony from his illusion and servi* 
tude, is worthy to speak in behalf of honour, as she had spoken for 
duty. Doubtless he was a plebeian, a rude and plain-speaking soldier^ 
with the frankness and jests of his profession, sometimes clumsy, such 
as a clever eunuch can dupe, ' a thick-skulled hero,' who, out of simplicity 
of soul, from the coarseness of his training, unsuspectingly brings 
Antony back to the meshes, which he seemed to be breaking through. 
Falling into a trap, he tells Antony that he has seen Cleopatra unfaith- 
ful with Dolabella : 

• All for Love, V. 3, 1. » Ibid. 



HAP. Il.J DRYDEN. 21 

* Antony. My Cleopatra ? 

Ventidius. Your Cleopatra. 
Dolabella's Cleopatra. 
Every man's Cleopatra. 

Antony, Thou liest. 

Ventidius. I do not lie, my lord. 
Is this so strange ? Should mistresses be left. 
And not provide against a time of change ? 
You know she's not much used to lonely nights.' * 

It was just the way to make Antony jealous and bring him b&ck fu- 
rious to Cleopatra. But what a noble heart has this Ventidius, and 
how we catch, when he is alone with Antony, the man's voice, the 
deep tones which had been heard on the battlefield ! He loves his 
general like a good dog, and asks no better than to die, so it be at 
his master's feet. He growls ominously on seeing him cast down 
crouches round him, and suddenly weeps : 

' Ventidius. Look, Emperor, this is no common dew. 
1 have not wept this forty years ; hut now 
My mother comes afresh into my eyes, 
I cannot help her softness. 

Antony. By Heaven, he weeps ! poor, good old man, he weeps ! 
The big round drops course one another down 
The furrows of his cheeks. — Stop them, Ventidius, 
Or I shall blush to death : they set my shame, 
That caused them, full before me. 

Ventidius. I'll do my best. 

Antony. Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends ; 
See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not 
For my own griefs, but thine. Nay, father 1 ' ' 

As we hear these terrible sobs, we think of Tacitus' veterans, who, 
escaping from the marshes of Germany, with scarred breasts, white 
heads, limbs stiff with service, kissed the hands of Drusus, carried his 
fingers to their gums, that he might feel their worn and loosened 
teeth, incapable to bite the wretched bread which was given them : 
* No ; 'tis you dream : you sleep away your hours 
In desperate sloth, miscalled philosophy. 
Up, up, for honour's sake ; twelve legions wait you, 
And long to call you chief : By painful journies, 
lied them, patient of both heat and hunger, 
Down from the Parthian marshes to the Nile. 
'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces. 
Their scarr'd cheeks, and chopt hands ; there's virtue in them. 
They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates 
Than yon trim hands can buy.' '^ 
And when all is lost, when the Egyptians have turned trait«3rs, and 
there is nothing left but to die well, Ventidius says : 

» All for Love, 4. 1. » Ibid. 1. 1 Ibid. 



22 THE Ci.ASSIC AGE, [BOOK Hi 

There yet remain 

Three legions in the town. The last assault 

iiopt off the rest : if death be your dasiffn. — 

As I must wish it now, — these are sufficient 

To make a heap about us of dead foes, 

An honest pile for burial. . . . Chuse your death; 

For, 1 have seen him in such various shapes, 

I care not which I take : I'm only troubled. 

The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 

'Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed, 

We threw it from us with a better grace ; 

That, like two lions taken in the toils. 

We might at least thrust out our paws, and wound 

The hunters that inclose us.* ^ , . 

Antony begs him to go, but he refuses : 

* Antony. Do not deny me twice. 

Ventidius. By Heaven I will not. 
Let it not be to outlive you. 

Antony, Kill me first, 
And then die thou ; for 'tis but just to serve 
Thy friend, before thyself. 

Ventidius. Give me your hand. 
We soon shall meet again. Now, farewell, Emperor ! 
... I will not make a business of a trifle : 
And yet I cannot look on you, and kill you. 
Pray turn your face. 

Antony. I do ; strike home, be sure. 

Ventidius. Home, as my sword will reacb.* ' 

And with one blow he kills himself. These are the tragic, stoical 
manners of a military monarchy, the great profusion of murders and 
sacrifices wherewith the men of this overturned and shattered society 
killed and died. This Antony, for whom so much has been done, is 
not undeserving of their love : he has been one of Caesar's heroes, the 
first soldier of the van ; kindness and generosity breathe from him to 
the last ; if he is weak against a woman, he is strong against men ; he 
has the muscles and heart, the wrath and passions of a soldier ; it is 
tl; is heat of blood, this too quick sentiment of honour, which has caused 
his ruin ; he cannot forgive his own crime ; he possesses not that lofty 
genius which, dwelling in a region superior to ordinary rules, emanci- 
pates a man from hesitation, from discouragement and remorse ; he 13 
only a soldier, he cannot forget that he has not executed the orderi 
given to him : 

' Ventidius. Emperor ! 

Antony. Emperor 1 Why, that's the style of victory • 

The conquering soldier, red with unfelt wounds, 

Salutes his general so : but never more 

Shall that sound reach my ears. 

» All for Love, 5. 1. « Ibid. 



CHAP. 11 1 DRYDEN. 23 

Vcntidius. I warrant you. 

Antony. Actium, Actium ! Oh 

Yentidius, It sits too near yon. 

Antony. Here, here it lies ; a lump of lead by day; 
And in my short, distracted, nightly slumbers, 
The hag" that rides my dreams. . . . 

Ventidius. That's my royal master ; 
And, shall we fight ? 

Antony. I warrant thee, old soldier. 
Thou shalt behold me once again iti iron ; 
And at the head of our old troops, that beat 
The Parthians, cry aloud, " Come, follow me." * * 

He fancies himself on the battlefield, and already passion carries him 
away. Such a man is not one to govern men ; we cannot master 
fortune until we have mastered ourselves ; this man is only made to 
belie and destroy himself, and to be veered round alternately by every 
passion. As soon as he believes Cleopatra faithful, honour, reputation, 
empires, everything vanishes ; 

* Ventidius. And what's this toy, 
In balance with your fortune, honour, fame t 

Antony. What is't, Ventidius ? it outAveighs them alL 
"Why, we have more than conquer'd Csesar now. 
My queen's not only innocent, but Iwes me. . • • 
Down on thy knees, blasphemer as thou art, 
And ask forgiveness of wrong'd innocence ! 

Ventidius. I'll rather die than take it. Will you go f 
Antony. Go ! Whither ? Go from all that's excellent ! 
. . . Give, you gods, 
Give to your boy, your Caesar, 
This rattle of a globe to play withal, 
This gewgaw world ; and put him cheaply off : 
I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra. ' ' 

Dejection follows excess ; these souls are only tempered against feai , 
their courage is but that of the bull and the lion ; to be fully them- 
selves, they need bodily action, visible danger; their temperament 
sustains them ; before great moral sufferings they give way. When 
Antony thinks himself deceived, he despairs, and has nothing left but 
to die: 

* Let him (Caesar) walk 

Alone upon't. I'm weary of my part. 

My torch is out ; and the world stands before me, 

Like a black desert at the approach of night ; 

I'll lay me down, and stray no fartj^er on.* ' 

Such verses remind us of Othello's gloomy dreams, of Macbeth, of 
Hamlet's even ; beyond the pile of swelling tirades and characters of 
painted cardboard, it is as though the poet had touched the ancient 
drama, and brought its emotion away with him. 

> All far Love, 1 t. « Ibid. 2. 1, end. » Ibid. 5. 1. ' 



24 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

By his side another also has felt it, a young man, a poor adventurer, 
by turns a student, actor, officer, always wild and always poor, who 
lived madly and sadly in excess and misery, like the old dramatists, 
with their inspiration, their fire, and who died at the age of thirty-four, 
according to some of a fever caused by fatigue, according to others of a 
prolonged fast, at the end of which he swallowed too quickly a morsel of 
bread bestowed on him in charity. Through the pompous cloak of the 
new rhetoric, Thomas Otway now and then reached the passions of the 
other age. It is plain that the times he lived in marred him, that the 
oratorical style, the literary phrases, the classical declamation, the well- 
poised antitheses, buzzed about him, and drowned his note in their 
sustained and monotonous hum. Had he but been born a hundred 
years earlier ! In his Orphan and Venice Preserved we encounter the 
sombre imaginations of Webster, Ford, and Shakspeare, their gloomy 
idea of life, their atrocities, murders, pictures of irresistible passions, 
which riot blindly like a herd of savage beasts, and make a chaos of 
the battlefield, with their yells and tumult, leaving behind them but 
devastation and heaps of dead. Like Shakspeare, his events are human 
transports and furies — a brother violating his brother's wife, a husband 
perjuring himself for his wife ; Polydore, Chamont, Jaffier, weak and 
violent souls, the sport of chance, the prey of temptation, with whom 
transport or crime, like poison poured into the veins, gradually ascends, 
envenoms the whole man, is spread on all whom he touches, and contorts 
and casts them down together in a convulsive delirium. Like Shak- 
speare, he has found poignant and living words,^ v;hich lay bare the 
depths of humanity, the strange noise of a machine which is getting 
out of order, the tension of the will stretched to breaking-point,* the 
simplicity of real sacrifice, the humility of exasperated and craving 
passion, which longs to the end and against all hope for its fuel and its 
gratification.* Like Shakspeare, he has conceived genuine women,*— 

* Monimia says, in the Orphan (5, end), when dying, ' How my head swims 
Tis very dark ; good night,' 

2 See the death of Pierre and Jaffier in Venice Preserved (5, last scene) 
Pierre stabbed once, bursts into a laugh. 

* ' Jaffier. Oh, that my arms were rivetted 
Thus round thee ever 1 But my friends, my oath I 
This, and no more. {Kisses her,) 

Belvidera. Another, sure another 
For that poor little one you've ta'en such care af ; 
I'll giv't him truly.' — Venice Preserved, 5. 1. 
There is jealousy in this last#vord. 
* * Oh, thou art tender all. 

Gentle and kind, as sympathizing nature, 
Dove-like, soft and kind. . . . 
I'll ever live your most obedient wife, 
Nor ever any privilege pretend 
Beyond your w-ill'.' — Orphan, 4, 1. 



CHAP. II.] DRYDEN. 25 

Monimia, above all Belvidera, who, like Imogen, has ^ven herself 
wholly, and is lost as in an abyss of adoration for him whom she hag 
chosen, who can but love, obey, weep, suffer, and who dies like a flower 
plucked from the stalk, when her arms are torn from the neck around 
which she has locked them. Like Shakspeare again, he has found, at 
least once: the large bitter buffoonery, the crude sentiment of human 
baseness ; and he has introduced into his most painful tragedy, an 
obscene caricature, an old senator, who unbends from his official 
gravity in order to play at his mistress' house the clown or the valet. 
How bitter I how true was his conception, in making the busy man 
eager to leave his robes and his ceremonies ! how ready the man is to 
abase himself, when, escaped from his part, he comes to his real self! 
how the ape and the dog crop out of him ! The senator Antonio comes 
to his Aquilina, who insults him ; he is amused ; hard words relieve 
other compliments ; he minces, runs into a falsetto like a zany at a 
country fair : 

* Antonio. Nacky, Nacky, Nacky, — how dost do, Nacky? Hurry, durry. 1 
am come, little Nacky. Past eleven o'clock, a late hour ; time in all conscience 
to go to bed, Nacky. — Nacky did I say ? Ay, Nacky, Aquilina, Una, Una, 
quilina ; Aquilina, Naquilina, Acky, Nacky, queen Nacky. — Come, let's to bed. 
^You fubbs, you pug you — You little puss. — Purree tuzzy — I am a senator. 

Aquilina. You are a fool, I am sure. 

Antonio. May be so too, sweet-heart. Never the worse senator for all that. 
Come, Naclcy, Nacky ; let's have a game at romp, Nacky ! . . . You won't sit 
down ? Then look you now ; suppose me a bull, a Basan-bull, the bull of bulls, 
or any bull. Thus up I get, and with my brows thus bent — I broo ; I say I broo, 
I broo, I broo. You won't sit down, will you — I broo. . . . Now, I'll be a senator 
again, and thy lover, little Nicky, Nacky. Ah, toad, toad, toad, toad, spit in my 
face a little, Nacky ; spit in my face, pry'thee, spit in my face, never so little ; 
spit but a little bit, — spit, spit, spit, spit when you are bid, I say ; do pry'thee, 
epii-, — Now, now spit. "What, you won't spit, will you ? Then I'll be a dog. 

Aquilina. A dog, my lord ! 

Antonio. A.j, a dog, and I'll give thee this t'other purse to let me be a dog — 
an'I to use me like a dog a little. Hurry durry, I will — here 'tis. {Gives the 
purse.) . . . Now bough waugh waugh, bough, w^augh. 

Aquilina. Hold, hold, sir. If cm's bite, they must be kicked, sir. Do you 
nee, kicked thus ? 

A ntonio. Ay, with all my heart. Do, kick, kick on, now I am under the table, 
kick again, — kick harder — harder yet — bough, waugh, waugh, bough. — Odd, I'll 
liave a snap at thy shins. — Bough, waugh, waugh, wvigh, bough — odd, »he kicks 
bravely. ' ' 

At last she takes a whip, thrashes him soundly, and turns him out of 
ths house. He will return, you may be sure; it has been a pleasant 
night for him ; he rubs his back, but he was amused. In fine, he was 
but a clown who had missed his vocation, whom chance has given an 



* Venice Preserved, 3, 1. Antonio is meant as a copy of the ' celebrated Eail 
of Shaftesbury, the lewdness of whose latter years,' says Mr. Thornton In hie 
edition of Otway's works, 3 vols. 1815, ' was a subject of general notoriety «- Tii 



26 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

embroidered silk gown, and who turns out at so much an ht ur political 
harlequinades. He feels more natural, more at his ease, playing Punch 
than aping a statesman. 

These are but gleams : for the most part Otway is a poet of hip 
time, dull and forged in colour; buried, like the rest, in the heavy, grey, 
clouded atmosphere, half English, half French, in which the bright 
lights brought over from France, are snuffed out by the insular fogs. 
He is a man of his time ; like the rest, he writes obscene comedies, The 
Soldier's Fortune, The Atheist^ Friendship in Fashion. He depicts coarse 
and vicious cavaliers, rogues on principle, as harsh and corrupt as those 
of Wycherley: Beaugard, who vaunts and practises the maxims of 
Hobbes ; the father, an old, corrupt rascal, who brags of his morality, 
and whom his son coldly sends to the dogs with a bag of crowns : Sir 
Jolly Jumble, a kind of base Falstaif, a pander by profession, whom 
the courtesans call *papa, daddy,' who, ' if he sits but at the table with 
one, he'll be making nasty figures in the napkins :' ^ Sir Davy Dunce, 
a disgusting animal, who ' has such a breath, one kiss of him were 
enough to cure the fits of the mother; 'tis worse than assafoetida. 
Clean linen, he says, is unwholesome . . . ; he is continually eating of 
garlic, and chewing tobacco : ' * Polydore, who, enamoured of his 
father's ward, tries to force her in the first scene, envies the brutes, 
and makes up his mind to imitate them on the next occasion.* Even 
his heroines he defiles.* Truly this society sickens us. They thought 

» The Soldier's Fortune, 1. 1. » Ibid, 

2 * Who'd be that sordid foolish thing called man, 
To cringe tlius, fawu, and flatter for a pleasure. 
Which beasts enjoy so very much above him? 
The lusty bull ranges thro' all the field, 
And from the herd singling his female out, 
Enjoys her, and abandons her at will. 
It shall be so, I'll yet possess my love, 
Wait on and watch her loose ungual ded hours : 
Then, when her roving thoughts have been abroad. 
And brought in wanton wishes to her heart ; 
T th' very minute when her virtue nods, 
I'll rush upon her in a storm of love. 
Beat down her guard of honour all before me. 
Surfeit on joys, till ev'n desires grow sick ; 
Then by long absence liberty regain, 

And quite forget the pleasure and the pain.' — The Orphan 1. 1 
H if impossible to see together more moral roguery and literary correctness. 
* ' Page (to Monimxa). In the morning when you call me to you, 
And by your bed I stand and tell you stories, 
I am ashamed to see your swelling breasts ; 
It makes me blush, they are so very white. 
Monimia. Oh men, for fiatfry and deceit renown'd ! ' 

-^The Orphan, 1. 1 



CHAP. 11.] DRYDEN. 27 

to cover all their filth with fine correct metaphors, neatly ericled poetical 
periods, a garment of harmonious phrases and noble expressions. They 
thought to equal Racine by counterfeiting his style. They did not know 
that in this style visible elegance conceals an admirable justness; that 
if it is a masterpiece of art, it is also a picture of manners ; that the 
mC5t refined and accomplished in society alone could speak and under- 
stand it ; that it paints a civilisation, as Shakspeare's does ; that each of 
these lines, which appear so restricted, has its inflection and artifice; 
that all passions, and every shade of passion, are expressed in them, — 
not, it is true, wild and entire, as in Shakspeare, but pared down and 
refined by courtly life; that this is a spectacle as unique as the other; 
that nature perfectly polished is as complex and as difficult to under- 
stand as nature perfectly intact; that as for them, they were as far below 
the one as above the other ; and that, in short, their characters are as 
much like Racine's as the porter of Mons. de Beauvilliers or the cook 
of Madame de Sevigne are like Madame de Sevigne or Mons. de 
Beauvilliers.^ 

VL 

Let us then leave this drama in the obscurity which it deserves, and 
seek elsewhere, in studied writings, for a happier employment of a 
fuller talent. 

This is the true domain of Dryden and of classical reason :' pam- 
phlets and dissertations in verse, letters, satires, translations and imita- 
tions, this is the field on which logical faculties and the art of writing 
find their best occupation. Before descending into it, and observing 
their work, it will be as well to study more closely the man who so 
wielded them. 

His was a singularly solid and judicious mind, an excellent reasoner, 
accustomed to discriminate his ideas, armed with good long-meditated 
proofs, strong in discussion, asserting principles, establishing his sub- 
divisions, citing authorities, drawing inferences ; so that, if we read his 
prefaces without reading his dramas, we might take him for one of the 
masters of the dramatic art. He naturally attains a definite prose 
style ; his ideas are unfolded with breadth and clearness ; his style is 
well moulded, exact and simple, free from the affectations and orna- 
ments with which Pope afterwards burdened his own ; his expression 
is, like that of Corneille, ample and periodic, by virtue simply of the 
internal argumentativeness which unfolds and sustains it. We can see 

* Burns said, after his arrival in Edinburgh, * Between the man of rustic lift 
and the polite world, I observed little difference. . . . But a refined and accom- 
plished woman was a being altogether new to me, and of which I had formed bui 
a very inadequate idea.' — (Burns* Works, ed. Cunningham, 1832, 8 vols., i, 207.) 
' Dryden says in his Essay on Satire, xiii 30, ' the stage to which my goo 
his never much inclined me. 



28 IHE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

that he thinks, and that on his own behalf; that he combines and verifiei 
his thoughts; that beyond all this, he naturally has a just perception, 
Rnd that with his method he has good sense. He has the tastes and 
the weaknesses which suit his cast of intellect. He holds in the highest 
estimation * the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent, whose 
expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is pure, 
whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close. What he borrows 
from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own, in coin as good, 
and almost as universally valuable.' ^ He has the stiffness of the 
logician poets, too strict and argumentative, blaming Ariosto, * who 
neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action, or compass 
of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught; his style is 
luxurious, without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the 
compass of nature and possibility.' * He understands delicacy no better 
than fancy. Speaking of Horace, he finds that ' his wit is faint and 
his salt almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine 
wit ; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear.' * Fox the same 
reason he depreciates the French style : * Their language is not strung 
with sinews, like our English ; it has the nimbleness of a greyhound, 
but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. . . . They have set up purity 
for the standard of their language ; and a masculine vigour is that of 
ours.' * Two or three such words depict a man ; Dryden has just 
affirmed, unwittingly, the measure and quality of his mind. 

This mind, as we may imagine, is heavy, and especially in flattery. 
Flattery is the chief art in a monarchical age. Dryden is hardly skilful 
in it, any more than his contemporaries. Across the Channel, at the 
same epoch, they praised just as much, but without cringin/j too low, 
because praise was decked out ; now disguised or relieved by charm of 
style ; now looking as if men took to it as to a fashion. Thus delicately 
rendered, people are able to digest it. But here, far from the fine aristo- 
cratic kitchen, it weighs like an undigested mass upon the stomach. 
1 have related how Lord Clarendon, hearing that his daughter had just 
married the Duke of York in secret, begged the king to have her 
instantly beheaded;* how the Commons, composed for the most part 
of Presbyterians, declared themselves and the English people rebels, 
worthy of the punishment of death, and went moreover to cast them- 
selves at the king's feet, with contrite air to beg him to pardon the 
House and the nation.* Dryden is no more delicate than statesmen and 
legislators. His dedications are as a rule nauseous. He says to the 
Duchess of Monmouth : 

'To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need only he seeu 
together. We are ready to conclude, that you are a pair of angels sent below tt 

* Essay or. Satire, dedicated to the Earl of Dorset, xiii. IG. ' IHd. 

^ Ibid. 84. ■* Dedication of the JEJneis,-^i\. 201. 

' See vol. i. 466. « See vol. i. 467. 



CHAP, ir.] DRYDEN. 29 

make virtue amiable in yotir persons, or to sit to poets w^en they would pleasantly 
instruct the age, by diawing gooduess in the most perfect and alluring sliape of 
nature. ... No part of Europe can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in mascu- 
line beauty, and in goodliness of shape. ' * 

Klse where he says to the Duke of Monmouth : 

* You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, con- 
spiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Riualdo are 
present in you, even above their originals ; you only want a Homer or a Tasso to 
make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in 
the height of their perfection) are the most desirable gifts of Heaven. ' ^ 

His Grace did not frown nor hold his nose, and his Grace was right.' 
Another author, Mrs. Aphra Behn, burned a still more ill-savoured 
incense under the nose of Nell Gwynne : people's nerves were strong in 
those days, and they breathed freely where others would be suffocated. 
The Earl of Dorset having written some little songs and satires, Dryden 
swears that in his way he equalled Shakspeare, and surpassed all the 
ancients. And these barefaced panegyrics go on imperturbablj for a 
score of pages, the author alternately passing in review the various 
virtues of his great man, always finding that the last is the finest ; * 
after which he receives by way of recompense a purse of gold. Observe 
that in this Dryden is not more a flunkey than the others. The corpora- 
tion of Hull, harangued one day by the Duke of Monmouth, made him 
a present of six broad pieces, which were presented to Monmouth by 
Marvell, the member for HuU.^ Modern scruples were not yet born. 
I can believe that Dryden, with all his prostrations, lacked spirit more 
than honour. 

A second talent, perhaps the first in carnival time, is the art of 
saying pretty things, and the Restoration was a carnival, about as delicate 
as a bargee's ball There are strange songs and more than adventu- 
rous prologues in Dry den's plays. His Marriage a la Mode opens with 
these verses sung by a married woman : 

* "Why should a foolish marriage vow, 
Which long ago was made, 
Oblige us to each other now, 
"When passion is decay'd ? 

* Dedication of The Indian Emperor, ii. 261. 

' Dedication of Tyrannic Love, iii. 347. 

' He also says in the same epistle dedicatory : * All men will join me in the 
adoration which I pay you.' To the Earl of Rochester he writes in a letter (xviii. 
90; : * I find it is not for me to contend any way with your Lordship, who can 
write better on the meanest subject than I can on the best. . . . You are above 
any incense I can give you.' In his dedication of the Fables (xi. 195) he com- 
pares the Duke of Ormond to Joseph, Ulysses, Lucullus, etc. In his fourtl 
poetical epistle (xi. 20) he compares Lady Castlemaine to Cato. 

^ Dedication of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. S86. 

^ See Andrew Marvell's Works, i. 210, 



30 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Ih 

We lov'd, and we lov'd as long as we c3Ti*d, 
'Till our love was lov'd out in us both. 
But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled ; 
'Twas pleasure first made it an oath. ' 

The reader may read the rest for himself in Dry den's plays ; it cannM 
bo quoted. Besides, Dryden does not succeed well ; his mind is on too 
solid a basis; his mood is too serious, even reserved, taciturn. As Sii 
Walter Scott well said, ' his indelicacy was like the forced impudence 
of a bashful man.'^ He wished to wear the fine exterior of a Sedley or 
a Rochester, made himself petulant of set purpose, and squatted clumsily 
in the filth in which others simply sported. Nothing is mere nauseous 
than studied lewdness, and Dryden studies everything, even pleasant- 
ness and politeness. He wrote to Dennis, who had praised him : 

*They (the commendations) are no more mine Avhen I receive lliem than the 
light of the moon can be allowed to be her own, who shines but Ly the reflexion 
of her brother.'^ 

He wrote to his cousin, in a diverting narration, these details of a fat 
woman, with whom he had travelled : 

* Her weight made the horses travel very heavily ; but, to give them a breath- 
ing time, she would often stop us, . . . and tell us we were all flesh and blood.' ' 

It seems that these pretty things would then amuse a lady. His 
letters are made up of heavy official civilities, vigorously hewn com- 
pliments, mathematical salutes ; his badinage is a dissertation, he props 
up his trifles with periods. I have found in him beautiful pieces, but 
never pleasing ones ; he cannot even argue with taste. The characters 
in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy think themselves still at school, learnedly 
quote Paterculus, and in Latin too, opposing the definition of the other 
side, and observing *that it was only a genere et fne, and so not alto- 
gether perfect.'* In one cf his prefaces he says in a professorial tone: 

* It is charged upon me that I make debauched persons my protagonists, or the 
chief persons of the drama ; and that I make them happy in the conclusion of my 
play ; against the law of comedy, which is to reward vhrtue, and punish vice. ' * 

Elsewhere he declares: * It is not that I would explode the use of 
metaphors from passion, for Longinus thinks them necessary to raise ItJ 
His great essay upon satire swarms with useless or long protracted 
pa=5sages, with the inquiries and comparisons of a commentator. He 
cannot get rid of the scholar, the logician, the rhetorician, and show the 
natural man. 

But the man of spirit was often manifest ; in spite of several falls 

> Scott's Life of Dryden, i. 447. 

2 Letter 2, ' to Mr. John Dennis,' xviii. 114. 

* Letter 29, ' to Mrs. Steward,' xviii. 144. 
< Essay of Dramatic Poesy, xv. 303. 

• Preface to An Evening's Love, iii. 225. 



CHA.P. ll.J DRYDEN. 3 J 

and many slips, he shows a mind constantly npriglrt, ten(!ing rather 
from conventionality than from nature, with a dash and afflatus, occupied 
with grave thoughts, and subjecting his conduct to his convictions. He 
was converted loyally and by conviction to the Roman Catholic creed, 
persevered in it after the fall of James ii., lost his post of historio- 
grapher and poet-laureate, and though poor, burdened with a family, 
ord infirm, refused to dedicate his Virgil to King William. He wrote 
to his sons : 

* Dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my talent : yet, for your 
Bake, I will struggle with the plain openness of my nature. ... In the mean time, 
I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes, but do ray dntj, and suffer for 
God's sake. . . . You know the profits (of Virgil) might have been more ; but 
neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them ; but I can 
never repent of my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice ol 
the cause for which I suffer. ' ^ 

One of his sons having been expelled from school, he wrote to the 

master, Dr. Busby, his own old teacher, with extreme gravity and noble- 
ness, asking without humiliation, disagreeing without giving offence, in 
a sustained and proud style, which is calculated to please, seeking again 
his favour, if not as a debt to the father, at least as a gift to the son, and 
concluding, * I have done something, so far to conquer my own spirit as 
to ask it.' He was a good father to his children, as well as liberal, and 
sometimes even generous, to the tenant of his little estate.** He says : 

* More libels have been written against me than almost any man now living. 
... I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, . . . and, being naturally 
vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.' ^ 

Insulted by Collier as a corrupter of morals, he endured this coarse 
reproof, and nobl^; confessed the faults of his youth : 

* I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me 
justly ; and 1 have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which 
can be trufy argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. 
If he be my enemy, let him triumph ; if he be my friend, as I have given him 
no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.'* 

There is some wit in what follows : 

* He (Collier) is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to 
battle like a dictatoi from the plough. I will not say " the zeal of God's house 
has eaten him up," but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners 
fjid civility.'* 

Such a repentance raises a man ; to humble oneself thus, one must be a 
great man. He was so in mind and in heart, full of solid arguments 
and individual opinions, above the petty mannerism of rhetoric and 

^ Letter 23. ' to his sons at Rome.' xviii. 133. 

2 Scott's Life of Bryden, i. 449. 

' Egsay on Satire, xiii. 80. 

* Preface to the Fables, xi. 238. » Ibid, 



32 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK J 11 

affectations of style, a master of verse, a slave to his idea, with thai 

abundance of thoughts which is the sign of true genius : 

* Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only 
difficulty is to chuse or to reject, to run them into verses, or to give tliem tU«i 
other harmony of prose : 1 have so long studied and practised both, that they art 
grown into a habit, and become familiar to me. ' ^ 

With these powers he entered upon his second career ; the English con- 
ititution and genius opened it to him. 

VII. 

* A man,* says La Bruy^re, ' born a Frenchman and a Christian 
finds himself constrained in satire ; great subjects are forbidden to him ; 
he essays them sometimes, and then turns aside to small things, which 
he elevates by the beauty of his genius and his style.' It was not so 
in England. Great subjects were given up to vehement discussion ; 
politics and religion, like two arenas, invited to boldness and to battle, 
every talent and every passion. The king, at first popular, had roused 
opposition by his vices and errors, and bent before public discontent 
as before the intrigue of parties. It was known that he had sold the 
interests of England to France ; it was believed that he would deliver 
up the consciences of Protestants to the Papists. The lies of Gates, the 
murder of the magistrate Godfrey, his corpse solemnly paraded in the 
streets of London, had inflamed the imagination and prejudices of the 
people ; the judges, blind or intimidated, sent innocent Roman Catholics 
to the scaffold, and the mob received with insults and curses their pro- 
testations of innocence. The king's brother had been excluded from 
his oflfices, it was endeavoured to exclude him from the throne. The 
pulpit, the theatres, the press, the hustings, resounded with discussions 
and recriminations. The names of Whigs and Tories arose, and the 
deepest debates of political philosophy were carried on, nursed by 
sentiments of present and practical interests, embittered by the rancour 
of old as well as of freshly roused passions. Dryden plunged in ; and 
his poem of Absalom and Achitoj^hel was a political pamphlet. * They 
who can criticise so weakly,' he says in the preface, * as to imagine that I 
have done my worst, may be convinced at their own cost that I can write 
severely with more ease than I can gently.' A biblical allegory, suited 
to the taste of the time, hardly concealed the names, and did not hide 
the men. He describes the tranquil old age and incontestable right of 
King David ;^ the charm, pliant humour, popularity of Jiis natural son 
Absalom;^ the genius and treachery of Achitophel,* who stirs up the 



1 Preface to the Fables, xi. 209. 

2 Charles ii. ' The Duke of Monraoutb. 
* The Earl of Shaftesbury : 

Of these the false Achitophel was first, 
A name to all succeeding ages curst r 



CnAP. II.] DRYDEN. 33 

8on against the father, unites the clashing ambitions, and reanimates 
the conquered factions. There is hardly any wit here ; there is no time 
to be witty in such contests ; think of the roused people who listened, 
men in prison or exile who heard him ; fortune, liberty, life Avas at 
stake. The thing is to strike the nail on the head and hard, not grace- 
fully. The public must recognise the characters, shout their names as 
they recognise the portraits, applaud the atta3ks which are made upon 
them, rail at them, hurl them from the high rank which they covet. 
Dry den passes them all in review : 

* In the first rank of these did Zimri * stand, 
A man so various that he seemed to be 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
"Was eveiytliing by starts and nothing long ; 
But in the course of one revolving moon 
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; 
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
With something new to wish or to enjoy ! 
Railing and praising were his usual themes ; 
And both, to show his judgment, in extremea: 
So over-violent, or over-civil, 
That every man with him was God or devil. 



For close designs and crooked counsels fit, 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit — 
Restless, unfixed in principles and place, 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; 
A fiery soul, which working out its way. 
Fretted the pigmy body to decay 
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
A daring pilot in extremity, 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high. 
He sought the storms ; but, for a calm imfit, 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
Great wits are sure to madness near allied 
And thin partitions do their bounds divide ; 
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour bleat^ 
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest ? 
Punish a body which he could not please, 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 
And all to leave what with his toil he won. 
To that unfeathered two-legged tiling, a son. 
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try, 
And born a shapeless lump, like anarclj y. 
In friendship false, implacable in hate, 
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.' 
' The Duke of Buckingham. 
TOL. XL 



tj4 THF, CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK UK 

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 

Nothing went ui rewarded but desert. 

Beggared by fools whom still he found too late, 

He had his jest, and they had his estate. 

He laugh'd himself from Court ; then sought relief 

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief : 

For spite of him the weight of business fell 

On Absalom and wise Achitophel ; 

Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, 

He left not faction, but of that was left. . . . 

Shimei,^ whose youth did early promise bring 

Of zeal to God and hatred to his King ; 

Did wisely from expensive sins refrain 

And never broke the Sabbath but for gain : 

Nor ever was he known an oath to vent. 

Or curse, unless against the government.* 

Against these attacks their chief Shaftesbury made a stand: whei 
accused of higli treason he was declared guiltless by the grand jury, in 
spite of all the efforts of the court, amidst the applause of a vast multi- 
tude ; and his partisans caused a medal to be struck, bearing his face, 
and boldly showing on the reverse the Tower obscured by a cloud. 
Dryden replied by his poem of the Medaly and the violent diatribe oyer* 
whelmed the open provocation : 

* Oh, could the style that copied every grace 

And plow'd such furrows for an eunuch face. 

Could it have formed his ever- changing will, 

The various piece had tired the graver's skill ! 

A martial hero first, with early care, 

Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war ; 

A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man, 

So young his hatred to his Prince began. 

Kext this, (how wildly will ambition steer !) 

A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear ; 

Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, 

He cast himself into the saint-like mould. 

Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain. 

The loudest bag-pipe of the squeaking train. ' 

The same hitterness envenomed religious controversy. Disputes on 
doo-ma, for a moment cast into the shade by debauched and sceptical 
manners, had broken out again, inflamed by the bigoted Catholicism of 
the prince, and by the just fears of the nation. The poet who in 
Religio Laid was still an Anglican, though lukewarm and hesitating, 
drawn on graiually by his absolutist inclinations, had become a convert 
to Romanism, and in his poem of The Hind and the Panther fought for 
his new creed. * The nation,' he says in the preface, ' is in too high 
a ferment for me to expect either fair war or even so much as fair 
quarter from a reader of the opposite party.' And then, making use 

' " > Slingsby Bethel. 



(If A p. II.] DRYDEN. 35 

of the mediaeval allegories, he represents all the heretical sects as beasts 
of prey, worrying a white hind of heavenly origin ; he spares neither 
coarse comparisons, nor gross sarcasms, nor open objurgations. The 
argument is close and theological throughout. His hearers were not 
wits, who cared to see how a dry subject could be adorned, theologians 
accidentally and for a moment, with mistrust and reserve, like Boileau 
in his Amou?' de Dieu, They were oppressed men, barely recovered 
from a secular persecution, attached to their faith by their sufferings, 
ill at ease under the visible menaces and ominous hatred of their re- 
strained foes. Their poet must be a dialectician and a schoolman ; he 
needs all the sternness of logic ; he is immeshed in it, like a recent 
convert, saturated with the proofs which have separated him from the 
national faith, and which support him against public reprobation, fertile 
in distinctions, putting his finger on the weaknesses of an argument, 
subdividing replies, bringing back his adversary to the question, thorny 
and unpleasing to a modern reader, but the more praised and loved in 
his own time. In all English minds there is a basis of gravity and 
vehemence ; hate rises tragic, with a gloomy outbreak, like the breakers 
in the North Sea. In the midst of his public strife Dryden attacks a 
private enemy. Shad well, and overwhelms him with immortal scorn.' A 
great epic style and solemn rhj^me gave weight to his sarcasm, and the 
unlucky rhymester was drawn in a ridiculous triumph on the poetic car 
whereon the muse sets the heroes and the gods. Dryden represented 
the Irishman Mac Flecknoe, an old king of folly, deliberating on the 
choice of a worthy successor, and choosing Shadwell as an heir to his 
gabble, a propagator of nonsense, a boastful conqueror of common 
rense. From all sides, through the streets littered with paper, the 
nations assembled to look upon the young hero, standing near the 
throne of his father, his brow surrounded with fogs, the vacant smile ol 
Batisfied imbecility floating over his countenance : 

*The hoary prince in majesty appear'd. 
High on a throne of his own labors rear'd. 
At his right hand our young Ascanius sate, 
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state ; 
His brows thick fogs instead of glories grace, 
And lambent dulness play'd around his face. 
As Hannibal did to the altars come. 
Sworn by his sire, a mortal foe to Rome ; 
So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, 
That he, till death, true dulness would maintain ; 
And, in his father's right and realm's defence, 
Ne'er to have peace with wit nor truce with sense. 
The king himself the sacred unction made, 
As king by oflEice and as priest by trade. 
In his sinister hand, instead of ball. 
He placed a mighty mug of potent ale.' 

, ' Mac Flecknoe. 



36 THE CLASSIC AGE L^OOK III 

His father blesses him : 

' •' Heavens bless my sou ! from Ireland let him leifrn 
To far Barbadoes on the western main ; 
Of bis dominion may no end be known, 
And greater than his father's be his throne ; 
Beyond Love's Kingdom let him stretch his pen \ 
He paused, and all the people cried Amen. 
Then thus continued he : " My son, advance 
Still in new impudence, new ignorance. 
Success let others teach, learn thou from me, 
Pangs without birth and fruitless industry. 
Let Virtuosos in five years be writ ; 
Yet not one tliought accuse thy toil of wit. . . « 
Let them be all by thy own model made 
Of dulness and desire no foreign aid. 
That they to future ages may be known. 
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own : 
Nay, let thy men of wit too be the same, 
All full of thee and diflfering but in name. . . , 
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep ; 
Thy tragic Muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep. 
With whate'er gall thou setst thyself to write. 
Thy inoffensive satires never bite ; 
In thy felonious heart though venom lies, 
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. 
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame 
In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram. 
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command 
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land. 
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise. 
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways ; 
Or, if thou wouldst thy different talents suit, 
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute." 
He said, but his last words were scarcely heard. 
For Bruce and Longville had a trap prepared. 
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard. 
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind. 
Borne upward by a subterranean wind. 
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part. 
With double portion of his father's art.* 

Thus the insulting masquerade goes on, not studied and polished \iks 
Boileau's Lutrin, but rude and pompous, inspired by a coarse and 
poetical afflatus, as you may see a great ship enter the muddy Thames, 
with spread canvas, cleaving the waters. 

VIII. 

In these three poems, the art of writing, the mark and the source of 
classical literature, appeared for the first time. A new spirit was born 
and renewed this art, like everything else ; thenceforth, and for a ceu' 



CHAP. II.] DRYDEN. 37 

tury to come, ideas sprang up and fell into their place after another 

law tlian that which had hitherto shaped them. Under Spenser and 
Shakspeare, living words, like cries or music, betrayed the internal 
imagination which gave them forth. A kind of vision possessed the 
artist ; landscapes and events were unfolded in his mind as in nature ; 
he concentrated in a glance all the details and all the forces which 
make up a being, and this image acted and was developed within him 
hke the external object ; he imitated his characters ; he heard their 
words ; he found it easier to represent them with every pulsation than 
to relate or explain their feelings ; he did not judge, he saw ; he was 
an involuntary actor and mimic ; drama was his natural work, be- 
cause in it the characters speak, and not the author. Then this com- 
plex and imitative conception changes colour and is decomposed : man 
sees things no more at a glance, but in detail ; he walks leisurely round 
them, turning his light upon all their parts in succession. The fire 
which revealed them by a single illumination is extinguished; he ob- 
serves qualities, marks aspects, classifies groups of actions, judges and 
reasons. Words, before animated, and as it were swelling with sap, are 
withered and dried ; they become abstractions ; they cease to produce 
in him figures and landscapes; they only set in motion the rehcs of 
enfeebled passions; they barely shed a few flickering beams on the 
uniform texture of his dulled conception ; they become exact, almost 
scientific, like numbers, and like numbers they are arranged in a series, 
allied by proportions, — the first, more simple, leading up to the next, 
more composite, — all in the same order, so that the mind which enters 
lipon a track, finds it level, and is never obUged to quit it. Thenceforth 
a new career is opened ; man has the whole world resubjected to his 
thought ; the change in his thoughts has changed all the aspects, and 
everything assumes a new form in his metamorphosed mind. His task 
is to explain and to prove ; this, in short, is the classical style, and this 
is the style of Dryden. 

He develops, defines, concludes ; he declares his thought, then takes 
it up again, that his reader may receive it prepared, and having re- 
ceived, may retain it. He bounds it with exact terms justified by the 
dictionary, with simple constructions justified by grammar, that the 
reader may have at every step a method of verification and a source of 
clearness. He contrasts ideas with ideas, phrases with phrases, that 
the reader, guided by the contrast, may not deviate from the route 
marked out for him. You may imagine the possible beauty of such a 
work. This poesy is but a stronger prose. Closer ideas, more marked 
contrasts, bolder images, only add weight to the argument. Metre and 
rhyme transform the judgments into sentences. The mind, held on the 
stretch by the rhythm, studies itself more, and by means of reflection 
arrives at a noble conclusion. The judgments are embossed in abbrevia- 
tive images, or symmetrical lines, which give them the solidity and 
popular form of a dogma. General truths acquire the definite form 



38 THE CLASSIC AGE. ^BOOK 111 

which transmits them to posterity, and propagates them in the humai» 

race. Such is the merit of these poems; they please by their good 
expressions.^ In a full and solid web stand out cleverly knotted oi 
sparkling threads. Here Dryden has gathered in one line a long argu- 
ment ; there a happy metaphor has opened up a new perspective undei 
the principal idea;* further on, two similar words, united together, 
have struck the mind with an unforeseen and cogent proof;'* elsewhere 
a hidden comparison has thrown a tinge of glory or shame on the per- 
son who least expected it. These are all artifices or successes of a 
calculated style, which chains the attention, and leaves the mmd per- 
suaded or convinced. 

IX. 

In truth, there is scarcely aiiy other literary merit. If Dryden is a 
skilled politician, a trained controversialist, well armed with arguments, 
knowing all the ins and outs of discussion, versed in the history of men 
and parties, this pamphleteering aptitude, practical and English, con- 
fines him to the low region of everyday and personal combats, far from 
the lofty philosophy and speculative freedom which give endurance and 
greatness to the classical style of his French contemporaries. In this 
age, in England, all discussion was fundamentally narrow. Except the 
terrible Hobbes, they all lack grand originality. Dryden, like the rest, 
is confined to the arguments and insults of sect and fashion. Their 
ideas were as small as their hatred was strong; no general doctrine 
opened up beyond the tumult of the strife a poetical vista ; texts, tradi- 
tions, a sad train of rigid reasoning, such were their arms; prejuUce 
and passion swayed both parties. This is why the subject-matter fell 
below the art of writing. Dryden had no personal philosophy to de- 



1 ' Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ. 
Conquering with force of arms and dint of wit: 
Theirs was tlie giant race, before the Hood. 
And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood. 
Like Janus, he the stubborn soil manured, 
With rules of husbandry the rankness cured ; 
Tamed us to manners, when the stage was rude, 
And boisterous English wit with art endued. . . . 
But what we gain'd in skill we lost in strength. 
Our builders were with want of genius curst ; 
The second temple was not like the first.' 

Epistle 12 to Gongreve, xi. 59. 

* * Held up the buckler of the people's cause 

Against the crown, and skulk'd against the laws. . . 
Desire of p^wer, on earth a vicious weed. 
Yet, sprung from high, is of celestial seed I ' 

Absalom and Achitophel, Part i 

' * Wliy then should I, encouraging the bad. 
Turn rebel, and run popularly mad ? ' 



CFAP. 11.] DRYDEN. 39 

velop ; lie does but versify themes given to him by others. In this 
sterility art soon is reduced to the clothing of foreign idjas, and the 
writer becomes an antiquarian or a translator. In fact, the greatest 
part of Dryden's poems are imitations, adaptations, or copies. He 
translated Persius, Virgil, part of Horace, Theocritus, Juvenal, Lucretms 
and Homer, and put into modern English several tales of Boccacio and 
Cliaucer These translations then appeared to be as great works as 
original compositions. When he took the jEneid in hand, the nation, 
as Johnson tells us, appeared to think its honour interested in the issue. 
Addison furnished him with the arguments of every book, and an essay 
on the Georgics; others supplied him with editions and notes ;_ great 
lords vied with one another in offering him hospitality; subscriptions 
Bowed in. They said that the English Virgil was to give England the 
Virgil of Rome. This work was long considered his highest glory. 
Even so at Rome, under Cicero, in the early dearth of national poetry 
the translators of Greek works were as highly praised as the original 

authors. ui * 4. 

This sterility of invention alters or depresses the taste. * or taste 
is an instinctive system, and leads us by internal maxims, which we 
ignore. The mind, guided by it, perceives connections,, shuns discord- 
ances, enjoys or suffers, chooses or rejects, according to general con- 
ceptions which master it, but are not visible. These removed, we see 
the tact, which they engendered, disappear; the writer is clumsy, be- 
cause philosophy fails him. Such is the imperfection of the stories 
handled by Dryden, from Boccacio and Chaucer. Dryden does not see 
that fairy tales or tales of chivalry only suit a poetry m its infancy; 
that ingenious subjects require an artless style; that the talk of Renard 
and Chanticleer, the adventures of Palamon and Arcite, the transfor- 
mations, tournaments, apparitions, need the astonished carelessness 
and the graceful gossip of old Chaucer. Vigorous periods reflective 
antitheses, here oppress these amiable ghosts; classical phrases em- 
barrass them in their too stringent embrace ; they are lost to our sight ; 
to find them again, we must go to their first parent, quit the too harsh 
Ught of a learned and manly age ; we cannot pursue them fairly except 
in their first style in the dawn of credulous thought, under the mist 
which plays about their vague forms, with all the blushes and smiie of 
mornincr. Moreover, when Dryden comes on the scene, he crushes the 
delicacies of his master, hauling in tirades or reasonings, blotting out 
sincere and self-abandoning tenderness. What a difference between 
his account of Arcite's death and Chaucer's I How wretched are all 
his fine words, his gallantry, his symmetrical phrases, his cold re- 
grets, compared to the cries of sorrow, the true outpouring, the deep 
love in Chaucer! But the worst fault is that almost everywhere he 
is a copyist, and retains the faults like a literal translator, with eyes 
olur,d on the work, powerless to comprehend and recast it, more a 
rhymester than a poet. When La Fontaine put .Esop or BoccaciO into 



iO THE CLAiSSlC AGE. [BOOK III 

verse, lie breathed a new spirit into them; he took their matter only! 
the new soul, which constitutes the value of his work, is his, and onl;y 
his; and this soul befits the work. In place of the Ciceronian peri )ds 
of Boccacio, we find slim, little lines, full of delicate raillery, dainty 
voluptuousness, feigned frankness, wlucj;> relish the forbidden fruit be- 
cause it is fruit, and because it is forbidden. The tragic departs, tho 
relics of the middle-ages are a thousand leagues away; there remaini 
nothing but the jeering gaiety, Gallic and racy, as of a critic and an 
epicurean. In Dryden, incongruities abound ; and our author is so little 
sliocked by them, that he imports them elsewhere, in his theological 
poems, representing the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, as a hind, 
and the heresies by various animals, who dispute at as great length and 
as learnedly as Oxford graduates.^ I like him no better in his Epistles ; 
as a rule, they are but flatteries, almost always awkward, often mytho- 
logical, interspersed with somewhat vulgar sentences. * I have studied 
Horace,' he says,^ * and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated 
here.' Do not imagine it to be true. Horace's Epistles, though in 
verse, are genuine letters, brisk, unequal in movement, always unstudied, 
natural. Nothing is further from Dryden than this original and 
sociable spirit, philosophical and lewd,^ the most refined and the most 
nervous of epicureans, a kinsman (at eighteen centuries' distance) of 
Alfred de Musset and Voltaire. Like Horace, an author must be a 
thinker and a man of the world to write agreeable morality, and Dryden 
was no more than his contemporaries a thinker or a man of the world. 

But other no less English characteristics sustain him. Suddenly, in 
the midst of the yawns which these Epistles excited, our eyes are 
arrested. A true accent, new ideas, are brought out. Dryden, writing 
to his cousin, a coimtry gentleman, has lighted on an English original 
subject. He depicts the life of a rural squire, the referee at' his 
neighbours, who shuns lawsuits and towm doctors, w^io keeps hinis^l/ 
in health by hunting and exercise. Here is his portrait : 

* How bless'd is he, who leads a country life, 
Uuvex'd with anxious cares, and void of strife I . • « 
With crowds attended of your ancient race. 
You seek the champaign sports, or sylvan chase ; 
With well-breathed beagles you surround the wood, 
Even then Industrious of the common good ; 
And often have you brought the wily fox 
To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks ; 
Chased even amid the folds, and made to bleed. 
Like felons, where they did the raurderous deed. 

' Though Huguenots contemn our ordination, succession, minititerial vocation, 
etc. {The Hind and the Panther, Faxt ii. v. 139), such are tne harsh words we 
often find in his books. 

« Preface to the Religio Laid. 

3 What Augustus says about Horace is charming, but cauuot be quoted 
even in Lat'.n. 



CHAP. U.l DRYDEiS. 41 

This fiery game your active youth maintain'd 

Not yet by years extinguish'd though restrain'd • . , . 

A patriot both the king and country serves ; 

Prerogative and privilege preserves : 

Of each our laws the certain limit show ; 

One must not ebb, nor t'other overflow : 

Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand, 

The barriers of the state on either hand ; 

May neither overflow, for then they drown the laud. 

When both are full, they feed our bless'd abode ; 

Like those that water d once the paradise of God. 

Some overpoise of sway, by turns, they share ; 

In peace the people, and the prince in war : 

Consuls of moderate power in calms were made ; 

When the Gauls came, one sole dictator sway'd. 

Patriots, in peace, assert the people's right, 

With noble stubbornness resisting might ; 

No lawless mandates from the court receive, 

Nor lend by force, but in a body give.' ^ 

This serious converse shows a political mind, fed on the spectacle of 
affairs, having in the matter of public and practical debates the supe- 
riority which the French have in speculative discussions and social con- 
versation. So, amidst the dryness of polemics break forth sudden 
splendours, a poetic fount, a prayer from the heart's depths ; the 
English well of concentrated passion is on a sudden opened again with 
a flow and a dash which Dry den does not elsewhere exhibit; 

* Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars 
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers. 
Is reason to the soul : and as on high 
Those rolling fires discover but the sky, 
Not light us here ; so Reason's glimm'ring ray 
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way. 
But guide us upward to a better day. 
And as those nightly tapers disappear 
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere. 
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight. 
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.* * 

' But, gracious God ! how well dost thou provide 
Por erring judgments an unerring guide 1 
Thy throne is darkness in th' abyss of light 
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. 
O teach me to believe Thee thus conceal'd. 
And search no farther than Thyself reveal'd ; 
But her alone for my director take. 
Whom Thou hast promised never to forsake ! 
My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires ; 
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires. 



* Epistle 15. xi. 75. « Beginning of TleUgio LaiH. 



42 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

Follow'd false lights ; and when their glimpse was gone, 

My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. 

Such was I, such by nature still I am ; 

Be Thine the glory and be mine the shame ! 

Good life be now my task ; my doubts are done.** 

Such is the poetry of these serious minds. After having strayed in the 
deb£.ucheries and pomps of the Restoration, Dryden found his way to 
the grave emotions of inner life ; though a Romanist, he felt like a Pro • 
testant the wretchedness of man and the presence of grace : he was 
capable of enthusiasm. Here and there a manly and effective verse 
discloses, in the midst of his reasonings, the power of conception and 
the inspiration of desire. When the tragic is met with, he takes to it 
as to his own domain ; at need, he deals in the horrible. He has de- 
scribed the infernal chase, and the torture of the young girl worried 
by dogs, with the savage energy of Milton.* As a contrast, he loved 
nature : this taste always endures in England ; the sombre, reflective 
passions are unstrung in the wide peace and harmony of the fields. 
Landscapes are to be met with amidst theological disputation: 
* New blossoms flourish and new flowers arise, 
As God had been abroad, and walking there 
Had left his footsteps and reformed the year. 
The sunny hills from far were seen to glow 
"With glittering beams, and in the meads below 
The burnished brooks appeared with liquid gold to flow. 
As last they heard the foolish Cuckoo sing, 
Whose note proclaimed the holy-day of spring. ' * 

Under his regular versification the artist's soul is brought to light ; * 
though contracted by habits of classical argument, though stiffened by 
controversy and polemics, though unable to create souls or to depict 
artless and delicate sentiments, he is a genuine poet : he is troubled, 
raised by beautiful sounds and forms ; he writes boldly under the pres- 
sure of vehement ideas ; he surrounds himself willingly with splendid 
images ; he is moved by the buzzing of their swarms, the glitter of their 
splen iours ; he is, when he wishes it, a musician and a painter ; he 
writes stirring airs, which shake all the senses, even if they do not sink 
deep into the heart. Such is his Alexanders Feast, an ode in honour 
of St Cecilia's day, an admirable trumpet-blast, in which metre and 
gound impress upon the nerves the emotions of the mind, a master- 
piece of rapture and of art, which Victor Hugo alone has come up 

» The Hind and the Panther, Part i. v. 64-75. ' Theodore and Honor ia, xL 
* The Hind and the Panther, Part iii. v. 553-560. 

* • For her the weeping heavens become serene, 
For her the ground is clad in cheerful green, 
For her the nightingales are taught to sing, 
And natm-e for her has delayed the spring.' 
These charming verses on the Duchess of York remind on9 of those of I^ 
Fontaine on the Princess of Couti. 



CHAP. IL- ' DKi'DEN. 43 

to. Alexander is on his throne in the palace of Porsepolis ; tho 
lovely Thais sate by his side ; before him, in a vast hall, his glo'*^ 
in us captains. And Timotheus sings : 

* The praise of Bacchus, then, the sweet musician sung ; 

Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young. 
The jolly God in triumph comes ; 
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums ; 
Flush'd with a purple grace. 
He sliews his honest face. 
Now, give the hautboys breath ; he comes, he comes 
Bacchus, ever fair and young. 
Drinking joys did first ordain ; 
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, 
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure ; 
Rich the treasure, 
Sweet the pleasure ; 
Sweet is pleasure after pain.' 
And at the stirring sounds the king is troubled ; his cheeks are glow- 
ing ; his battles return to his memory ; he defies heaven and earth. 
Then a sad song depresses him. Timotheus mourns the death of the 
betrayed Darius. Then a tender song softens him ; Timotheus lauds 
the dazzling beauty of Thais. Suddenly he strikes the lyre again, 

* A louder yet, and yet a louder strain. 
Break his bands of sleep asunder, 

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder. 
Hark, hark ! the horrid sound 
Has raised up his head ; 
As awaked from the dead, 
And amazed, he stares around. 
Revenge, revenge ! Timotheus cries. 
See the furies arise ; 
See the snakes, that they rear, 
How they hiss in their hair ! 
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes I 
Behold a ghastly band, 
Each a torch in his hand 
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were siain, 
And unburied remain 
Inglorious on the plain : 
Give the vengeance due 
To the valiant crew. 
Behold how they toss their torches on high, 

How they point to the Persian abodes. 
And glittering temples of their hostile gods. — 

The princes applaud, with a furious joy. 
And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy r 
Thais led the way. 
To light him to his prey. 
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.' 

• For instance, in the (Jhant du Cirque. 



44 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Thus already music softened, exalted, mastered men ; Dryden's versei 
acquire power in describing it. 

X. 

This was one of his last works ; brilliant and poetical, it was bom 

amidst the greatest sadness. The king for whom he had written waa 
deposed and in exile ; the religion which he had embraced was despiseJ 
and oppressed ; a Roman Catholic and a royalist, he was bound to t 
conquered party, which the nation resentfully and mistrustfully con- 
sidered as the natural enemy of liberty and reason. He had lost the 
two places which were his support ; he lived wretchedly, burdened 
with a family, obliged to support his son abroad ; treated as a hireling 
by a coarse publisher, forced to ask him for money to pay for a watch 
which he could not get on credit, beseeching Lord Bolingbroke to pro- 
tect him against Tonson's insults, rated by this shopkeeper when the 
promised page was not finished on the stated day. His enemies persecuted 
him with pamphlets ; the Puritan Collier lashed his comedies unfeel- 
ingly ; he was danmed without pity, but conscientiously. He had long 
been in ill health, crippled, constrained to write much, reduced to 
exaggerate flattery in order to earn from the great the indispensable 
money which the publishers would not give him : ^ 

* What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have 
undertaken to translate in my declining years ; struggling witli wants, oppressed 
with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write ; and 
my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me, by the 
lying character which has been given them of my morals. ' * 

Although well meant for his own part, he knew that his conduct had 
not always been worthy, and that all his writings would not endure. 
Born between two epochs, he had oscillated between two forms of life 
and two forms of thought, having reached the perfection of neither, 
having kept the faults of both ; having found in surrounding manners 
no support worthy of his character, and in surrounding ideas no sub- 
ject worthy of his talent. If he had founded criticism and good style, 
this criticism had only found scope in pedantic treatises or unconnected 
prefaces ; this good style continued out of the track in inflated tragedies, 
dispersed over multiplied translations, scattered in occasional pieces, ia 
odes Avritten to order, in party poems, meeting only here and there an 
afflatus capable of employing it, and a subject capable of sustaining t. 
What efforts for such a moderate result I For a long time gravel and 
gout left him no peace ; erysipelas seized one of his legs. In April 
1700 he tried to go out; ' a slight inflammation in one of his toes be- 
came, from neglect, a gangrene ;' the doctor would have tried amputa- 
tion, but he decided that what remained him of health and happiness 
was not worth the pain. He died at the age of sixty-nine. 

— »— < 

■ He was paid two hundred and fifty guineas for ten thoiisand lines 
2 Postscript of Virffil's Works, as translated by Dryden, xv. p. 187. 



OHAx.ill.] THE REVOLUTION 45 



CHAPTER III. 
The Revolution. 

L The moral revolution of the seventeenth century — It advances side by side 
with the political revolution. 

U. Brutality of the people — Gin-Riots — Corruption of the great— Political 
manners— Treasons under William iii. and Anne— Morality under Wal- 
pole and Bute— Private manners— The roysterers— The atheists— Chester- 
field's Letters— His polish and morality— Gay's Beggars Opera— YOa 
elegance and satire. 
III. Principles of civilisation in France and England— Conversation in France ; 
how it ends in a revolution — Moral sense in England ; how it ends in a 
reformation. 

IV Religion— Visible signs— Its profound sentiment— Religion popular— Life- 
like — Arians — Methodists. 
V. The pulpit — Mediocrity and efficacy of preaching — Tillotson — His heaviness 
and solidity — Barrow — His abundance and minuteness — South — His 
harshness and energy— Comparison of French and English preachers. 

VI. Theology — Comparison of the French and English apology for religion — 
Sherlock, Stillingfleet, Clarke— Theology not speculative but moral— The 
greateafe minds are on the side of Christianity— Impotence of speculative 
philosophy— Berkeley, Newton, Locke, Hume, Reid— Development ol 
moral philosophy — Smith, Pine, Hutcheson. 
VII. The Constitution— Sentiment of right— Locke's Essay on Government— 
Theory of personal right accepted— Maintained by temperament, pride, 
and interest— Theory of personal ir^^ht applied— Put in practice by 
elections, the press, the tribunals. 
VIII. Parliamentary eloquence — Its energy and harshness — Lord Chatham- 
Junius— Fox — Sheridan- Pitt — Burke. 

IX. lasue of the century's labours — Economic and moral transformation — Com- 
parison of Reynolds' and Lely's portraits— Contrary doctrines and ten- 
dencies in France and England — Revolutionists and Conservatives — 
Judt^ment of Burke and the English people on the French Revolution. 



WITH the constitution of 1688 a new spirit appears in England. 
Slowly, gradually, the moral revolution accompanies the 
social: man changes with the state, in the same sense and for the same 
causes; character moulds itself to the situation; and little by little, in 
manners and in literature, we trace the empire of a serious, reflective, 
moral spirit, capable of discipline and independence, which can al :n« 
maintain and give effect to a constitution. 



16 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

II. 

This was not achieved without difRculty, and at first sight it seems 
as though England had gained nothhig by this revolution of which she 
is so proud. The aspect of things under William, Anne, and the first 
two Georges, is repulsive. We are tempted to agree in Swift's judg- 
uieut, to say that if he has depicted a Yahoo, it is because he has seen 
bira ; naked or drawn in his carriage, the Yahoo is not beautiful. We 
see but corruption in high places, brutality in low, a band of intriguers 
lejiding a mob of brutes. The human beast, inflamed by political 
passions, gives vent to cries and violence, burns Admiral Byng in 
effigy, demands his death, would destroy his house and park, sways 
from party to party, seems with its blind force ready to annihilate civil 
society. When Dr. Sacheverell was tried, the butcher boys, crossing- 
sweepers, chimney-sweepers, costermongers, drabs, the entire scum, 
conceiving the Church to be in danger, follow him with yells of rage 
and enthusiasm, and in the evening set to work to burn and pillage 
the dissenters' chapels. When Lord Bute, in defiance of public 
opinion, was set up in Pitt's place, he was assailed with stones, and 
was obliged to surround his carriage with a strong guard. At every 
political crisis was heard a riotous growl, were seen disorder, blows, 
broken heads. It was worse when the people's own interests were at 
stake. Gin had been discovered in 1684, and about half a century 
later England consumed seven millions of gallons.^ The tavernkeepers 
ou their signboards invited people to come and get drunk for a penny ; 
for twopence they might get dead drunk ; no charge for straw ; the 
landlord dragged those who succumbed into a cellar, where they slept 
oiF their carouse. You could not walk London streets without meeting 
wretches, incapable of motion or thought, lying in the kennel, whom 
the care of the passers-by alone could prevent from being smothered 
in mud, oi crushed by carriage-wheels. A tax was imposed to stop 
this madness: it was in vain; the judges dared not condemn, the in- 
formers were assassinated. The House gave way, and Walpole, find- 
ing himself threatened with a riot, withdrew his law.'* All these 
bcwigged and ermined lawyers, these bishops in lace, these embroidered 
and gold-bedizened lords, this fine government so cleverly balanced, was 
carried on the back of a vast and formidable brute, which as a rule 
would tramp peacefully though growlingly on, but which on a sudden, 
for a mere whim, could sliake and crush it. It was clearly seen in 
1780, during the riots of Lord George Gordon. Without reason or 
command, at the cry of No Popery the excited mob demolished the 
piisons, let loose the criminals, abused the Peers, and was for three 

* 1742, Report ot Lord Lonsdale. 

' In the present inflamed temper of the people, the Act could not be car 
ried into execution without an armed force. — Speech of Sir Bolert Walpole, 



CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 41 

days master of the town, burning, pillaging, and glutting itself. BarrQlg 
of gin were staved in and made rivers in the streets. Children and 
women on their knees drank themselves to death. Some became mad, 
others fell down besotted, and the burning and falling houses ended by 
destroying or burying them. Eleven years later, at Birmingham, the 
people sacked and gutted the houses of the Liberals and Dissenters, and 
were found next day in heaps, dead drunk in the roads and ditches. 
The riot of instinct in this over-strong and well-fed race is perilous. The 
popular bull dashed headlong at the first red rag which it thought it saw 
The higher ranks were even less estimable than the lower. If there 
has been no more beneficial revolution than that of 1688, there baa 
been none that was launched or supported by dirtier means. Treasoii 
was everywhere, not simple, but double and triple. Under William 
and Anne, admirals, ministers, councillors, favourites of the antechamber, 
corresponded and conspired with the same Stuarts whom they had 
sold, only to sell them again, with a complication of bargains, each 
destroying the last, and a complication of perjuries, each surpassing 
the last, until in the end no one knew whose or who he was. The 
greatest general of the age, the Duke of Marlborough, is one of the 
basest rogues in history, supported by his mistresses, a niggard user of 
the pay which he received from the State, systematically plundering 
his soldiers, trafficking in political secrets, a traitor to James, to William, 
to England, ready to risk his life to avoid changing a pair of wet boots, 
and to let an expedition of English soldiers fall into a French ambush. 
After him, Bolingbroke, a sceptic and cynic, minister in turn to Queen 
and Pretender, disloyal alike to both, a trafficker in consciences, mar- 
riages, and promises, who had squandered his talent in debauch and 
intrigues, to end in disgrace, impotence, and scorn.^ Then Walpole 
was compelled to resign, after having been prime minister for twenty 
years, and who used to boast that * every man had his price.' ^ Mon- 
tesquieu wrote in 1729 : * 

' There are Scotch members who have only two hundred pounds for their vote, 
and sell it at tins price. Englishmen are no longer worthy of their liberty. They 
Bell it to the king ; and if the king would sell it back to them, they would sell it 
him again.' 

We must read in Bubb Doddington's Diary the candid fashion and pretty 
contrivances of this great traffic. So Dr. King states : 

* He ("VValpole) wanted to carry a question in the House of Commons, to 
which he knew there would be great opposition. ... As he was passing through 
the Court of Requests, he met a member of the contrary party, whose avarice 
he imagined would not reject a large bribe. He took him aside, and said, "Such 



' See Walpole's terrible speecli against him, 1734 

' See, for the truth of this statement, Memoirs of Horace Walpooe, 2 vol» 
>d. E. Warburton, 1851, i. 381, note. 

* Notes during a journey in England made m 1729 with Loi i Chesterfield 



48 THE CLASteIC AGE. [BOOK Til 

a question comes on tliis day ; give me your vote, and here is a bank -"bill of iiro 
thousand pounds," which he put into his hands. The member made him thia 
answer: ** Sir Robert, you have lately sei-ved some of my particular friends ; and 
when my wife was last at court, the King was very gi-acious to her, which must 
have happened at your instance. I should therefore think myself very ungratefhl 
(putting the bank bill into his p:cket) it I were to refuse the favour you art 
now pleased to ask me."' * 

This is how a man of taste did business. Corruption was so lixed 
in public manners and in politics, that after the fall of Walpole, Lord 
Bute, who had denounced him, was obliged to practise and increase it. 
His colleague Fox changed the pay-office into a market, haggled about 
their price with hundreds of members, distributed in one morning 
twenty-five thousand pounds. Votes were only to be had for cash 
down, and yet at an important crisis these mercenaries would thrfaten 
to go over to the enemy, struck for wages, and demanded more. Nor 
did the leaders miss their own share. They sold themselves for, or 
paid themselves with, titles, dignities, sinecures. In order to get a 
place vacant, they gave the holder a pension of two, three, five, and 
even seven thousand a year. Pitt, the most upright, the leader of 
those who were called patriots, passed and retracted his word, attacked 
or defended Walpole, proposed war or peace, all to become or to con- 
tinue a minister. Fox, his rival, was a sort of shameless sink. The 
Duke of Newcastle, * whose name was perfidy,' a kind of living caricature, 
the most clumsy, ignorant, ridiculed and despised of the aristocracy, 
was in the Cabinet for thirty years and premier for ten years, by virtue 
of his connections, his wealth, of the elections which he managed, and 
the places in his gift. The fall of the Stuarts put the government into 
the hands of a few great families which, by means of rotten boroughs, 
bought members and high-sounding speeches, oppressed the king, 
moulded the passions of the mob, intrigued, lied, wrangled, and trit:d 
to swindle each other out of power. 

Private manners were as lovely as public. As a rule, the reigning 
king detested his son ; this son got into debt, demanded of Parliament 
an increase of allowance, allied himself with his father's enemies. 
George i. kept his wife in prison thirty-two years, and got drunk everj 
night with his two plain mistresses. George ii., who loved his wife, 
took mistresses to keep up appearances, rejoiced at his son's death, 
upset his father's will. His eldest son cheated at cards,* and on* 
day at Kensington, having borrowed five thousand pounds from Bubb 
Doddington, said, when he saw him from the window: 'That man ia 
reckoned one of the most sensible men in England, yet with all hitt 
parts I have just nicked him out of five thousand pounds.'^ George iv. 
was a sort of coachman, gamester, scandalous roysterer, unprincipleJ 

^ Dr. W. King, Political and Literary Anecdotes of his ovm Timesy 1818, 27 

* Frederick died 1751. Memoirs of Horace Walpole, i. 262 

* Walpole's Memoirs of George II. ^ ed. Lord Holland, 3 vols., 2d ed., 1847, L 77. 



CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 49 

Detting- man, whose proceedings all but got him excluded from the 

Jockey Club. The only upright man was George in., a poor half- 
witted dullard, who went mad, and whom his mother had kept in his 
yoath, as though 'ii a cloister. She gave as her reason the universal 
corruption of men of quality. ' The young men,' she said, ' were all 
rakes ; the young women made love, instead of waiting till it was made 
to them.' In fact, vice was in fashion, not delicate vice as in France. 
' Money,' wrote Montesquieu, * is here esteemed above everything, 
honour and virtue not much. An Englishman must have a good 
dinner, a woman, and money. As he does not go much in society, and 
limits himself to this, so, as soon as his fortune is gone, and he can no 
longer have these things, he commits suicide or turns thief.' The young 
men had a superabundance of coarse energy, which made them mistake 
brutality for pleasure. The most celebrated called themselves Mohawks, 
and tyrannised over London by night. They stopped people, and made 
them dance by pricking their legs with their swords ; sometimes they 
would put a woman in a tub, and set her rolling down a hill ; others 
would place her on her head, with her feet in the air ; some would 
flatten the nose of the wretch whom they had caught, and press his 
eyes out of their sockets. Swift, the comic writers, the novelists, have 
painted the baseness of this gross debauchery, craving for riot, living 
in drunkenness, revelling in obscenity, issuing in cruelty, ending by 
irreligion and atheism.-^ This violent and excessive mood requires to 
occupy itself proudly and daringly in the destruction of what men 
respect, and what institutions protect. These men attack the clergy by 
the same instinct which leads them to beat the watch. Collins, Tindal, 
Bolingbroke, are their doctors ; the corruption of manners, the wont of 
treason, the elbowing of sects, the freedom of speech, the progress of 
sciences, and the fermentation of ideas, seemed as if they would dissolve 
Christianity. * There is no religion in England,' said Montesquieu 
' Four or five in the house of Commons go to mass or to the parlia- 
mentary sermon. ... If any one speaks of religion, everybody begins 
to laugh. A man happening to say, " I believe this like an article of 
faith," everybody burst out laughing.' In fact, the phrase was pro- 
vincial, and smacked of antiquity. The main thing was to be fashion- 
able, and it is amusing to see from Lord Chesterfield in what this 
fashion con-sisted. Of justice and honour he only speaks transiently, 
and for form's sake. Before all, he says to his son, ' have manners, 
good breeding, and the graces.' He insists upon it in every letter, with 
a fulness and force of illustration which form an odd contrast: 

* l^lon clier ami, comment vont les graces, les manieres, les agremens, et tous 
ces petits riens si necessaires pour rendre uu homme airaahle ? Les prenez-vous ? 
y faites vous des progres ? . . . A propos, on m'assure que Madame de Blot sana 
avoir dts traits, est jolie comma un coeur, et que nonobstant cela, elle s'en eat 

* Character of Birton in Voltaire's Jenny. 
VOL. XL P 



4)0 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

tenue Jngqu'ici scrnpnleusement k son mari, quai qu'il y ait dej^ plus d'lin %n 

qu'elle est mariee. Elle n'y pense pas.^ ... It seems ridiculous to tell you, 
but it is most certainly true, that your dancing-master is at this time the man in 
aU Europe of the greatest importance to you.^ ... In yoi-j- person you must im 
accurately clean ; and your teeth, hands, and nails should be superlatively so. . . , 
Upon no account whatever put yovir fingers in your nose or ears.^ What says 
AJadame Dupin to you ? For an attachment I should prefer her to la petite Blot,* 
. . . Pleasing women may in time be of service to you. They often please and 
govern others. ' • 

And he quotes to him as examples, Bolingbroke and Marlborongh, 
the two worst roues of the age. Thus speaks a serious man, an umpire 
of education and taste.® He wishes to polish his son, to give him a 
French air, to add to solid diplomatic knowledge and large views of 
ambition an engaging, lively, and frivolous manner. This outward 
polish, which at Paris is of the true colour, is here but a shocking 
veneer. This transplanted politeness is a lie, this vivacity is senseless- 
ness, this worldly education seems fitted only to make actors and rogues. 

So thought Gay in his Beggars^ Ojyera^ and the polished society 
applauded with furore the portrait which he drew of it. Sixty-three 
consecutive nights the piece ran amidst a tempest of laughter ; the ladies 
had the songs written on their fans, and the principal actress, it is said, 
married a duke. What a satire ! Thieves infested London, so that in 
1728 the queen herself was almost robbed ; they formed bands, with 
officers, a treasury, and multiplied, though every six weeks they were sent 
by the cartload to the gallows. Such was the society which Gay put on 
the stage. In his opinion, it was as good as the higher society ; it was hard 
to discriminate : the manners, wit, conduct, morality in both were alike. 

* Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in 
high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable 
vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of 
the road the fine gentlemen. ' ' 

Wherein, for example, is Peachum different from a great minister ? 
Like him, he is a leader of a gang of thieves ; like him, he has a register 

^ The original letter is in French. Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, ed. Mahon, 
4 vols., 1845 ; ii., i\pril 15, 1751, p. 127. 

2 Ibid. ii. Jan. 3, 1751, p. 72. ^ j^i^i ^i -^^y^ 12, 1750, p. 57. 

4 Foid. ii. May 16, 1751, p. 146. « j^i^i ^ j^n. 21, 1751, p. 81. 

® * They (the English) are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken 
to anybody above their schoolmaster and the Fellows of their college. \f they 
happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin, but not one word of modem 
history or modern languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad, as they call it ; 
but, in truth, they stay at home all that while : for, being very awkward, con- 
foundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign com- 
pany, at least none good ; but dine and sup with one another only at the tavern.' 
Ibid, i., May 10, 0. S., 1748, p. 136. ' I could wish you would ask him (Mr. Burrish 
for some letters to young fellows of pleasure or fashionable coquettes, thatyoi 
may be dans Vhonnete debauclie de Munich.' — Ibid. ii. Oct. 3, 1753, p. 331. 

~> Speech of the Beggar in the Epilogue of the Beggars' Opera. 



CHAP. III.j THE REVOLUTION. ^\ 

for thefts ; like bim, he receives money with both hands; like lim, h« 
contrives to have his friends caught and hung when they trouble him ; 
he uses, like him, parliamentary language and classical comparisons ; he 
has, like him, gravity, steadiness, and is eloquently indignant when hit 
honour is suspected. You will answer, perhaps, that he quarrels with 
a comrade about the profits, and stabs him ? But lately, Sir Robert 
W«iIpole and Lord Townsend had taken each other by the collar on a 
aimilai' question. Listen to what Mrs. Peachum says of her daughter: 

' Lo ve him (Macheath) worse and worse ! I thought the girl had been better 
bred. ' ' 
The daughter observes : 

' A woman knows how to be mercenary though she has never been in a court 

01' at an assembly. ' ^ 

And the father remarks : 

' My daughter to me should be, like a court lady to a minister of state, a key 
to the whole gang. ' ^ 

As to Macheath, he is a fit son-in-law for such a politician. If less 
brilliant in council than in action, tliat only suits his age. Point out a 
yoiing and noble officer who has a better address, or performs finer 
actions. He is a highwayman, that is his bravery ; he shares his booty 
with his friends, that is his generosity : 

* You see, gentlemen, I am not a mere court-friend, who professes everything 
and will do nothing, . . . But we, gentlemen, have still honour enough to break 
through the corruptions of the world.'* 

For the rest, he is gallant; he has half a dozen wives, a dozen children; 
he frequents stews, he is amiable towards the beauties whom he meets, 
he is easy in manners, he makes elegant bows to every one, he pays 
compliments to all : 

* Mistress Slammekin ! as careless and genteel as ever ! all you fine ladies, who 
know your oAvn beauty affect undress ... If any of the ladies chuse gin, I hope 
they will be so free as to call for it. — Indeed, sir, I never drink strong waters, but 
when I have the colic. — Just the excuse of the fine ladies 1 why, a lady of quality 
is never without the colic. ' ' 

Is it not the genuine tone of good company? And would you doubt 
that Macheath is a man of quality when you learn that he has deserved 
to be hung, and is not? Everything yields to such a proof. If, how- 
ever, you wish for another, he would add that, 

' As to conscience and nasty morals, I have as few drawbacks upon my pleasures 
as any man of quality in England ; in those I am not at least vulgar.' ^ 
After such a speech one must give in. Do not bring up the foulness 
of these manners ; you see that there is nothing repulsive in them. 
These interiors of prisons and stews, these gambling-houses, this whi2 o^ 

' Gray's Flays, 1772 ; The Beggars' Opera, i. 1. ^ Ibid. '^ Ibid. 

* Ibid. iii. 2. ^ Ibid. ii. 1 

• I cannot find these lines in the edition I have consulted. — Tr. 



52 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

gin, this pander- traffic, and these pickpockets' calculations, by no means 
disgust the ladies, who applaud from the boxes. They sing the songs ol 
Polly ; their nerves shrink from no detail ; they have already inhaled the 
filthy odours from the higlily polished pastorals of the amiable poet.* 
They laugh to see Lucy show her pregnancy to Macheath, and give 
Polly ' rats-bane.' They are familiar with all the refinements of the gal* 
lows, and all the niceties of medicine. Mistress Trapes expounds her 
trade before them, and complains of having ' eleven fine customers now 
dcwn under the surgeon's hands.' Mr. Filch, a prison-prop, uses words 
wiiich cannot even be quoted. A cruel keenness, sharpened by a 
stinging irony, flows through the Avork, like one of those London 
streams whose corrosive smells Swift and Gay have described ; more 
than a hundred years later it still proclaims the dishonour of the society 
which is bespattered and befouled with its mire. 

III. 

These were but the externals ; and close observers, like Voltaire 
did not misinterpret them. Betwixt the slime at the bottom and the 
scum on the surface rolled the great national river, which, purified by 
its own motion, already at intervals gave signs of its true colour, soon 
to display the powerful regularity of its course and the wholesome 
limpidity of its waters. It advanced in its native bed ; every nation 
has one of its own, and flows down its proper slope. It is this slope 
which gives to each civilisation its degree and form, and it is this 
which we must endeavour to describe and measure. 

To this end we have only to follow the travellers from the twc 
countries who at this time crossed the Channel. Never did England 
regard and imitate France more, nor France England. To see the 
distinct current in which each nation flowed, we have but to open our 
eyes. Lord Chesterfield writes to his son : 

* It must be owned, that the polite conversation of the men and women at 
Paris, though not always very deep, is much less futile and frivolous than ouri 
here. It turns at least upon some subject, something of taste, some point of 
histoiy, criticism, and even philosophy, which, though probably not quite so solid 
as Mr. Locke's, is however better, and more becoming rational beings, than our 
frivolous dissertations upon the weather or upon whist.'* 

In fact, the French became civilised by conversation ; not so the 
English. Ai soon as the Frenchman quits mechanical labour and 
oiarse material life, even before he quits it, he converses : this is his 



^ In these Eclogues the ladies explain in good style that their friends have their 
lackeys for lovers : * Her favours Sylvia shares amongst mankind ; such gen'roua 
Love could never be confin'd. ' Elsewhere the servant girl says to her mistress : 
* Have you not fancy'd, in his frequent kiss, th' ungrateful leavings of a filthy miss ? ' 

2 Chesterfield's Letters, ii. April 22, 0. S., 1751, p. 131. See, for a contiRgt 
Swift's Essay on Polite Conversation. 



CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 53 

goal and his pleasure.* Barely has he escaped from religious wars and 
feudal isolation, when he makes his bow and has his say. With the 
Hotel de Rambouillet we get tlie fine drawing-room talk, which is to 
last two centuries: Germans, English, all Europe, either novices or 
dullards, listen to France open-mouthed, and from time to time clumsil}! 
attempt an imitation. How amiable are French talkers ! What discrimi- 
nation! What innate tact! With what grace and dexterity they can 
persuale, interest, amuse, stroke doAvn sickly vanity, rivet the diverted 
attentiun, insinuate daRgerous truth, ever soaring hundred feet above 
the tedium-point where their rivals are floundering with all their native 
heaviness. But, above all, how sharp they have soon become ! Instinc- 
tively and without effort they light upon easy gesture, simple speech, 
sustained elegance, a characteristic piquancy, a perfect clearness. Their 
phrases, still formal under Balzac, are looser, lightened, launch out, flow 
speedily, and under Voltaire find their wings. Did any one ever see such 
a desire, such an art of pleasing ? Pedantic sciences, political economy, 
theology, the sullen denizens of the Academy and the Sorbonne, speak 
hut in epigrams. Montesquieu's F Esprit cles Lois is also * VEsprit sur 
les lois.'' Rousseau's periods, which begat a revolution, were balanced, 
turned, polished for eighteen hours in his head. Voltaire's philosophy 
breaks out into a million sparks. Every idea must blossom into a wit- 
ticism ; thought is made to leap; all truth, the most thorny and the 
most sacred, becomes a pleasant drawing-room conceit, cast backward 
and forward, like a gilded shuttlecock, by delicate women's hands, with- 
out sullying the lace sleeves from which their slim arms emerge, or the 
garlands which the rosy Cupids unfold on the wainscoting. Everything 
must glitter, sparkle, or smile. The passions are refined, love is dimmed, 
the proprieties are multiplied, good manners are exaggerated. The 
refined man becomes ' sensitive.' From his wadded taffeta dressing- 
gown he keeps plucking his worked handkerchief to whisk away the 
moist omen of a tear ; he lays his hand on his heart, he grows tender ; 
he has become so delicate and correct, that an Englishman knows not 
whether to take him for an hysterical young woman or a dancing- 
master.^ Take a clear view of this beribboned puppy, in his light-green 
dress, lisping out the songs of Florian. The genius of society which has 
led him to these fooleries has also led him elsewhere ; for conversation, 
in France at least, is a chase after ideas. To this day, in spite of 



^ Even in 1826, Sidney Smith, arriving at Calais, writes {Life and Letters^ n. 
274) : ' What pleases me is the taste and ingenuity displayed in the shops, and 
tlie good manners and politeness of the people. Such is the state of manners, that 
you appear almost to have quitted a land of barbarians. I have not seen a cobbler 
who is not better bred than an English gentleman. ' 

2 See Evelina, by Miss Burney, 3 vols., 1784 ; observe the character of the poor, 
genteel Frenchman, M, Dubois, who is made to tremble even whilst lying in the 
gutter. These very correct young ladies go to see Congreve's Love for ijove; theii 



54- THE CLASSIC AGE [BOOK III 

modern distrust and sadness, it is at table, over the coffee especnally, 
that deep politics and the loftiest philosophy crop up. To think, above 
all, to think rapidly, is a recreation. The mind finds in it a sort of 
ball ; think how eagerly it hastens thither. This is the source of all 
French culture. At the dawn of the age, the htdies, between a couple 
of bows, produced studied portraits and subtle dissertations ; they un- 
derstand Descartes, appreciate Nicole, approve Bossuet. Presently 
little suppers are introduced, and during the dessert they discuss the 
existence of God. Are not theology, morality, set forth in a noble or 
piquant style, pleasures for the drawing-room and adornments of luxury? 
Fancy finds place amongst them, floats about and sparkles like a light 
flame over all the subjects on Avhich it feeds. What a flight was 
this of the eighteenth century! \Yas society ever more anxious for 
lofty truths, more bold in their search, more quick to discover, mor'S 
ardent in embracing them ? The perfumed marquises, these laced cox- 
combs, all these pretty, well-dressed, gallant, frivolous people, crowd to 
philosophy as to the opera ; the origin of animated beings, the eels of 
Needham, the adventures of Jacques the Fatalist,^ and the question of 
free judgment, the principles of political economy, and the calculations 
of the Man Avith Forty Crowns,^ — all is to them a matter for paradoxes 
and discoveries. All the heavy rocks, which the men who had made 
it their business, were hewing and undermining laboriously in solitude, 
being carried along and polished in the public torrent, roll in myriads, 
mingled together with a joyous clatter, hurried onwards with an ever- 
increasing rapidity. There was no bar, no collision ; they were not 
hindered by the practicability of their plans: they thought for think- 
ing's sake ; theories could be expanded at ease. In fact, this is how in 
France men have always conversed. They play with general truths ; 
they glean one nimbly from the heap of facts in which it lay concealed, 
and develop it ; they hover above observation in reason and rhetoric ; 
they find themselves uncomfortable and common-place when they are 
not in the region of pure ideas. And in this respect the eighteenth 
century continues the seventeenth. The philosophers had described 
good breeding, flattery, misanthropy, avarice ; they now examined 
libtrty, tyranny, religion; they had studied man in himself; they now 
3tudy him in the abstract. Eeligious and monarchical writers are of 
the same family as impious and revolutionary writers ; Boileau leads 
up to Rousseau, Racine to Robespierre. Oratorical reasoning foimed 



parents are not afraid of showing them Miss Prue. See also, in Evelina^ by way ol 
contrast, the boorish character of the English captain ; he throws Mrs. Duval twice 
in the mud ; he says to his daughter Molly : * I charge you, as you value ray favour, 
that you'll never again be so impertinent as to have a taste of your own befoie mj 
face ' (i. 190). The change, even from sixty years ago, is surprising. 

^ The title of a philosophical novel by Diderot. — Tr. 

• The title of a philosophical tale by Voltahe. — Tb. 



CHAP, lil,] THE REVOLUTION. 5» 

the regular theatre and classical preaching; oratorical reason pro- 
duces the Declaration of Rights and the Control Social. They form ibi 
themselves a certain idea of man, of his inclinations, faculties, duties; 
a mutilated idea, but the more clear as it was the more reduced. From 
being aristocratic it becomes popular ; instead of being an amusement, 
it is a faith ; from delicate and sceptical hands it passes to coarse and 
enthusiastic hands. From the lustre of the drawing-room they make a 
brand and a torch. Such is the current on which the French mind 
floated for two centuries, caressed by the refinements of an exquisite 
pt,liteness, amused by a swarm of brilliant ideas, charmed by the pro- 
mises of golden theories, till, thinking that it touched the cloud-palace, 
made bright by the future, it suddenly lost its footing and fell in the 
storm of the Revolution. 

Altogether different is the path which English civilisation has taken. 
It is not the spirit of society which has made it, but moral sense ; and 
the reason is, that here man is not as he is in France. The French- 
men who became acquainted with England at this period were struck 
by it. * In France,' says Montesquieu, ' I become friendly with every- 
body ; in England with nobody. You must do here as the English do, 
live for yourself, care for no one, love no one, rely on no one.' They 
v/ere of a singular genius, yet ' solitary and sad. They are reserved, 
live much in themselves, and think alone. Most of them having wit, 
ar2 tormented by their very wit. In scorn or disgust of all things, they 
are unhappy amid so many reasons why they should not be so.' And 
Voltaire, like Montesquieu, continually alludes to the sombre energy of 
this character. He says that in London there are days when the wind 
is in the east, when it is customary for people to hang themselves ; he 
relates shudderingly how a young girl cut her throat, and how the lover, 
without a word, bought back the knife. He is surprised to see ' so many 
Timons, so many splenetic misanthropes.' Whither will they go ? There 
was one path which grew daily wider. The Englishman, naturally 
serious, meditative, and sad, did not regard life as a game or a pleasure ; 
his eyes were habitually turned, not outward to smiling nature, but 
inward to the life of the soul ; he examines himself, ever descends 
within himself, confines himself to the moral world, and at last sees no 
other beauty but that which shines there ; he enthrones justice as the 
sole and absolute queen of humanity, and conceives the plan of disposing 
all his actions according to a rigid code. He has no lack of force in 
this ; for his pride comes to assist his conscience. Having chosen him- 
self and by himself the route, he would blush to quit it ; he rejects 
temptations as his enemies ; he feels that he is fighting and conquering,' 
that he is doing a difficult thing, that he is worthy of admiration, 
that he is a man. Moreover, he rescues himself from his capital foe, 

* ' The consciousness of silent endurance, so dear to every Englisliman, o\ 
siandiug out against something and not giving in.' — Toi i Brown's Scliool Bayi 



66 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK til 

tedium, and satisfies his craving for action ; having gzasped his dutiesj 
he has a task for his facuUies and an end in life, and this gives rise to 
associations, foundations, preachings ; and finding more stedfast souls, 
and nerves more tightly strung, it sends them forth, without causing 
tliem too much suffering, to long strife, through ridicule and danger. 
The reflective character of the man has given a moral rule ; the mili- 
tant character now gives moral force. The mind, thus directed, is more 
apt than any other to comprehend duty; the will, thus armed, is more 
capable than any other of performing its duty. This is the fundamental 
faculty which is found in all parts of public life, concealed but present, 
like one of those deep and primeval rocks, which, lying far inland, give 
to all undulations of the soil a basis and a support. 

IV. 

To Protestantism first, and it is from this structure of mind that the 
Englishman is religious. Find your way through the knotty and unin- 
viting bark. Voltaire laughs at it, and jests about the ranting of the 
preachers and the rigours of the faithful. * There is no opera, no 
comedy, no concert on a Sunday in London ; cards even are expressly 
forbidden, so that only persons of quality, and those who are called 
decent men, play on that day.' He amuses himself at the expense of 
the Anglicans, ' so scrupulous in collecting their tithes ;' the Presby- 
terians, ' who look as if they were angry, and preach with a strong nasal 
accent ;' the Quakers, ' who go to church to wait for the inspiration of 
God with their hats on their heads.' But is there nothing to be observed 
but these externals ? And do you suppose that you are acquainted 
with a religion because you know the details of formulary and vest- 
ment ? There is a common faith beneath all these sectarian differences : 
whatever be the form of Protestantism, its object and result are the 
culture of the moral sense ; that is why it is popular here : principles 
and dogmas all make it suitable to the instincts of the nation. The 
sentiment which in the reformed man is the source of all, is anxiety 
of conscience ; he pictures perfect justice, and feels that his upright- 
ness, however great, cannot stand before that. He thinks of the Day 
of Judgment, and tells himself that he will be damned. He is troubled, 
ani prostrates himself; he prays God to pardon his sins and renew his 
heart. He sees that neither by his desires, nor his deeds, nor by any 
ceremony or institution, nor by himself, nor by any creature, can he 
deserve the one or obtain the other. He betakes himself to Christ, the 
one Mediator ; he prays to him, he feels his presence, he finds himself 
justified by his grace, elect, healed, transformed, predestinated. Thua 
understood, religion is a moral revolution ; thus simphfied, religion is 
only a moral revolution. Before this deep emotion, metapfiysics and 
theology, ceremonies and discipline, all is blotted out or subordinate, 
Rnd Cliristianity is simply the purification of the heart. Look noAv at 
these men, dressed in sombre colours, speaking through the nose on 



CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 57 

Sundays, in a box of dark wood, whilst a man m bands, ' witb the air 
of a Cato,' reads a psahii. Is there nothing in their heart but theo- 
logical * trash ' or mechanical phrases ? There is a deep sentiment-— 
veneration This bare Dissenters' meeting-house, this simple service 
and church of the Anglicans, leave them open to the impression of what 
they read and hear. For they do hear, and they do read ; prayer 
in the vulgar tongue, psalms translated into the vulgar tongue, <Jaii 
penetrate through their senses to their souls. Be sure they do pene- 
trate ; and this is why they have such a collected mien. For the race 
is by nature capable of deep emotions, disposed by the vehemence of 
its imagination to comprehend the grand and tragic ; and the Bible, 
which is to them the very word of eternal God, provides it, I know 
that to Voltaire it is only emphatic, unconnected, ridiculous ; the senti- 
ments with which it is filled are out of harmony with French sentiments 
In England the hearers are on the level of its energy and harshness 
The cries of anguish or admiration of the solitary Hebrew, the trans- 
ports, the sudden outbursts of sublime passion, the thirst for justice, the 
growling of the thunder and the judgments of God, shake, across thirty 
centuries, these biblical souls. Their other books assist it. The Prayer 
Book, which is handed down as an heirloom with the old family Bible, 
speaks to all, to the dullest peasant, or the miner, the solemn accent of 
true prayer. The new-born poetry, the reviving religion of the six- 
teenth century, have impressed their magnificent gravity upon it ; and 
we feel in it, as in Milton himself, the pulse of the twofold inspiration 
which then lifted a man out of himself and raised him to heaven. 
Their knees bend when they listen to it. The Confession of Faith, the 
collects for the sick, for the dying, in case of public misfortune oi 
private grief, the lofty sentences of impassioned and sustained eloquence, 
transport a man to some unknown and august world. Let the fine 
gentlemen yawn, mock, and succeed in not imderstanding : I am sure 
that, of the others, many are moved. The idea of dark death and 
of the limitless ocean, to which the poor weak soul must descend, the 
thought of this invisible justice, ever present, ever foreseeing, on whicll 
the changing show of visible things depends, enlighten them with un- 
expected beams. The physical world and its laws seem to them but a 
phantom and a figure ; they see nothing more real than justice ; it is 
the sum of humanity, as of nature. This is the deep sentiment which 
on Sunday closes the theatre, discourages pleasures, fills the churches ; 
this it is which pierces the breastplate of the primitive spirit and the 
corporeal dulness. This shopkeeper, who all the week has been count- 
ing his bales or drawing up columns of figures ; this cattle-breeding 
squire, who can only bawl, drink, jump a fence ; these yeomen, these 
cottagers, who amuse themselves, in order to draw blood whilst 
boxing, or vie with each other in grinning through a horse-collar, 
— all these uncultivated souls, immersed in material life, receive thus 
fiom their religion a moral life. They love it ; you will hear it in the 



58 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

yells of a mob, rising like a thunderstorm, when a rash hand touches oi 
seems to touch tlie Church. You will see it in the sale of Protestant 
devotional books, Pilgrim^s Progress^ The Whole Duty of Man, alone 
able to force their way to the window-ledge of the yeoman and squire, 
where four volumes, their whole library, rest amid the fishing-tackle. 
You -.an only move the men of this race by moral reflections and reli- 
gicuijs amotions. The cooled Puritan spirit still broods underground, 
and i drawn in the only direction where fuel, air, fire, and action are 
to b( found. 

We obtain a glimpse of it when we look at the sects. In France, 
Jansenists and Jesuits seem to be puppets of another century, fighting 
for the amusement of this. Here Quakers, Independents, Baptists 
exist, serious, honoured, recognised by the State, adorned by able 
writers, by deep scholars, by virtuous men, by founders of nations.* 
Their piety causes their disputes ; it is because they will belief, that 
they differ in belief: the only men without religion are those who 
do not care for religion. A motionless faith is soon a deid faith ; and 
when a man becomes a sectarian, it is because he is fervent. This 
Christianity lives because it is developed ; we see the sap, always flow- 
ing from the Protestant inquiry and faith, re-enter the old dogmas, 
dried up for five hundred years. Voltaire, when he came to England, 
was surprised to find Arians, and amongst them the first thinkers in 
England — Clarke, Newton himself. Not only dogma, but feeling, is 
renewed ; beyond the speculative Arians were the practical Methodists; 
behind Newton and Clarke came Whitfield and Wesley. 

No history more deeply illustrates the English character than that of 
these two men. In spite of Hume and Voltaire, they founded a monas- 
tical and convulsionary sect, and triumph through rigour and exagge- 
ration, which would have ruined them in France. Wesley was a scholar, 
an Oxford student, and he believed in the devil ; he attributes to him 
sickness, nightmare, storms, earthquakes. His family heard supernatural 
noises ; his father had been thrice pushed by a ghost ; he himself saw the 
hand of God in the commonest events of life. One day at Birmingham, 
overtaken by a hailstorm, he felt that he received this warning, because 
»t table he had not sufficiently exhorted the people who dined with him ; 
when he had to determine on anything, he looked out by chance for a 
text of Scripture, in order to decide. At Oxford he fasted and wearied 
himself until he spat blood, and almost died ; at sea, when he departed 
for America, he only ate bread, and slept on deck ; he lived the life of an 
apostle, giving away all that he earned, travelling and preaching all the 
year, and every year, till the age of eighty-eight ; ^ it has been reckoned 

* William Penn. 

2 On one tour he slept three weeks on the bare boards. One day, at three in the 
morning, he said to Nelson, his companion : • Brother Nelson, let us be of good 
cheer. I have one whole side yet ; for the skin is off but on one side.' — Southey'i 
Life of Wesley, 2 vols, 1820, ii. ch. xv. 54. 



CHAP. 1 1 I.J THE HEVOLUTIC'N. 5§ 

that he gave away thirty thousand pounds, travelled about a hundred thou- 
sand miles, and preached forty thousand sermons. What could such a man 
Iiave done in France in the eighteenth century ? Here he was listened 
to and followed, at his death he had eighty thousand disciples ; now he 
has a million. The qualms of conscience, which forced him in thif 
dire'^Jtion, pushed others in his footsteps. Nothing is more striking than 
the confession of his preachers, mostly low-born and laymen. George 
Story had the spleen, dreamed and mused gloomily ; took to slandering 
himself and the occupations of men. Mark Bond thought himself 
damned, because when a boy he had pronounced once a blasphemy ; he 
read and prayed unceasingly and in vain, and at last in despair enlisted, 
with the hope of being killed. John Haime had visions, howled, and 
thought he saw the devil Another, a baker, had scruples because his 
master continued to bake on Sunday, wasted away with anxiety, and 
soon was nothing but a skeleton. These are the timorous and impas- 
sioned souls which furnish matter for religion and entlmsiasm. They 
are numerous in this land, and on them doctrine took hold. Wesley 
declares that 

* A string of opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of heads is 
Christian holiness. It is not an assent to any opinion, or any number of opinions.' 
* This justifying faith implies not only the personal revelation, the inward evidence 
of Christianity, but likewise a sure and firm confidence in the individual believer 
that Christ died for his sin, loved him, and gave his life for him. ' * 

' By a Christian, I mean one who so believes in Christ, as that sin hath no 
more dominion over him.' * 

Elsewhere, a woman, disgusted with this madness, wished to leave, 
but had only gone a few steps when she fell into as violent fits as 
others. Conversions followed these transports ; the converted paid 
their debts, forswore drunkenness, read the Bible, prayed, and went 
fcbout exhorting others. Wesley collected them into societies, formed 
assemblies for mutual examination and edification, submitted spiritual 
life to a methodic discipline, built chnpels, chose preachers, founded 
schools, organised enthusiasm. To this day his disciples spend three 
millions a year in missions to all parts of the world, and on the banks 
of the Mississippi and the Ohio their shoutings repeat the enthusiasm 
and the conversions of primitive inspiration. The same instinct is still 
revealed by the same signs ; the doctrine of grace survives in unmter- 
rupted energy, and the race, as in the sixteenth century, puts its poetry 
into the exaltation of the moral sense. 

The faithful feels in himself the touch of a superior hand, and the 
birth of an unknown being. The old man has disappeared, a new man 
has taken his place, pardoned, purified, transfigured, steeped in joy and 
confidence, inclined to good as strongly as he was once drawn to evih 
A miracle has been wrought, and it can be wrought at any moment, 

' Southey's Life of WesUij, il. 176. '^ lUd. i. 251. 



60 . THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

juddenly, under any circnmstances, without warning. Some sinner, 
the oldest and most hardened, without wishing it, without having 
dreamed of it, falls down weeping, his heart melted by grace. The dull 
thoughts, which fermented long in these gloomy imaginations, broke out 
suddenly into storms, and the dull brutal mood is shaken by nervous 
fits which it had not known before. Wesley, Whitfield, and theiT 
preachers went over all England preaching to the poor, the peasants, 
the workmen in the open air, sometimes to a congregation of twenty 
thousand people. *The fire is kindled in the country.' There was 
sobbing and crying. At Kingswood, Whitfield, having collected the 
miners, a savage race, * saw the white gutters made by the tears which 
plentifully fell down from their black cheeks, black as they came out 
from their coal-pits.' ^ Some trembled and fell ; others had transports 
of joy, ecstasies. Southey writes thus of Thomas Olivers : * His heart 
was broken, nor could he express the strong desires which he felt for 
righteousness. ... He describes his feeling during a Te Deum at the 
cathedral, as if he had done with earth, and was praising God before 
His throne.'* The god and the brute, which each of us carries in him- 
self, were let loose ; the physical machine was upset ; emotion was 
turned into madness, and the madness became contagious. An eye- 
witness says : 

* At Everton some were shrieking, some roaring aloud. . . . The most general 
was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life ; and, 
indeed, almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter 
anguish. Great numbers wept Avithout any noise ; others fell down as dead. ... I 
stood upon the pew-seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, 
fresh, healthy, countryman, but in a moment, when he seemed to think of nothing 
else, down he dropt, with a violence inconceivable. ... I heard the stamping of 
his feet, ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom 
of the pew. ... I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above his 
fellows ; ... his face was red as scarlet ; and almost all on whom God laid hia 
i.<md, turned either very red or almost black.' • 

V. 

A sort of theological smoke covers and hides this glowing hearth 
which burns in silence. A stranger who, at this time, had visited the 
country, would see in this religion only a choking vapour of arguments, 
controversies, and sermons. All those celebrated preachers, Barrow, 
lillotson, South, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Burnet, Baxter, Barclay, 
preached, says Addison, like automatons, monotonous!}'-, without 
moving their arms. For a Frenchman, for VoltMire, who read them, 
as he read everything, what a strange reading! Here is Tillotson first, 
the most authoritative of all, a kind of Father of the Church, so much 
admired that Dry den tells us that he learned from him the art of writ 



» Southev's Ufe of Wesley, i, eh. vi. 236. 

5 Ibid ii. ch. xvii. 111. ^ lUd. ii. ch. xxiv. 330. 



f'HAP. III.J THE REVOLUTION. (53 

ing well, and that his sermons, the only property whicli he left his 
widow, were bought by a publisher for two thousand five hundred 
pounds. This work has, in fact, some weight ; there are three folio 
volumes, each of seven hundred pages. To open them, you must be 
a critic by profession, or absolutely desire to get saved. And now 
let us open them. ' The Wisdom of being Religious,' — such is his 
first sermon, much celebrated in his time, and the foundation of his 
success : 

* These words consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense ; . . . 
80 that they differ only as cause and effect, which by a metonymy, used in all sorts 
of authors, are frequently put one for other,' ^ 

This opening makes us uneasy. Is this great orator a teacher of 
grammar ? 

* Having thus explained the words, I come now to consider the proposition 
contained in them, which is this : That religion is the best knowledge and wis- 
dom. This I shall endeavour to make good these three ways : — 1st, By a direct 
proof of it ; 2c?, By shewing on the contrary the folly and ignorance of irreligion 
and wickedness ; dd, By vindicating religion from those common imputations 
whicli seem to charge it with ignorance or imprudence. I begin with the direct 
proof of this. ' ^ . . . 

Thereupon he gives his divisions. Wliat a heavy demonstrator I 
One is tempted to turn over the leaves only, and not to read them. 
Let us examine his * Forty-second sermon, against Evil-speaking:' 

* Firstly : I shall consider the nature of this vice, and wherein it consists. 
Secondly : I shall consider the due extent of this prohibition to speak evil of no 
man. Thirdly : I shall show the evil of this practice, both in the causes and 
effects of it. Fourthly : I shall add some further considerations to dissuade men 
from it. Fifthly : 1 shall give some rules and directions for the prevention and 
cure of it.'* 

What a style ! and it is the same throughout. There is nothing 
lifelike; it is a skeleton, with all its joints coarsely displayed. All the 
ideas are ticketed and numbered. The schoolmen were not worse. 
Neither rapture nor vehemence ; no wit, no imagination, no original 
and brilliant idea, no philosophy ; notliing but quotations of mere 
scholarship, and enumerations from a handbook. Tlie dull argumen- 
tative reason comes with its pigeon-holed classifications upon a great 
truth of the heart or an impassioned word from the Bible, examines it 
* positively and negatively,' draws thence ' a lesson and an encourage- 
ment,' arranges each part under its heading, patiently, indefatigably, so 
that sometimes three whole sermons are needed to complete the division 
and the proof, and each of them contains in its exordium the methc<l\- 
cal abstract of all the points treated and the arguments siipplied. Just 
Bo were the discussions of the Sorbonne carried on. At the court of 

' Tillotson's Serynons, 12 vols., 1742. i. 1. ' mg^^ 3 ji^^i^ jji |gg^ 



62 1HE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

Louis XIV. Tillotson would have been taken for a man, who had run 
away from a seminary ; Voltaire would call him a village cure. He has 
all that is necessary to shock men of the world, nothing to attract them. 
For he does not address men of the world, but Christians: his hearers 
neither need nor desire to be goaded or amused ; they do not ask for 
analytical refinements, novelties in matter of feeling. They come to 
have Scripture explained to them, and morality demonstrated. The 
force of their zeal is only manifested by the gravity of tlieir attention. 
Let others make a pretext out of a text ; for them, they cling to it : it is 
tlie very word of God, they cannot dwell on it too much. They must 
have the sense of every word hunted out, the passage interpreted 
phrase by phrase, in itself, by the context, by similar passages, by 
general doctrines. They are willing to have the different readings, 
translations, interpretations expounded ; tliey like to see the orator 
become a grammarian, a Hellenist, a scholiast. They are not repelled 
by all this dust of scholarship, which rises from the^ folios to settle upon 
their countenance. And the precept being laid doAvn, they demand 
an enumeration of all the reasons which support it ; they wish to be 
convinced, carry away in their heads a provision of good, approved 
motives to last the week. They came there seriously, as to their 
counting-house or their field, to get tired and wearied out with the 
task, to toil and dig conscientiously in theology and logic, to amend and 
better themselves. They would be angry at being dazzled. Their 
great sense, their ordinary common sense, is much better pleased with 
cold discussions ; they want inquiries and methodical reports in the 
matter of morality, as in a matter of tariff, and treat conscience as port 
wine or herrings. 

In this Tillotson is admirable. Doubtless he is pedantic, as Voltaire 
called him; he has all 'the bad manners learned at the university;* 
he has not been 'polished by association with women ;' he is not like 
the French preachers, academicians, elegant discoursers, who by a 
courtly air, a well - delivered Advent sermon, the refinements of b, 
purified style, earn the first vacant bishopric and the favour of high 
society. But he writes like a perfectly honest man; we can see that 
he is not aiming in any way at the glory of an orator ; he wishes to 
persuade soundly, nothing more. We enjoy this clearness, this natural- 
ness, this justness, this entire loyalty. In one of his sermons he says: 

* Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance, and many more. 
If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better ; foi 
why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which lie is not, but because h« 
thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to ? For to counterfeit and 
dissemble, is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now, the best 
way in the world for a man to seem to be anything, is really to be what he 
would seem to be. Besides, that it is many times as troublesome to make good 
the pretence of a gcod quality, as to have it ; and if a man have it not, it is ten 
til one but Ik.- if< discovered to want it, and tlien all his; pains and laboiu t* 



CHAP. m.J THE REVOLUTION. (5^ 

Beem to have it are lost. There is .something unnatural in painting, which a 
gkillf-il ej'3 will easily discern from native beauty and complexion. 

* It is hard to personate and act a part long ; for where truth is not at th« 
bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and be- 
tray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any man think it convenient to seem 
good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to everybody's satis' 
faction ; ... so that, upon all accounts, sincerity is true wisdom. ' * 

We are led to believe a man who speaks thus ; we say to ourselves, 
* This is true, he is right, we must do as he says.' The impression re- 
ceived is mora], not literary; the sermon is efficacious, not rhetorical; 
it does not please, it leads to action. 

In this great manufactory of morality, where every loom goes on as 
regularly as its neighbour, with a monotonous noise, we distinguish two 
which sound louder and better than the rest — Barrow and South. Not 
that they were free from dulness. Barrow had all the air of a college 
pedant, and dressed so badly, that one day in London, before an audi- 
ence who did not know liim, he saw almost the whole congregation at 
once 'leave the church. He explained the word sv^ap/sruv in the pulpit 
with all the charm of a dictionary, commenting, translating, dividing, 
subdividing like the most formidable of scholiasts,^ caring no more for 
the public than for himself ; so that once, when he had spoken for three 
hours and a half before the Lord Mayor, he rephed to those who asked 
him if he was not tired, ' I did, in fact, begin to be weary of standing so 
long.' But the heart and mind were so full and so rich, that his faults 
became a power. He had a geometrical method and clearness,^ an in- 
esiiaustible fertility, extraordinary impetuosity and tenacity of logic, 
writing the same sermon three or four times over, insatiable in his 
craving to explain and prove, obstinately confined to his already over- 
flowing thoughts, with a minuteness of division, an exactness of con- 



' Tillotson's Sermons, iv. 363 ; Sermon 55, * Of Sincerity towards God and 
Man,' John i. 47. This was the last sermon Tillotson preached ; July 29, 1694:. 

2 Barrow's Theological Woj'ks, 8 vols. Oxford, 1830, i. 179 ; Sermon viii., 
'The Duty of Thanksgiving, ' Eph. v. 20. 

* These words, although (as the very syntax doth immediately discover) they bear 
a relation to, and have a fit coherence with, those tliat precede, may yet, (especially 
considering St. Paul's style and manner of exjiression in the preceptive and ex- 
hortative parts of his Epistle?), without any violence or prejudice on either hand, 
be severed from the context, and considered distinctly by themselves. . . . First, 
then, concerning the duty itself, to give tlianks, or rather to be iliankful (for ivx«.- 
ftvTiiv doth not only signily (/7-a^ia5 agere, reddere, dicere, to give, render, ox declare 
thanks, but also gratias habere, grate affectum esse, to be thankfidbj disposed, to 
entertain a grateful affection, sense, or memory. ... I say, concerning this dutj 
itself, (abstractedly considered), as it involves a respect to benefits or good things 
received ; so in its employment about them it imports, requires, or supposes these 
fo'j lowing particulars.' 

^ He was a mathematician of tlie highest order, and had resigned bis chai/ 
10 Newton. 



64 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

nection, a superfluity of explanation, so astonishing that the hearer at 
last gives in ; and yet the mind turns with the vast machine, carried 
away and doubled up as by the rolling weight of a flattening machine. 
Listen to his sermon, ' Of the Love of God.' Never was a mor« 
copious and forcible analysis seen in England, so penetrating and un- 
wearying a decomposition of an idea into all its parts, a more powerfu* 
logic, more rigorously collecting into one network all the threads of a 
subject : 

* Although no such benefit or advantajre can accrue to God, which may increasft 

his essential and indefectible happiness ; no harm or damage can arrive that may 
impair it (for he can be neither really more or less rich, or glorious, or joyful than 
he is ; neither have our desire or our fear, our delight or our grief, our designfi 
or our endeavours any object, any ground in those respects) ; yet hath he declared, 
that there be certain interests and concernments, which, out of his abundant good- 
ness and condescension, lie doth tender and prosecute as his own ; as if he did 
really receive advantage by tlie good, and prejudice by the bad success, respectively 
belonging to them ; that he earnestly desires and is greatly delighted with some 
things, very much dislikes and is grievously displeased with other things : for in- 
stance, that he bears a fatherly affection toward his creatures, and earnestly de- 
sires their welfare ; and delights to see them enjoy the good he designed them ; 
as also dislikes the contrary events ; doth commiserate and condole their misery ; 
that he is consequently well pleased when piety and justice, peace and order 
(the chief means conducing to our welfare) do flourish ; and displeased, when im- 
piety and iniquity, dissension and disorder (those certain sources of mischief to 
us) do prevail ; that he is well satisfied with our rendering to him that obedience, 
honour, and respect, which are due to him ; and highly offended with our injurious 
and disrespectful behaviour toward him, in the commission of sin and violation 
of his most just and holy commandments ; so that there wants not sufficient 
matter of our exercising good-will both in affection and action toward God ; we are 
capable both of wishing and (in a manner, as he will interpret and accept it) of 
doing good to him, by our concurrence with him in promoting those things which 
he approves and delights in, and in removing the contrary. ' ^ 

This entanglement wearies one, but what a force and dash is there in 
this meditative and complete thought ! Truth thus supported on all its 
foundations can never be shaken. Observe the absence of rhetoric. 
TJiere is no art here ; the whole oratorical art consists in the dfUife 
thoroughly to explain and prove what he has to say. He is even koM 
and artless ; and it is just this ingenuousness which raises him to ih* 
antique level. You may meet with an image in his writings which 
seems to belong to the finest period of Latin simplicity and dignity : 

* The middle, we may observe, and the safest, -and the fairest, and the most cun« 
spicuous places in cities are usually deputed for the erections of statues and monu« 
ments dedicatdd to the memory of worthy men, who have nobly deserved of their 
countries. In like manner should we in the heart and centre of our soul, in th* 



Barrow's Theological Works, i., Serniou 23. 027. 



CHAP. III.l THE REVOLUTION Qp 

best and highest apartments thereof, in the places most exposed to ordinary obser- 
vativin, and most secure from the invasions of worldly care, erect lively representa 
tions of, and lasting memorials unto, the divine bounty.' * 

There is here a sort of effusion of gratitude ; and at the end of the 
sermon, when we think him exhausted, the expansion becomes mor« 
copious by the enumeration of the unlimited blessings amidst which 
we float like fishes in the sea, not perceiving them, because we are sur- 
rounded and penetrated by them. During ten pages the idea overflows 
in a continuous and similar phrase, without fear of crowding or mono- 
tony, in spite of all rules, so loaded are the heart and imagination, and 
•o satisfied are they to bring and collect all nature as a single offering : 

* To him, the excellent quality, the noble end, the most obliging manner of 
whose beneficence doth surpass the matter thereof, and hugely augment the bene- 
fits : who, not compelled by any necessity, not obliged by any law (or previous 
compact), not induced by any extrinsic arguments, not inclined by our merit, not 
wearied with our importunities, not instigated by troublesome passions of pity, 
shame, or fear, (as we are wont to be), not flattered with promises of recompense, 
nor bribed with expectation of emolument, thence to accrue unto himself; but 
being absolute master of his own actions, only both lawgiver and counsellor to him- 
self, all-sufficient, and incapable of admitting any accession to his perfect blissful- 
ness ; most willingly and freely, out of pure bounty and good-will, is our Friend 
and Benefactor ; preventing not only our desires, but our knowledge ; surpassing 
not our deserts only, but our wishes, yea, even our conceits, in the dispensation of 
his inestimable and unrequitable benefits ; having no other drift in the collation 
of them, beside our real good and welfare, our profit and advantage, our pleasure 
and content.*' 

Zealous energy and lack of taste ; such are the features common to 
all this eloquence. Let us leave this mathematician, this man of the 
closet, this antique man, who proves too much and is too eager, and 
let us look out amongst the men of the world he who was called the 
wittiest of ecclesiastics, Robert South, as different from Barrow in his 
character and life as in his works and his mind ; armed for war, an 
impassioned royalist, a partisan of divine right and passive obedience, 
an acrimonious controversialist, a defamer of the dissenters, a foe to the 
A.ct of Toleration, who never refused to use in his enmities the licence 
bi an insult or a foul word. By his side Father Bridaine,^ who seems 
so coarse to the French, was polished. His sermons are like a conver- 
sation of that tivxie ; and you know in what style they conversed then in 
England. South is afraid of no popular and impassioned image. He 
sets forth little vulgar facts, with their low and striking details. He 
never shrinks, he never minces matters ; he speaks the language of the 

1 Barrow's Theological Works, i. 184; Sermon viiL, 'The Duty of Thanks- 
giving,' Eph. V. 20. 
» Ibid. p. 202. 

3 Jacques Bridaine (1701-1767), a celebrated and zealous French preacher 
whose sermons were always extempore, and hence not very cultivat*^ i and ra 
Gued in ptyle.— Tr. 

rOT; It. E 



6Q THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

people. His style is anecdotic, striking, abrupt, with change of tone, 
forcible and clownish gestures, with every species of originality, vehe- 
mence, and boldness. He sneers in the pulpit, he rails, he plays th^ 
mimic and comedian. He paints his characters as if he had them be- 
fore his eyes. The audience will recognise the originals again in the 
streets ; they could put the names to the portraits. Read this bit on 
hypocrites : 

' Suppose a man infinitely ambitious, and equally spiteful and malicious 
^&e who poisons the ears of great men by venomous whispers, and rises by the 
fall of better men than himself ; yet if he steps forth with a Friday look and a 
Lenten face, with a blessed Jesu ! and a mournful ditty for the vises of the times ; 
oh ! then he is a saiut upon earth : an Ambrose or an Augustine (I mean not for 
that earthly trash of book-learning ; for, alas ! such are above that, or at least 
that's above them), but for zeal and for fasting, for a devout elevation of the eyes, 
and a holy rage against other men's sins. And happy those ladies and religious 
dames, characterized in the 2d of Timothy, ch. iii. 6, who can have such self- 
denying, thriving, able men for their confessors! and thrice happy those families 
where they vouchsafe to take their Friday night's refreshments ! and thereby 
demonstrate to the world what Christian abstinence, and what primitive, self- 
mortifying rigor there is in forbearing a dinner, that they may have the better 
stomach to their supper. In fine, the whole world stands in admiration of them ; 
fools are fond of them, and wise men are afraid of them ; they are talked of, they 
are pointed at ; and, as they order the matter, they draw the eyes of all max after 
them, ano generally something else. ' ^ 

A man so frank of speech was sure to commend frankness ; he has 
done so with the pointed irony, the brutality of a Wycherley. The 
pulpit had the plain-dealing and coarseness of the stage ; and in this 
picture of forcible, honest men, whom the world considers as bad 
characters, we find the pungent familiarity of the Plain Dealer: 

* Again, there are some, who have a ceitain ill-natured stillness (forsooth) in 
their tongue, so as not to be able to applaud and keep pace with this or that self- 
admiring, vain-glorious Thraso, while he is pluming and praising himself, and 
telling fulsome stories in his own commendation for tLree or four hours by 
the clock, and at the same time reviling and throwing dirt upon all mankind 
l»esides. 

* There Is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom neither hopes nor fears, 
lro^7ns nor favours, can prevail upon, to have any of the cast, beggarly, foilorn 
nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual or temporal, trumped upon 
them. 

* To which we may add another sort of obstinate ill-natured persons, -who are not 
to be brouglit by any one's guilt or greatness, to speak or write, or to swear or lie, 
as they are bidden, or to give up their own consciences in a compliment to tliose, 
who have none themselves. 

* And lastly, there are some, so extremely ill-natured, as to think it very 
lawful and allowable for them to be sensible when they are injured or oppressed, 
when they are slandered in their good names, and wronged in their just interests ; 

' Souths Sermons, 1715, 11 vols., vi. 110. The fourth and last discourst 
tiom those words in Isaiah, v. 20. 



CHAP. Jll.j THE REVOLUTION. 67 

<iiid, withal, to dare to own what they find, and feel, without being such beasls of 
burden as to bear tamely whatsoever is cast upon them ; or such spaniels as to 
lick the foot which kicks them, or to thank the goodly great one for doing them 
all these back favours. ' ^ 

In this eccentric style all blows tell ; we might call it a boxing-matdli 
in which sneers inflict bruises. But see the effect of these churls' vul- 
pjarities. We issue thence with a soul full of energetic feeling; we have 
seen the very objects, as they are, without disguise ; we find ourselves 
battered, but seized by a vigorous hand. This pulpit is effective ; and 
indeed, as compared with the French pulpit, this is its characteristic. 
These sermons have not the art and artifice, the propriety and moderation 
of French sermons; they are not, like the latter, monuments of style, 
composition, harmony, veiled science, tempered imagination, disguised 
logic, sustained good taste, exquisite proportion, equal to the harangues 
of the Roman forum and the Athenian agora. They are not classical. 
No, they are practical. A rude shovel, roughly handled, and encrusted 
with pedantic rust, was necessary to dig in this 3oarse civilisation. The 
delicate French gardening would have done nothing with it. If Barrow 
is redundant, Tillotson heavy, South vulgar, the rest unreadable, they 
are all convincing ; their sermons are not models of elegance, but 
instruments of edification. Their glory is not in their books, but in 
their works. They have framed morals, not literary remains. 

VI. 

To form morals is not all ; there are creeds to be defended. We 
must combat doubt as well as vice, and theology goes side by side 
with preaching. It abounds at this moment in England. Anglicans, 
Presbyterians, Independents, Quakers, Baptists, Antitrinitarians, wrangle 
with each other, ' as heartily as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit,' and are 
never tired of inventing weapons. What is there to take hold of and 
preserve in all this arsenal ? In France at least theology is lofty ; the 
fairest flowers of mind and genius have there grown over the briars of 
scholastics ; if the subject repels, the dress attracts. Pascal and Bossuet, 
Fenelon and La Briiyere, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu, friends 
and enemies, all have scattered their wealth of pearls and gold. Over 
the threadbare woof of barren doctrines the seventeenth century has 
embroidered a majestic stole of purple and silk ; and the eighteenth 
century, crumpling and tearing it, scatters it in a thousand golden 
threads, which sparkle like a ball- dress. But in England all is dull, 
dry, and gloomy ; the great men themselves, Addison and Locke, when 
the3' meddle in the defence of Christianity, become flat and wearisome. 
From Chillingworth to Paley, apologies, refutations, expositions, dis- 
cussions, multiply and make us yawn ; they reason well, and that ia 
all. The theologian enters on a camjjaign against the Papists of the 

^ South's Sermons, vi. 118. The fourth and last discourse from these wordii 
\n LsaiaV. v. 30. 



63 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH. 

severiteonth century and the Deists of the eighteenth,^ like a tactician, 
by rule, taking a position on a principle, throwing up a breastwork ol 
arguments, covering all with texts, marching calmly underground in 
the long shafts which he has dug ; we approach and see a sallow-faced 
pioneer creep out, with frowning brow, stiF hands, dirty clothes ; he 
thinks he is protected from all attacks ; his eyes, glued to the ground, 
have not seen the broad level road beside his bastion, by which the 
enemy will outflank and surprise him. A sort of incurable mediocrity 
keeps men like him, mattock in hand, in their trenches, where no one is 
likely to pass. They imderstand neither their texts nor their formuli..s. 
They are impotent in criticism and philosophy. They treat the poetic 
figures of Scripture, the bold style, the approximations to improvisation, 
the mystical Hebrew emotion, the subtilties and abstractions of Alex- 
andrian metaphysics, Avith the precision of a jurist and a psychologist. 
They would actually make Scripture an exact code of prescriptions and 
definitions, drawn up by a convention of legislators. Open the first that 
comes to hand, one of the oldest — John Hales. He comments on a 
passage of St. Matthew, where a question arises on a matter forbidden 
on the Sabbath. What Avas this, * to go amongst the corn, to pluck the 
ears or to eat thereof? ' Then follow divisions and arguments raining 
down by myriads.^ Take the most celebrated ; Sherlock, applying the 
new psychology, invents an explanation of the Trinity, and imagines 
three divine souls, each knowing what passes in the others. Stilling- 
fleet refutes Locke, who thought that the soul in the resurrection, 
though having a body, would not perhaps have exactly the same one 
in which it had lived. Go to the most illustrious of all, the learned 
Clarke, a mathematician, philosopher, scholar, theologian ; he is busy 
patching up Arianism. The great Newton himself comments on the 
Apocalypse, and proves that the Pope is Antichrist. In vain have 
they genius ; as soon as they touch religion, they dote, dwindle ; they 
make no way ; they are wedged in, and obstinately knock tb'^ir 
heads against the same obstacle. Generation after generation they 
bury themselves in the hereditary hole with English patience and con- 
scientiousness, whilst the enemy marches by, a league off. Yet in the 

* I thought it necessary to look into the Socinian pamphlets, which hava 
fewurmed so much among us within a few years. — Stillingfieet, In Vindication oj 
the Doctrine of the Trinit^j, 1697. 

^ He examines, amongst other things, *the sin against the Holy Ghost.' Tliej 
would much like to know in what this consists. But nothing is more obscure. 
Calvin and other theologians each gave a different definition. After a minute dis- 
sertation, John Hales concludes thus : 'And though negative proofs from Scripture 
are not demonstrative, yet the general silence cf the apostles may at least help to 
infer a probability that the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is not committable 
by any Christian who lived not in the time of our Saviour ' (1636). This is a 
training for argument. So, in Italy, the discussion about giving drawers to, o? 
withholding them from the Capuchins, developed political and diplomatic ability 



u'RAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 69 

hole they argue ; they square it, round it, face it with stones, then 
with bricks, and yet wonder that with all these expedients the enemy 
marches on. I have read a host of tliese treatises, and I have not 
gleaned an idea. A man is annoyed to see so much lost labour ; is 
amazed that, during so many generations, people so virtuous, zealous, 
thoughtful, loyal, well read, well trained in discussion, have only 
iwcceeded in filling the lowei shelves of libraries. We muse sadly on 
this second scholastic theology, and end by perceiving that if it was 
witiic'it effect in the kingdom of science, it was because it only strove 
to bear fruit in the kingdom of action. 

All these speculative minds were so in appearance only. They were 
apologists, and not inquirers. They busy themselves with morality, 
not with truth.^ They would shrink from treating God as a hypothesis, 
and the Bible as a document. They would see a vicious tendency in 
the wide impartiality of criticism and philosophy. They would have 
scruples of conscience if they indulged in free inquiry without limita- 
tion. In fact, there is a sort of sin in really free inquiry, because it 
presupposes scepticism, abandons respect, weighs good and evil in the 
same balance, and equally receives all doctrines, scandalous or edifying, 
as soon as they are proved. They banish these dissolving speculations ; 
they look on them as occupations of the slothful ; they seek from argu- 
ment only motives and means for right conduct. They do not love it 
for itself; they repress it as soon as it strives to become independent; 
they demand that reason shall be Christian and Protestant ; they would 
give it the lie under any other form ; they reduce it to the humble 
position of a handmaid, and set over it their own inner biblical and 
utilitarian sense. In vain did free-thinkers arise in the beginning of 
the century ; forty years later,^ they were drowned in forgetfulness. 
Deism and atheism were here only a transient eruption developed on 
the surface of the social body, in the bad air of the great world and 
the plethora of native energy. Professed irreligious men — Toland, 
Tindal, Mandeville, Bolingbroke — met foes stronger than themselves. 
The leaders of experimental philosophy,^ the most learned and accredited 
of scholars of the age,* the most witty authors, the most beloved and 
able,* all the authority o:* science and genius was employed in putting 
them down. Refutations abound. Every year, on the foundation of 
Robert Boyle, men noted for their talent or knowledge come to London 

* * The Scripture is a book of morality, and not of philosophy. Everything 
there relates to practice, ... It is evident, from a cursory view of the Old and 
New Testament, that they are miscellaneous books, some parts of which are history, 
others writ in a poetical style, and others prophetical ; but the design of them 
all, is professedly to recommend the practice of true religion and virtae.*-- « 
John Clarke, Chaplain of the King, 1721. 

^ Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. 

3 Ray, Boyle, Barrow, Newton. •* Bentley, Clarke, Warburton, Berkeley. 

* Locke, Addison, Swift, Johnson, Richardson. 



70 • THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK HI 

to preach eight sermons, *to establish the Christian religion against 
atheists, deists, pngaiis, Mohammedans, nnd Jews.' And these apologies 
are solid, able to convince a liberal mind, infallible for the conviction 
of a moral mind. The clergymen who write them, Clarke, Bentley, 
I/aw, Watt, Warburton, Butler, are not below the lay science and 
intellect. Moreover, the lay element assists them. Addison writes 
♦he Evidences of Christianity^ Locke the Reasonableness of Christianity, 
Ray the Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation. Over 
and above this concert of serious words is heard a ringing voice : Swift 
compliments with his terrible irony the elegant rogues who entertained 
the wise idea of abolishing Christianity. If they had been ten times 
more numerous they would not have succeeded, for they had nothing 
to substitute in its place. Lofty speculation, which alone could take the 
ground, was shown or declared to be impotent. On all sides philoso- 
phical conceptions dwindle or come to nought. If Berkeley lighted on 
one, the denial of matter, it stands alone, without influence on the 
public, as it were a theological covp d'etat, like a pious man who wants 
to undermine immorality and materialism at their basis, Newton at- 
tained at most an incomplete idea of space, and was only a mathema- 
tician. Locke, almost as poor,^ gropes about, hesitates, does little more 
than guess, doubt, start an opinion to advance and withdraAv it by 
turns, not seeing its far-off consequences, nor, above all, exhausting 
anything. In short, he forbids himself lofty questions, and is ver^^ 
much inclined to forbid them to us. He has written a book to inquire 
what objects are within our reach, or above our comprehension. He 
seeks for our limitations ; he soon finds them, and troubles himself no 
further. Let us shut ourselves in our own little domain, and work 
there diligently. * Our business in this world is not to know all things, 
but those which regard the conduct of our life.' If Hume, more bold, 
goes further, it is in the same track : he preserves nothing of lofty 
science ; he abolishes speculation altogether. According to him, we 
know neither substances, causes, nor laws. When we affirm that an 
object is conjoined to another object, it is because we choose, by cus- 
tom ; * all events seem entirely loose and separate.' If we give them 
* a tie,' it is our imagination which creates it ;^ there is nothing true 
but doubt. The conclusion is, that we shall do well to purge our mind 
ot all theory, and only believe in order that we may act. Let us 
examine our wings only in order to cut them off, and let us confiuG 

* * Panpertina philosopliia,' says Leibnitz. 

' After the constant conjunction of two objects — heat and flame, for instance, 
weight and solidit}^ — we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from 
the appearance of the other. All inferences from experience are effects of custom, 
not of ieasoning-. . . . Upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all na'.nre, 
any one instance of connection which is conceivable by us. All events seem en- 
tirely loose and separate ; one event follows another ; but we can never ob 
serve any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. 



•::HAP. IIL] THE REVOLUTION. 71 

ourselves to walking. So finished a pyrrhonism serves only tv> cast the 
world back upon established beliefs. In fact, Reid, being honest, is 
alarmed. He sees society broken up, God vanishing in smoke, th<F' 
family evaporating in hypotheses. He objects as a father of a family, 
a good citizen, a religious man, and sets up common sense as a sove- 
reign judge of truth. Rarely, I think, in this world has speculation 
fallen lower. Reid does not even understand the systems which he 
discusses ; he lifts his hands to heaven when he tries to expound 
Aristotle and Leibnitz. If some municipal body were to order a syst(>m, 
it would be this churchwarden-philosophy. At bottom the men of 
this country did not care for metaphysics ; to interest them, it must 
be reduced to psychology. Then it becomes a science of observa- 
tion, positive and useful, like botany ; still the best fruit which they 
pluck from it is a theory of moral sentiments. In this domain Shaftes- 
bury, Hutcheson, Price, Smith, Ferguson, and Hume himself prefer te 
labour ; here they find their most original and durable ideaa On this 
point the public instinct is so strong, that it enrols the most independent 
minds in its service, and only permits them the discoveries which turn to 
its profit. Except two or three, chiefly purely literary men, and who are 
French or Frenchified in mind, they busy themselves only with morals. 
This idea rallies round Christianity all the forces which in France 
Voltaire ranges against it. They all defend it on the same ground — 
as a tie for civil society, and as a support for private virtue. Formerly 
instinct supported it ; now opinion consecrates it ; and it is the same 
secret force which, by an insensible labour, at present adds the weight 
of opinion to the pressure of instinct. Moral sense, having preserved 
for it the fidelity of the lower classes, conquered for it the assent of 
the loftier intellects. Moral sense transfers it from the public con- 
science to the literary world, and from being popular, makes it official. 

VIL 

One would hardly suspect this public tendency, after taking a dis- 
tant view of the English constitution ; but on a closer view it is the 
first thing we see. It appears to be an aggregate of privileges, that is, 
of sanctioned injustices. The truth is, that it is a body of contracts, 
that is, of recognised rights. Every one, great or small, has its own, 
\*hich he defends with all his might. My lands, my property, my 
chartered right, whatsoever it be, ancient, indirect, superfluous, indi- 
vidual, public, none shall touch it, king, lords, nor commons. Is it ot 
the value of five shillings? I will defend it hke a million pounds ; it is 
my person which they would fetter. I will leave my business, lose my 
time, throw away my money, make associations, pay fines, go to prison, 
perish in the attempt ; no matter ; I shall show that I am no coward, 
that I will not bend under injustice, that I will not yield a portion of 
toy right. 

By this sentiment Englishmen have conquered and preserved pubiio 



72 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOC/K 111 

liberty. This feeling, after they had dethroned Charles i. and James il.* 
is shaped bto principles in the Declaration of 1689, and is developed by 
Locke in demonstrations.^ * All men/ says Locke, * are naturally in a 
state of perfect freedom, also of equality.'^ 'In the State of Nature 
every one has the Executive power of the Law of Nature,'* i.e. ci 
judging, punishing, making war, ruling his family and dependents. 
* There only is political society where every oiie of the members hath 
quitted this natural Power, resign'd it up into the Hands of the Com- 
munity in all Cases that exclude him not from appealing for Proteotioa 
t© the Law established by it.'* 

' Those who are united into one body and have a common established law and 
judicature to appeal to, with authority ... to punish oftenders, are in civil society 
one with another.* As for the ruler (it is said), he ought to be absolute . . . becausa 
he has power to do more hurt and wrong ; it is right when he does it. , . .This is to 
think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may bo 
done them by polecats or foxes ; but are content, nay think it safety, to be de- 
voured by lions. ^ The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural 
liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to 
join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living 
one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greaten 
security against any, that are not of it. ' ' 

Umpires, rules of arbitration, this is all which their federation can 
Impose upon them. They are freemen, who, having made a mutual 
treaty, are still free. Their society does not found, but guarantees their 
rights. And official acts here sustain abstract theory. When Parlia- 
ment declares the throne vacant, its first argument is, that the king baa 
violated the original contract by which he was king. When the Com- 
mons impeach Sacheverell, it was in order publicly to maintain that 
the constitution of England was founded on a contract, and that the 
subjects of this kingdom have, in their different public and private 
capacities, as legal a title to the possession of the rights accorded to 
them by law, as the prince has to the possession of the crown. When 
Lord Chatham defended the election of Wilkes, it was by laying down 
that ' the rights of the greatest and of the meanest subjects now stand 



' We must read Sir Robert Filmore's PatriarcTia on the prevailing theory, iE 
order to see from what a quagmire of follies people emerged. He said that Adam, 
on his creation, had received an absolute and regal power over the universe ; that 
in every society of men there was one legitimate king, the direct heir of Adam. 
•Some say it was by lot, and others that Noah sailed round the Mediterranean 
in ten years, and divided the world into Asia, Afric, and Europa — portions foi 
his three sons.' Compare Boss net. Politique fondee sur VEcriture. Ai thii 
epoch moral science was being emancipated from theology. 

* Locke, Of Civil Government, 1714, book ii, cli. ii. § 4. 

» Ibid. % 13. * Ibid ii. ch. vii. § 87. » IbM. 

• Md. ii. ch. vii. g 9o. Ibid ii. ch. viii. § 95. 



CUAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 73 

upon the same foimclation, the secr.rity of law common to all. . . . 

When the people had lost their rights, those of the peerage would 
soon become insignificant.' It was no supposition or philosophy which 
jounded them, but an act and deed, Magna Charta, the Petition of 
Bights, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the whole body of the stUute laws. 
These rights are there, inscribed on parchments, stored up iti ar- 
chives, signed, sealed, authentic ; those of the farmer and prince are 
traced on the same page, in the same ink, by the same writer ; both are 
on an equaUty on this vellum ; the gloved hand clasps the horny palm. 
What though they are unequal? It is by mutual accord: the peasant 
is as much a master in his cottage, with his rye-bread and his nine 
shillings a week,^ as the Duke of Marlborough m Bl-ubeim Castie, with 
his many thousands a year in places and pensions. 

There they are, these men, standing firm and ready to defend them- 
selves. Pursue this sentiment of right in the details of political life ; the 
force of brutal temperament and concentrated or savage passions pro- 
vides arms. If you go to an election, the first thing you see is the full 
tables.^ They cram themselves at the candidate's expense : ale, gin, 
brandy are set flowing without concealment ; the victuals descend into 
their electoral stomachs, and their faces grow red. At the same time 
they become furious. ' Every glass they pour down serves to increase 
their animosity. Many an honest man, before as harmless as a tame 
rabbit, when loaded with a single election dinner, has become more 
dangerous than a charged culverin.' ^ The wrangle turns into a fight, 
and the pugnacious instinct, once loosed, craves for blows. The can- 
didates bawl against each other, till they are hoarse. They are chaired 
about, to the great peril of their necks ; the mob yells, cheers, grows 
warm with the motion, the defiance, the row ; big words of patriotism 
peal out, anger and drink inflame their veins, fists are clenched, clubs 
are at work, and bulldog passions regulate the greatest interests of the 
country. Let all beware how they draw them down on their heads : 
Lords, Commons, King, they will spare no one ; and when Government 
would oppress a man in spite of them, they will compel Government to 
suppress their own law. 

They are not to be muzzled, they make that a matter of pride 



' De Foe's estimate. 

* * Their eating, indeed, amazes me ; had I five hundred heads, and were each 
head furnished with brains, yet would they all be insufficient to compute the num- 
ber of cows, pigs, geese, and turkies whicli upon this occasion die for the good of 
their country ! ... On the contrary, they seem to lose their temper as they lose 
their appetites ; every morsel they swallow. The mob meet upon the debate, fight 
tliemselves sober, and then draw off to get drunk again, and charge for anothei 
encounter.'— Goldsmith's Citizeti of the World, Letter cxii., 'An Elcctipn de 
scribed.' See also Hogarth's prints. 

3 Ibid. 



74 THE CLASSIC AGE. LBOOK III 

With feliem. pride assists instinct in defending the right. Each feel? 
that * his house is his castle,' and that the law keeps guard at his door. 
Each tells himself that he is defended against private insolence, that 
the public arbitrary power will never touch him, that he has * his body,' 
and can answer blows by blows, wounds by wounds, that he \\\\\ be 
judged by an impartial jury and a law common to all. * Even if an 
Englishman,' says Montesquieu, * has as many enemies as hairs on liii 
head, nothing will happen to him. The Liws there were not made for 
one more than for another ; each looks on himself as a king, and the 
men of this nation are more confederates than fellow-citizens.' This 
goes so far, * that there is hardly a day when some one does not lose 
respect for the king. Lately my Lady Bell Molineux, a regular virago, 
sent to have the trees pulled up from a small piece of land which the 
queen had bought for Kensington, and Avent to law with her, without 
having wished, under any pretext, to come to terras with her, and made 
the queen's secretary wait three hours.' ' When they come to France, 
they are deeply astonished to see the sway of " the king's good plea- 
sure," the Bastille, the lettres de cachet ; a gentleman who dare not live 
on his estate in the country, for fear of the governor of the province ; 
a groom of the king's chamber, who, for a cut with the razor, kills 
a pour barber with impunity.'^ In England, 'one man does not fear 
another.' Converse with any of them, you will find how greatly this 
security raises their hearts and courage. A sailor who rowed Voltaire 
about, and may be pressed next day into the fleet, prefers his condition 
to that of the Frenchman, and looks on him with pity, whilst taking his 
five shillings. The vastness of their pride breaks forth at every step and 
in every page. An Englishman, says Chesterfield, thinks himself equal 
to beating three Frenchmen. They would willingly declare that they 
are in the herd of men as bulls in a herd of cattle. You hear them 
bragging of their boxing, of their meat and ale, of all that can support 
the force and energy of th( ir virile will. Roast-beef and beer make 
stronger arms than cold water and frogs.^ In the eyes of the vulgar, 
the French are starved wigmakers, papists, and serfs, an inferior 
kind of creatures, who can neither call their bodies nor their souls their 
own, puppets and tools in the hands of a master and a priest. As foi 
themselves, 

* Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state 
Witk daring aims irregularly great. 
Pride in their port, defiance in tlieir eye, 
I see the lords of human-kind pass by ; 
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band, 
By forms unfashiou'd, fresh from nature's hand^ 
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul. 
True to imagin'd right, above control, 



Smollett, Peregrme Pickle, ch. 40. '^ See Hogarth's print«. 



:^HAP. in. J THE REVOLUTION 75 

While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan, 
And learns to venerate himself as man.' ^ 

Men thus constituted can beccme impassioned in public concerns, fo? 

khey are their own concerns ; in France, they are only the business of 
the king and of Madame de Pompadour.^ Here, political parties are as 
ardent as sects: High Church and Low Cluirch, capitalists and landed 
proprietors, court nobility and county families, they have their dogmas 
thtdr theories, their manners, and their hatreds, like Presbyterians, 
Anglicans, and Quakers. The country squire rails, after his wine, at 
the House of Hanover, drinks to the king over the water; the Whig in 
London, on the 13th of January, drinks to the man in the mask,^ and 
then to the man who will do the same thing without a mask. They 
imprisoned, exiled, beheaded each other, and Parliament re-echoed 
daily with the fury of their denunciations. Political, like religious life, 
wells up and overflows, and its outbursts only mark the force of the 
flame which nourishes it. The eagerness of parties, in State as in faith, 
is a proof of zeal ; constant quiet is only general indifference ; and if 
they fight at elections, it is because they take an interest in them. Here 
* a tiler had the newspaper brought to him on the roof that he might 
read it.' A stranger who reads the papers ' would think the country 
on the eve of a revolution.' When Government takes a step, the public 
feels itself involved in it ; its honour and its welfare are being disposed 
of by the minister ; let the minister beware if he disposes of them ill. 
With the French, M. de Conflans, who lost his fleet through cowardice, 
is punished by an epigram ; here. Admiral Byng, who was too prudent 
to risk his, was shot. Each in his due position, and according to his 
power, takes part in business : the mob broke the heads of those who 
would not drink Dr. Sacheverell's health ; gentlemen came in mounted 
troops to meet him. Some public favourite or enemy is always exciting 
open demonstrations : Pitt, whom the people cheer, and on whom the 
corporations bestow many gold boxes ; Grenville, whom people go to 
hiss when coming out of the house ; Lord Bute, whom the queen loves, 
who is hooted, and who is burned under the emblems, a boot and a 
petticoat ; the Duke of Bedford, whose palace is attacked by a mob, 
and is only saved by a garrison of infantry and horse ; Wilkes, whose 
papers the Government seize, and to whom the jury assign an indemnity 
of one thousand pounds. Every morning appear journals and pamphlets 
to discuss affairs, criticise characters, denounce by name lords, orators, 
ministers, the king himself. He who wants to speak speaks. In this 
hubbub of writings and associations opinion swells, mounts like a wave, 
and falling upon Parliament and Court, drowns intrigue and carries 

' Goldsmith's Traveller. 

' Chesterfield observes that a Frenchman of his ti^jie did not understand 
the word country ; you must speak to him of his prince 
' The executioner of Charles i. 



76 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II 

away all differences. After all, in spite of tlie rotten boroughs, it ii 
opinion wliicli rules. What though the king be obstinate, the men in 
power band together ? Opinion growls, and everything bends or breaks. 
The Pitts rose as high as they did, only because public opinion raised 
them, and the independence of the individual ended in the sovereignty 
of the people. 

In such a state, * all passions being free, hatred, envy, jealousy, the 
fervour for wealth and distinction, were displayed in all their fulness.' ' 
Judge of the force and energy with which eloquence must have beei? 
implanted and have flourished. For the first time since the fall of the 
ancient tribune, it found a soil in whicVi it could take root and live, and 
a harvest of orators sprang up, equal, in the diversity of their talents, 
the energy of their convictions, and the magnificence of their style, to 
that which once covered the Greek agora and the Roman forum. For 
a long time it seemed that liberty of speech, experience in affairs, the 
importance of the interests involved, and the greatness of the rewards 
offered, should have forced its growth ; but eloquence came to nothing, 
encrusted in theological pedantry, or limited in local aims ; and the 
privacy of the parliamentary sittings deprived it of half its force by 
removing from it the light of day. Now at last there was light ; pub- 
licity, at first incomplete, then entire, gives Parliament the nation for 
an audience. Speech is elevated and enlarged at the same time that 
the public is refined and multiplied. Classical art, become perfect, 
furnishes method and development. Modern culture introduces into 
technical reasoning freedom of discourse and a breadth of general ideas. 
In place of arguing, they conversed ; they were attorneys, they became 
orators. With Addison, Steele, and Swift, taste and genius invade 
politics. Voltaire cannot say whether the meditated harangues once 
delivered in Athens and Rome excelled the unpremeditated speeches of 
Windham, Carteret, and their rivals. In short, discourse succeeds in 
overcoming the dryness of special questions and the coldness of com- 
passed action, which had so long restricted it ; it boldly and irregularly 
extends its force and luxuriance ; and in contrast with the fine abbes 
of the drawing-room, who in France compose their academical compli- 
ments, we see appear the manly eloquence of Junius, Chatham, Fox, 
Pitt, Burke, and Sheridan. 

I need not relate their lives nor unfold their characters ; I should 
Lave to enter upon political details. Three of them, Lord Chatham, 
Fox, and Pitt, were ministers,^ and their eloquence is part of their power 
and their acts. That eloquence is the concern of those men who may re- 
cord their political history; I can simply take note of its tone and accent. 

* Montesquieu, book xix. ch. 27. 

' Junius wrote anonymously, and critics have not yet been able with cer 
tainty, to reveal his true name. Most probably he was Sir Philip Francif 
For Sheridan, see vol. i. 524. For Burke, see -^cl. ii. 81. 



THE REVOLUTION. 77 



VIII. 



An extraordinary afflatus, a sort of quivering of intense determina- 
tion, runs through all these speeches. Men speak, and they speak as if 
they fought. No caution, politeness, restraint. They are unfettered, 
they abandon themselves, they hurl themselves onward ; and if they 
restrain themselves, it is only that they may strike more pitilessly and 
more strongly. When the elder Pitt first filled the House with hia 
vibrating voice, he already possessed his indomitable audacity. In vain 
Walpole tried to * muzzle him,' then to crush him ; his sarcasm was sent 
back to him with a prodigality of outrages, and the all-poweirful mini- 
ster bent, smitten with the truth of the biting insult which the young 
man inflicted on him. A proud haughtiness, only surpassed by that of 
his son, an arrogance which reduced his companions to the rank of 
subalterns, a Roman patriotism which demanded for England a univer- 
sal dominion, an ambition lavish of money and men, gave the nation its 
rapacity and its fire, and only saw rest in far vistas of splendid glory 
and limitless power, an imagination which brought into Parliament 
the vehemence and declamation of the stage, the brilliancy of fitful 
inspiration, the boldness of poetic imagery. Such are the sources of 
his eloquence : 

* But yesterday, araX England might have stood against the world ; now "none 
so poor to do her reverence." 

* We shall be forced ultimately to retract ; let us retract while we can, not 
when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive Acts : 
they must be repealed — you will repeal them ; I pledge myself for it, that you wil? 
in the end repeal them ; I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken 
for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed. 

* You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly pile 
and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow ; traffic and barter with 
«very little pitiful German prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles 
of a foreign prince ; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent — doubly so from 
this mercenary aid on which you rely ; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, 
the minds of your enemies. To overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine 
and plunder ; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling 
cruelty ! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop 
was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms — never — never — 
never ! 

' But, my Lords, who is the man, that in addition to these disgraces and mis- 
ehiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk 
and scalping-knife of the savage ? To call into civilised alliance the wild and in- 
human savage of the woods ; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence ol 
disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of barbarous war against our brethren ? 
My LoMs, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment ; unless 
thoroughly done away, it will be a stain on the national character — it is a violation 
of the constitution — I believe it is against law.' "■ 

* Anecdotes and Speeches of the Eai'l of Chath im, 4th ed., 3 vcls., 1794, 11 
ch. 44. 445. 



78 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

Tliere is a touch of Milton and Shakspeare in this tragic pomp, 
in this impassioned solemnity, in the sombre and violent brilliancy of 
this overstrung and overloaded style. In such superb and blood-like 
purple are English passions clad, under the folds of such a banner 
they fall into battle array ; the more powerfully that amongst them 
there is one altogether holy, the sentiment of right, which rallies, oc- 
cupies, and ennobles them : 

* I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all 
the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit 
instruments to make slaves of the rest. *■ 

' Let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate ; let it be taxable only 
by their own consent given in their provincial assemblies ; else it will cease to be 
property. 

' This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in Amtrica, who pre* 
fer with poverty liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in 
defence of their rights as men, as freemen. . . . The spirit which now resists your 
taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and 
ship money in England ; the same spirit that called England on its legs, and by 
the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution ; the same spirit which estab- 
lished the great, fundamental essential maxim of your liberties : that no subject of 
England shall be taxed but by his own consent. 

* As an Englishman by birth and principle, I recognise to the Americans their 
supreme unalienable right in their property, a right which they are justified in the 
defence of to the last extremity. ' ^ 

If Pitt sees his own right, he sees that of others too ; it was with 
this idea that he moved and managed England. For it, he appealed to 
Englishmen against themselves ; and in spite of themselves they recog- 
nised their dearest instinct in this maxim, that every human will is 
inviolable in its limited and legal province, and that it must put forth 
its whole strength against the slightest usurpation. 

Unrestrained passions and the most manly sentiment of right ; such 
is the abstract of all this eloquence. Instead of an orator, a public 
man, take a writer, a private individual ; see the letters of Junius, 
which, amidst national irritation and anxiety, fell one by one likcj dropa 
of fire on the fevered limbs of the body politic. If he makes his phrases 
concise, and selects his epithets, it was not from a love of style, but in 
order the better to stamp his insult. Oratorical artifices in his hand 
become instruments of torture, and when he files his periods it was to 
drive the knife deeper and surer ; with what audacity of denunciation, 
with what sternness of animosity, with what corrosive and burning 
iTony, applied to the most secret corners of private life, with what in- 
exorable persistence of calculated and meditated persecution, the quota- 
tions alone will show. He writes to the Duke of Bedford : 

* My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or asteeu 

• Anecdotes and Speeches of the Earl of Chatham, ii. ch. 29, 46. 
« IMd. ii. ch. 42, SDa 



CHAP. III.] THE REVOLUTION. 79 

from the public, that if, in the following lines, a compliment or erpession of 
ftpplaiise should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your estab- 
] Lshed character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding. * * 
He writes to the Duke of Grafton : 

* There is something in both your character and conduct which distinguishea 
yon not only from all other ministers, but from all other men. It is not that you 
do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that 
youT indolence and your activity hare been equally misapplied, but that the first 
uniform principle, or, if I may call it, the genius of your life, should have carried 
you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momen- 
tary imputation or colour of a virtue ; and that the wildest spirit of inconsistency 
should never once have betrayed you into a wise or honourable action. ' * 
Junius goes on, fiercer and fiercer ; even when he sees the minister 
fallen and dishonoured, he is still savage. It is vain that he confesses 
aloud that in the state in which he is, the Duke might ' disarm a private 
enemy of his resentment.' He grows worse : 

* You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. 
The condition you are reduced to would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, 
and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object, aa 
you are, would disgrace the dignity of revenge. . . . For my OAvn part, I do not 
pretend to understand those prudent forms of decorum, those gentle iniles of dis- 
cretion, which some men endeavour to unite with the conduct of the greatest and 
most hazardous affairs. ... I should scorn to provide for a future retreat, or to 
keep terms with a man who preserves no measures with the public. Neither the 
abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of danger, nor even the sacred 
shield of cowardice, should protect him. I would pursue him through life, and try 
the last exertion of my abilities to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and 
make it immortaL' ' 

Except Swift, is there a human being who has more intentionally con- 
centrated and intensified in his heart venom and hatred ? Yet this 
is not vile, for it thinks itself to be in the service of justice. Amidst 
these excesses, this is the persuasion which enhances them ; these men 
tear one another, but they do not crawl ; whoever their enemy be, they 
take their stand in front of him. Thus Junius addresses the king : 

* SiK, — It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every re- 
jroach and distress which has attended your government, that you should never 
have been acquainted with the language of truth until you heard it in the com- 
plaints of your people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your 
education. We are still inclined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious 
lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the 
natural benevolence of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of 
a direct, deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on 
which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to 
entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should long since nav€ 
adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility of complaint. . . . 
The people of England are loyal to the House af Hanover, not from a vain pro^- 

^ Junius' Letters, 2 vols., 1773, xxiii. i. 162. ' Ibid. xii. i. 75. 

• Ibid xxxvi. ii. 56. 



80 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

ferL-nce of one famHy to another, but from a conviction that the establishiRent of 
that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, 
Sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational ; fit for Englishmen to 
adopt, and well worthy of your Majesty's encouragement. We cannot long b« 
deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart, of itself, is only conteno- 
tible : armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The 
prince who imitates their conduct, should be warned by their example ; and whik 
he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember 
that, as it was acquiied by one revolution, it may be lost by another. * ^ 

Let us look for less bitter souls, and try to encounter a sweeter 
accent. There is one man, Charles Fox, happy from his cradle, who 
learned everything without study, whom his father trained in prodigality 
and recklessness, whom, from the age of twenty-one, the public voice 
proclaimed as the first in eloquence and the leader of a great party, 
liberal, humane, sociable, faithful to these generous expectations, whose 
very enemies pardoned his faults, whom his friends adored, wliom labour 
never wearied, whom rivals never embittered, whom power did not 
spoil ; a lover of converse, of literature, of pleasure, who has left the 
impress of his rich genius in the persuasive abundance, in the fine 
character, the clearness and continuous ease of his speeches. Behold 
him rising to speak ; think of the discretion he must use ; he is a states- 
man, a premier, speaking in Parliament of the friends of the king, lords 
of the bedchamber, the noblest families of the kingdom, with their allies 
and connections around him ; he knows that each word of his will pierce 
like a fiery arrow into the heart and honour of five hundred men who 
sit to hear him. No matter, he has been betrayed ; he will punish the 
traitors, and here is the pillory in which he sets ' the janissaries of the 
bedchamber,' who by the Prince's order have deserted him in the 
thick of the fight : 

* The whole compass of language affords no terms sufficiently strong and pointed 
to mark the contempt which I feel for their conduct. It is an impudent avowal 
of political profligacy, as if that species of treachery were less infamous than any 
other. It is not only a degradation of a station which ought to be occupied only 
by the highest and most exemplary honour, but forfeits their claim to the charac- 
ters of gentlemen, and reduces them to a level with the meanest and the basest of 
the species ; insults the noble, the ancient, and the characteristic independence oi 
the English peerage, and is calculated to traduce and vilify the British legislature 
in the eyes of all Europe, and to the latest posterity. By what magic nobility can 
thus charm vice into virtue, I know not nor wish to know ; but in any other thing 
than politics, and among any other men than lords of the bedchamber, such an 
instance of the grossest pertidy would, as it well deserves, be branded with infamy 
and execration. ' ^ 

Then turning to the Commons : 

* A Pailiament thus fettered and controlled, without spirit and without free- 
dom, instead of limiting, extends, substantiates, and establishes beyond all pre^ 



' Junius* Letters, xxxv. ii. 29. 

* Fox's Speeches. 6 vols.. 1815, ii, 271 ; Dec. 17, 1\ 



cnxP. III. I THE REVOLUTIOJS. 



81 



eedent, latitude, or condition, the prerogatives of the crown. But though the 

British House of Commons were so shamefully lost to its own weight in the consti- 
tr+ion, were so unmindful of its former struggles and triumphs in the great cause 
of liberty and mankind, were so indifferent and treacherous to those primary 
objects and concerns for which it was originally instituted, I trust the characteristic 
spirit of this country is still equal to the trial ; I trust Englishmen will be as jealoua 
of secret influence as superior to open violence ; I trust they are not more ready to 
defend their interests against foreign depredation and insult, than to encounter and 
defeat this midnight conspiracy agaiust the constitution. ' * 

Such are the outbursts of a nature above all gentle and amiable ; 
judge of the others. A sort of impassioned exaggeration reigns in the 
debates to which the trial of Warren Hastings and the French Revolu- 
tion gave rise, in the acrimonious rhetoric and forced declamation of 
Sheridan, in the pitiless sarcasm and sententious pomp of the younger 
Pitt. These orators love the coarse vulgarity of gaudy colours ; they 
hunt out accumulations of big words, contrasts symmetrically protracted, 
vast and resounding periods. They do not fear to rebuff ; they crave 
effect. Force is their characteristic, and the characteristic of the 
greatest amongst them, the first mind of the age, Edmund Burke. 

He did not enter Parliament, like Pitt and Fox, in the dawn of his 
youth, but at thirty -five, having had time to train himself thoroughly 
in all matters, acquainted with law, history, philosophy, literature, 
master of such a universal erudition, that he has been compared tc 
Bacon, But what distinguished him from all other men was a wide, 
comprehensive intellect, which, exercised by philosophical studies and 
writings,^ seized the general aspects of things, and, beneath text, con- 
stitutions, and figures, perceived the invisible tendency of events and 
the inner spirit, covering with his contempt those pretended statesmen, 
unfit to stand at the helm of a great state. 

Beyond all those gifts, he had one of those fertile and precise 
imaginations which believe that finished knowledge is an inner view, 
which never quit a subject without having clothed it in its colours and 
forms, and which, passing beyond statistics and the rubbish of dry docu- 
ments, recompose and reconstruct before the reader's eyes a distant 
country and a foreign nation, with its monuments, dresses, landscapes, 
and all the shifting detail of its aspects and manners. To all the-je 
powers of mind, which constitute a man of system, he added all those 
energies of heart which constitute an enthusiast. Poor, unknown, 
having spent his youth in compiling for the publishers, he rose, by dint 
of work and merits, with a pure reputation and an unscathed conscience, 
ere the trials of his obscure life or the seductions of his brilliant life had 
fettered his independence or tarnished the flower of his loyalty. He 
brought to politics a horror of crime, a vivacity and sincerity of con- 
•cience, a humanity, a sensibility, which seem only suitable to a young 



^ Fox's Speeches, vol. ii. p. 368. 

' An Inquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. 



VOL. II. 



82 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IR 

man He base^ human society on maxims of morality, demanded the 
conduct of business for noble sentiments, and seemed to have under- 
taken to raise and dignify the generosity of the human heart. He had 
fought nobly for noble causes : against the outrage of power in England, 
the outrage of the people in France, the outrage of monopolists in India. 
He had defended, with immense research and unimpeached disinte- 
restedness, the Hindoos tyrannised over by English greed : 

* Every man of rank and landed fortune being long since extingnished, the 
remaining miserable last cultivator who gi'ows to the soil, after having his back 
scored by the farmer, has it again flayed by the whip of the assignee, and is thus 
by a ravenous because a short-lived succession of claimants lashed from oppressor 
to oppressor, whilst a single drop of blood is left as the means of extorting a singla 
grain of corn.*' 

He made himself everywhere the champion of a principle and the 
persecutor of a vice ; and men saw him bring to the attack all the forces 
of his wonderful knowledge, his lofty reason, his splendid style, with 
the unwearying and untempered ardour of a moralist and a knight. 

Read him only several pages at a time: only thus he is great; 
otherwise all that is exaggerated, commonplace, and strange will arrest 
and shock you ; but if you give yourself up to him, you will be carried 
away and captivated. The vast amount of his works rolls impetuously 
in a current of eloquence. Sometimes a spoken or written discourse 
needs a whole volume to unfold the train of his multiplied proofs and 
courageous anger. It is either the expose of a ministry, or the whole 
history of British India, or the complete theory of revolutions, and the 
political conditions, which comes down like a vast, overflowing stream, 
to dash with its ceaseless effort and accumulated mass against some 
crime that men would overlook, or some injustice which they would 
sanction. Doubtless there is foam on its eddies, mud in its bed : thou- 
sands of strange creatures sport wildly on its surface : he does not 
Be^.ect, he lavishes ; he casts forth by myriads his multiplied fancies, 
emphasis and harsh words, declamations and apostrophes, jests and 
execrations, the whole grotesque or horrible assemblage of the distant 
regions and populous cities which his umvearied learning or fancy has 
traversed. He says, speaking of the usurious loans, at forty-eight per 
cent, and at coaapound interest, by which Englishmen had devastated 
India, that 

' That debt forms the foul putrid mucus, in which are engendered the whole 
brood of creeping ascarides, all the endless involutions, the eternal knot, added 
to a knot of those inexpugnable tape-worms which devour the nutriment, and eat 
up the bowels of India. ' ^ 

Nothing strikes him as in excess, neither the description of tortures, nox 
the atrocity of his images, nor the deafening racket of his antitheses, 

» Burke's Works, 180S, 8 vols., iv 280, Speech on the Nabob ofArcot's debts 
^ Ibid. 282. 



CHAP, m.j THE REVOLUTION. gg 

nor the prolonged tnimpet-blast of his curses, nor the vast oddity of 
his jests. To the Duke of Bedford, who had reproached him with his 
pensions, he answers ; 

' The grants to tlie house of Russel were so enormous, as not only to outrage 
cecouomy, but even to stagger credibility. The duke of Bedford is the leviathan 
among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his umvieldy bulk ; lid 
plays and frolicks in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst " h« 
lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, 
his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against 
his origin, and covers me all over with the spray, — everything of him and about 
him is from the throne. ' * 

Burke has no taste, nor have his compeers. The fine Greek or French 
deduction has never found a place among the Germanic nations ; with 
them all is heavy or ill-refined : it is of no use for them to i^udy Cicero, 
and to confine their dashing force in the orderly dykes of Latm rhetoric. 
He continues half a barbarian, battening in exaggeration and violence ; 
but his fire is so sustnined, his conviction so strong, his emotion so 
warm and abundant, that we suffer him to go on, forget our repug- 
nance, see in his irregularities and his trespasses only the outpourings of 
a great heart and a deep mind, too open and too full; and we wonder 
with a sort of strange veneration at this extraordinary overflow, impetu- 
ous as a torrent, broad as a sea, in which the inexhaustible variety ol 
colours and forms undulates beneath the sun of a splendid imagination! 
which lends to this muddy surge all the brilliancy of its rayst 

IX. 

If you wish for a comprehensive view of all these personages, study 
Reynolds,^ and then look at the fine French portraits of this time, 
the cheerful ministers, gallant and charming archbishops, Marshal de 
Saxe, who in the Strasburg monument goes down to his tomb with 
the taste and ease of a courtier on the staircase at Versailles. Here, 
under skies drowned in pallid mists, amid soft, vaporous shades, appear 
expressive or contemplative heads : the rude energy of the character 
has not awed the artist ; the coarse bloated animal ; the strange and 
ominous bird of prey ; the growling jaws of the wicked bulldog — he 
has put them all in : levelling politeness has not in his pictures effaced 
individual asperities under uniform pleasantness. Beauty is there, but 
variously : in the cold decision of look, in the deep seriousness and sad 
nobility of the pale countenance, in the conscientious gravity and the 
indomitable resolution of the restrained gesture. In place of Lely's 
courtesans, we see by their side chaste ladies, sometimes severe and 
active ; good mothers surrounded by their little ones, who kiss them 

* Burke's Works, viii. 35 ; A Letter to a NoUe Lord. 
' Lord Heathfield, the Earl of Mansfield, Major Stringer Lawrence, Lor4 
iiahburton, Lord Edgecombe, etc. 



84 THE CLASSIC AuE. [BOOB. IH 

and embrace one another : morality is here, and with it the sentiment 
of home and family, propriety of dress, a pensive air, the correct deport- 
ment of Miss Burney's heroines. They have succeeded: Bakewell 
transforms and reforms their cattle; Arthur Young their agriculture; 
Howard their prisons ; Arkwright and Watt their industry ; Adam 
Smith their political economy ; Bentham their penal law ; Locke, 
Hutcheson, Ferguson, Joseph Butler, Keid, Stewart, Price, their psycho- 
logy and their morality. They have purified their private manners, they 
now purify their public manners. They have settled their government, 
they have confirmed themselves in their religion. Johnson is able to 
say with truth, that no nation in the world better tills its soil and its 
mind. There is none so rich, so free, so well nourished, where public 
and private efforts are directed with such assiduity, energy, and ability 
towards the improvement of public and private condition. One point 
alone is wanting: lofty speculation. It is just this point which, for 
lack of the rest, constitutes at this moment the glory of France ; and 
English caricatures show, with a good appreciation of burlesque, face to 
face and in strange contrast, on one side the Frenchman in a tumble- 
down cottage, shivering, with long teeth, thin, feeding on snails and a 
handful of roots, but otherwise charmed with his lot, consoled by a 
republican cockade and humanitarian programmes ; on the other, the 
Englishman, red and puffed out with fat, seated at his table in a com- 
fortable room, before a dish of most juicy roast-beef, with a pot of 
foaming ale, busy in grumbling against the public distress and the 
traitorous ministers, who are going to ruin everything. 

Thus Englishmen arrive on the threshold of the French Revolution, 
Conservatives and Christians facing the French free-thinkers and revo- 
lutionaries. Without knowing it, the two nations have rolled on- 
wards for two centuries towards this terrible shock ; without knowing 
it, they have only been working to aggravate it. All their effort, all 
their ideas, all their great men have accelerated the motion which hurls 
them towards the inevitable conflict. Hundred and fifty years of polite- 
ness and general ideas have persuaded the French to trust in human 
goodness and pure reason. Hundred and fifty years of moral reflection 
and political strife have attached the Englishman to positive reHgicn 
and an established constitution. Each has his contrary dogma and his 
contrary enthusiasm. Neither understands the other, and each detests 
the other. What one calls renovation, the other calls destruction ; what 
one reveres as the establishment of right, the other curses as the over- 
throw of right ; what seems to one the annihilation of superstition, 
seems to the other the abolition of morality. Never was the contrast 
of two spirits and two civilisations marked in more manifest characters; 
and it was Burke who, with the superiority of a thinker and the hos- 
tility of an Englishman, took it in hand to show this to the Frenck, 

He is indignant at this ' tragi-comick farce,' which at Paris wai 
called the regeneration of humanity. He denies that the contagion o* 



(THAP. IiLj THP: revolution. 85 

Bucli folly can ever poison England. He laughs at the Cockneys, who, 
roused by the pratings of democratic societies, think themselves on the 
brink of a revolution : 

* Because half a dozen grasshoppers nnder a fern make the field ring with their 
importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of 
the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who 
make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field ; that of course, they are many 
in number ; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, 
hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour. ' ^ 

Real England hates and detests the maxims and actions of the French 
Revolution : * 

* The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with 
disgust and horror. We wished ... to derive all we possess as an inheritance 
from our forefathers. . . . (We claim) our franchises not as the rights of men, but 
as the rights of Englishmen. ' * 

Our rights do not float in the air, in the imagination of philosophers; 
they are put down in Magna Charta : 

* We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may he filled, like 
stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of piiper 
about the rights of men.** 

We despise this abstract verbiage, which deprives man of all equity 
and respect to puflf him up with presumption and theories. Our con- 
stitution is not a fictitious contract, like that of Rousseau, sure to be 
violated in three months, but a real contract, by which king, nobles, 
people, church, every one holds the others, and is himself held. The 
crown of the prince and the privilege of the noble are as sacred as the 
land of the peasant and the tool of the workman. Whatever be the 
acquisition or the inheritance, we respect it in every man, and our law 
has but one object, which is, to preserve to each his property and his 
rights. 

* We fear God ; we look up with awe to kings ; with affection to parliaments ; 
with duty to magistrates ; with reverence to priests ; and with respect to nobility.'' 

* There is not one public man in this kingdom who does not reprobate the dis- 
honest, perfidious, and cruel confiscation which the National Assembly has bsen 
compelled to make. . . . Church and State are ideas inseparable in our minds. . . . 
Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiasticks, and in all stages, 
from infancy to manhood. . . . They never will suffer the fixed estate of the church 
to be converted into a pension, to depend on the treasury. . . . They made their 
church like their nobility, independent. They can see without pain or grm Iging 
an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a Bishop of Durham or a Bishop of 
Winchester in possession of ten thousand a year. ' • 

1 E. Burke's Works, v. 165 ; Reflections on the Revolution in France. 
' I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred among us participate! 
In the triumph of the revolution society.' — Burke's Reflections, v. J 65. 
8 Ibid. 75. * Md. 168. ' ^ Ihid. 167. » Ibid. 188, 



5(J THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOIi IM 

We will never suffer the established domain of onr church to be con- 
verted into a pension, so as to place it in dependence on the treasury. 
We have made our church as our king ind our nobility, independent. 
We are shocked at your robbery — first, because it is an outrage upon 
property; next, because it is an attack against religion. We hold that 
there exists no society without belief, and we feel that, in exhauiting 
the source, you dry up the whole stream. We have rejected as a poison 
the infidelity which defiled the beginning of our century and of yours, 
and we have purged ourselves of it, whilst you have been saturated. 

* Who, born within the last forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, 
and Tindal, . . . and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers ? ' * 

' We are Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal. 

* Atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts. 

* We are resolved to keep an established church, an establislied monarchy, an 
established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the degree it (.atists, 
and in no greater. ' * 

We settle our establishment upon the sentiment of right, and the senti- 
ment of right on the respect for God. 

In place of right and of God, what do you acknowledge as master ? 
The sovereign people, that is, the arbitrary inconstancy of a counted 
majority. We deny that the majority has a right to re-create a con- 
stitution. 

* The constitution of a country being once settled upon some compact, tacit or 
expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it, without the breach of the 
covenant, or the consent of all the parties. ' ' 

We deny that the majority has the right to make a constitution ; 
unanimity must first have conferred this right on the majority. We 
deny that brute force is a legitimate authority, and that a populace is a 
nation.* 

* A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state or separabla 
from it. . . . When great multitudes act together under that discipline of nature, 
I recognise the people ; . . . when you separate the common sort of men from their 
proper chieftains so as to form them into an adverse army, I no longer know that 
venerable object called the people in such a disbanded race of deserter;* and 
vagabonds. ' * 

We detest with all our power of hatred the right of tyranny which 
you give them over others, and ^we detest still more the right of insur- 

* Burke's Works, v. 172 ; Reflections. * Ibid. 175. 

* Ihid. vi. 201 ; Ajjpealfrom the New to the Old Whigs. 

* * A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not 
good for twenty -four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty 
millions. ... As to the share of power, authority, jiirection, which each indi- 
ridual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must de.iy to be 
Mnongst the direct original rights of man in civil society.' — Burke's Worlis^ 
V. 109 ; Reflections. 

" Bnvke'B Works, vi. 319; Appeal from the Ne'o to the Old Whi^'i 



CHAP. m.J THE liEVJLUTlO.>. SI 

lection which yon give them against themselves. We believe that a 
constitution is a deposit transmitted to tins generation by the past, to 
be banded down to the future, and that if a generation can dispose of 
It as its own, it ought also to respect it as belonging to others. Wn 
hold that, * by this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, 
and as much, and in as mcmy ways as there are floa*;ing fancies and 
fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the ccmmonwealth would 
be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would 
become little better than the flies of a summer.' ^ We repudiate this 
meagre and coarse reason, which separates a man from his ties, 
and sees in him only the present, which separates a man from society, 
and counts him as only one head in a flock. We despise these 
* mstaphysics of an undergraduate and the mathematics of an ex- 
ciseman,' by which you cut up the state and man's rights according 
to square miles and numerical unities. We have a horror of that 
cynical coarseness by which ' all the decent drapery of life is to be 
rudely torn off,' by which ' now a queen is but a woman, and a woman 
is but an animal,' ^ which cuts down chivalric and religious spirit, the 
two crowns of humanity, to plunge them, together with learning, into 
the popular mire, to be ' trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish 
multitude.'^ We have a horror of this systematic levelling which 
disorganises civil society. Burke continues thus : 

* I am satisfied be5'-ond a doubt that the project of turning a great empire into 
a vestry, or into a collection of vestries, and of governing it in the spirit of a paro- 
chial administration, is senseless and absurd, in any mode, or with any qualifica- 
tions. I can never be convinced, that the scheme of placing the highest po t\'ers of 
the state in churchwardens and constables, and other such officers, guided 1-y the 
prudence of litigious attornies, and Jew brokers, and set in action by shameless 
women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns and brothels, by pert 
apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hairdressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the stage 
(who, in such a commonwealth as yours, will in future overbear, as already they 
have overborne, the sober incapacity of dull uninstructed men, of useful but 
laborious occupations), can never be put into any shape that must not be Vith dis- 
graceful and destructive.'* * If monarchy should ever obtain an entire ascendency 
in France, it will probably be . . . the most completely arbitrary power that bas 
ever appeared on earth. France will be wholly governed by the agitators in corpo- 
rations, by societies in the towns formed of directors in assignats, . . . attornies, 
agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarcliy 
founded on the destruction of the crown, the church, the nobility, and the people.'* 

This is what Burke wiote in 1790 to the dawn of the French 
Revolution. 6 The year after the people of Birmingham destroyed the 

» Burke's Works, v. 381 ; Rejlectiom. * Thid. 151. » Ibid. 164. 

* Ihid. vi. 5 ; Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 

* Ihid. V. 349 ; Reflections. 

* * The efl"ect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please : we 
•ught to see what it will please them t3 do, before we risk congratulations whicl? 



88 'i'HE CLASSIC AGE. [BOC K 

houses of English Jacobins, and the miners of Wednesbury went cult 
in a body from their pits to come to the succour of ' king and chuich.' 
Crusade against crusade ; scared England was as fanatical as enthu- 
siastic France. Pitt declared that they could not * treat with a nation 
of atheists.' ^ Burke said that the war was not between people and 
people, but between property and brute force. The rage of execratioD, 
invective, and destruction mounted on both sides like a conflagration,' 
It was not the coUibion of the two governments, but of the two civilisa- 
tions and the two doctrines. The two vast machines, driven with all 
their momentum and velocity, met face to face, not by chance, but by 
fatality. A whole age of literature and philosophy had been necessary 
to amass the fuel which filled their sides, and laid down the rail which 
guided their course. In this thundering clash, amid these ebullitions 
of hissing and fiery vapour, in these red flames which grated around 
the boilers, and whirled with a rumbling noise upwards to the heavens, 
an attentive spectator may still discover the nature and the accumulation 
of the force which caused such an outburst, dislocated such iron plates, 
and strewed the ground with such ruins. 

may be soon turned into complaints. . . . Strange chaos of levity and ferocity, 
. . . monstrous tragi-comick scene. . . . After I have read the list of the persons 
and descriptions elected into the Tiers-Etat, nothing which they afterwards did 
could appear astonishing. ... Of any practical experience in the state, not one 
man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. The majority was com- 
posed of practitioners in the law, . . . active chicaners, . . . obscure provincial 
advocates, stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attornies, notaries, etc.' 
— Burke's Reflections, etc., v. 37 and 90. That which offends Burke, and even 
makes him very uneasy, was, that no representatives of the ' natural landed in- 
terests ' were among the representatives of the Tiers-Etat. Let us give one quo- 
tation more, for really this political clairvoyance is akin to genius : ' Men are 
qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral 
chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling 
power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere ; and the less of it there is 
within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution 
of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge theii 
fetters. ' 

* Pitt's Speeches, 3 vols., 1808, ii. p. 81, on negotiating for peace with Fiance, 
Jan- 26, 1795. Pitt says, however, in the same speech: * God forbid that w€ 
should, look on the body of the people of France as atheists.' — Tk. 

* Letters to a Nolle Lord ; Letters on a Regicide Peace, 



i 

CHAPTER IV. 

Addison. 

i. Addi«on and Swift in their epocli — Wherein they are alike and unlike. 
n. The man — Education and culture — Latin verses — Voyage in France and 

Italy — Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax— Bemarks on Italy — Dialogues 
on Medals — Campaign — Gentleness and kindness— Success and happi- 
ness. 
III. Gravity and rationality — Solid studies and exact observation — His know- 
ledge of men and business habits — Nobility of his character and conduct 
— Elevation of his morality and religion — How his life and character have 
contributed to the pleasantness and usefulness of his writings. 

IV. The moralist — His essays are all moral — Against gross, sensual, or worldly 
life — This morality is practical, and yet commonplace and desultorj' — 
How it relies on reason and calculation — How it has for its end satisfac- 
tion in this world and happiness in the other — Speculative meanness of 
his religious conception — Practical excellence of his religious conception. 
V. The writer — Harmony of morality and elegance — The style that suits men 
of the world — Merits of this style — Inconveniences — Addison as a critic 
— His judgment of Paradise Lost — Agreement of his art and criticism — 
Limits of classical criticism and art — What is lacking in the eloquence 
of Addison, of the Englishman and of the moralist. 

VI. Grave pleasantry — Humour — Serious and fertile imagination — Sir Roger cU 
Coverley — The religious and the poetical sentiment — Vision of Mirza — 
How the Germanic element subsists under Latin culture. 



IN this vast transformation of the minds which occupies the whole 
eighteenth century, and gives England its political and moral 
standing, two superior men appear in politics and morality, both ac- 
complished writers — the most nccomplished yet seen in England ; both 
accredited mouthpieces of a party, masters in the art of persuasion and 
conviction; both limited in philosophy and art, incapable of considering 
sentiments in a disinterested fashion ; always bent on seeing the motives 
of things, for approbation or blame ; otherwise differing, and even in 
contrast with one another: one happy, kind, loved; the other hated, 
hating, and most unfortunate : the one a partisan of liberty and the 
noblest hopes of man ; the other an advocate of a retrograde party, and 
an eager detractor of humanity : the one measured, delicate, furnishing 
a model of the most solid English qualities, perfected by continental 
culture ; the otlier unbridled and formidable, showing an example of 



90 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

the harshest English instincts, luxuriating without limit or rule in 
every kind of devastRtion and amid every degree of despair. To pene- 
trate to the interior of this civilisation and this people, there are i\a 
means better than to pause and dwell upon Swift and Addison. 

II. 

* I have often reflected,* says Steele, ' after a night spent with him 
(Addison), apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of 
conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who 
had all their wit and nature heightened with humour, more exquisite 
and delightful than any other man ever possessed.'^ And Pope, a 
rival of Addison, and a bitter rival, adds : ' His conversation had 
something in it more charming than I have found in any other man.'* 
These sayings express the whole talent of Addison: his writings are 
conversations, masterpieces of English urbanity and reason ; nearly all 
the details of his character and life have contributed to nourish this 
urbanity and this reasonableness. 

At the age of seventeen we find him at Oxford, studious and peace 
ful, loving solitary walks under the elm avenues, and amongst the 
beautiful meadows on the banks of the Cherwell. From the thorny 
brake of school education he chose the only flower — a withered one, 
doubtless, Latin verse — but one which, compared to the erudition, to 
the theology, to the logic of the time, is still a flower. He celebrates, 
in strophes or hexameters, the peace of Kyswick, or the system of Dr. 
Burnett ; he composes little ingenious poems on a puppet-show, on the 
battle of the pigmies and cranes ; he learns to praise and jest — in Latin, 
it is true — but with such success, that his verses recommend him i'ot 
the rewards of the ministry, and even reach Boileau. At the same 
time he imbues himself with the Latin poets ; he knows them by heart, 
even the most affected, Claudian and Prudentius ; presently in Italy 
quotations will rain from his pen ; from top to bottom, in all its nooks 
and under all its aspects, his memory is stuffed with Latin verses. We 
see that he loves them, scans them with delight, that a fine caesura 
charms him, that every delicacy touches him, that no hue of art or emo- 
tion escapes him, that his literary tact is refined, and prepared to relish 
all the beauties of thought and expression. This inclination, too long 
retained, is a sign of a little mind, I allow ; a man ought not to spend 
BO much time in inventing cantos. Addison would have done better to 
enlarge his knowledge — to study Latin prose-writers, Greek literature, 
Christian antiquity, modern Italy, which he hardly knew. But this 
limited culture, leavirg him weaker, made him more refined. He 
formed his art by studying only the monuments of Latin urbanity ; he 
acquired a taste for the elegance and refinements, the triumphs and 

' Addison's "^-orks, ed. Hurd, 6 vols., v. 151 ; Steele's Letter to Mr Congrer? 
» Md. vi. 729. 



CHAP IV.] ADDISON. 9;l 

ftrtifices of style ; he became self-contemplative, correct, capnl le of 
knowing and perfecting his own tongue. In tlie designed reminiscences, 
the happy allusions, the discreet tone of his own little poems, I find 
beforehand many traits of the Spectator. 

Leaving the university, he travelled long in the two most polished 
countries in the world, France and Italy. He lived at Paris, in the 
house of the ambassador, in the regular and brilliant society v/hicl\ 
gave fashion to Europe ; he visited Boileau, IMalebranche ; saw with 
somewhat malicious curiosity the fine curtsies of the painted and 
affected ladies of Versailles, the grace and almost stale civilities of the 
fine speakers and fine dancers of the other sex. He was amused 'it 
our complimentary intercourse, and remarked that in France, when a 
tailor accosted a shoemaker, he congratulated himself on the honour of 
saluting him. In Italy he admired the works of art, and praised them 
in a letter,^ whose enthusiasm is rather cold, but very Avell expressed.* 
You see that he had the fine training which is now given to young 
men of the higher ranks. And it was not the amusements of Cockneys 
or the worry of taverns which employed him. His beloved Latin poets 
followed him everywhere. He had read them over before setting out ; 
he recited their verses in the places which he mentions. 

* I must confess, it was not one of the least entertainments that I met with in 
travelling, to examine these several descriptions, as it were, npon the spot, and to 
compare the natural face of the country with the landscapes that the poets have 
given us of it.'* 

These were the pleasures of an epicure in literature ; there could be 
nothing more literary and less pedantic than the account which he 
wrote on his return.* Presently this refined and delicate curiosity led 
him to coins. * There is a great affinity,' he says, * between them and 
poetry;' for they serve as a commentary upon ancient authors; an 
effigy of the Graces makes a verse of Horace visible. And on this sub- 
ject he wrote a very agreeable dialogue, choosing for personages well- 
bred men : 

* All three very well versed in the politer parts of learning, and had travelled 
into the most refined nations of Europe. . . . Their design was to pass away tlie 
heat of the summer among the fresh breezes that rise from the river (the Thames), 
»nd the agreeable mixture of shades and fountains in which the whole country 
•aturally abounds.' * 

—— — — i« 

» A Letter to Lord Halifax (1701), i. 29. 

* * Renowned in verse, each shady thicket grows. 

And every stream in heavenly numbers flows. . . . 

Where the smooth chisel all its force has shown. 

And softened into flesh the rugged stone, . . . 

Here pleasing airs my ravisht soul confound 

With circling notes and labyrinths of sound.' — Ibid, 
• Preface to Remarks on Italy, i. 358. •* Remarks <?*» /<«% 

' First Dirdojue on Medals, i. 255. 



a2 'I'HE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK in 

Then, with a gentle and well-tempered gaiety, he laughs at pedants who 
waste life in discussing the Latin toga or sandal, but pointed out, lik^ 
a man of taste and wit, the services which coins might render to history 
and the arts. Was there ever a better education for a literary man of the 
world ? He had already for a long time acquired the art of fashionable 
poetry, I mean the correct verses, which are complimentary, or written 
to order. In all polished society we look for the adornment of thought JT 
we desire for it rare, brilliant, beautiful dress, to distinguish it from 
vulgar thoughts, and for this reason we impose upon it rhyme, metre, 
noble expression ; we make for it a store of select terms, true metaphors, 
suitable images, which are like an aristocratic wardrobe, in which it is 
hampered but must adorn itself. Men of wit are bound to make verses 
for it, and in a certain style ; others to display their lace, and after a 
certam pattern. Addison put on this dress, and wore it correctly and 
easily, passing without difficulty from one habit to another similar, 
from Latin to English verse. His principal piece, The Campaign^ is 
an excellent model of becoming and classical style. Each verse is full, 
perfect in itself, with a clever antithesis, or a good epithet, or a figuro 
of abbreviation. Countries have noble names ; Italy is Ausonia, the 
Black Sea is the Scythian Sea ; there are mountains of dead, and a 
thunder of eloquence sanctioned by Lucian ; pretty turns of oratorical 
address imitated from Ovid; cannons are mentioned in poetic peri- 
phrases as later in Delille.^ The poem is an official and decorative 
amplification, like that which Voltaire wrote afterwards on Fontenoy. 
Addison does yet better ; he wrote an opera, a comedy, a much ad- 
mired tragedy on the death of Cato. Such writing was always, in the 
last century, a passport to employ good style and to enter fashionable 
society. A young man in Voltaire's time, on leaving college, had to 
write his tragedy, as now he must write an article on political economy ; 
it was then a proof that he could converse with ladies, as now it is 
a proof that he can argue with men. He learned the art of being 
amusing, of touching, of talking of love ; he thus escaped from dry or 
special studies ; he could choose among events or sentiments those 
which will interest or please ; he was able to hold his own in good 
company, to be sometimes agreeable there, never to transgress. Such 
i& the culture which these works gave Addison ; it is of slight import- 

— . tm 

' On the victory of Blenheim. 

2 ' With floods of gore . . . the rivers swell. . . . 
Mountains of dead. 
Rows of hollow brass 
Tube behind tube the dreadful entrance keep, 
Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep. . . . 
. . . Here shattered walls, like broken rocks, from far 
Rise up in hideous views, the guilt of war ; 
Whilst here the vine o'er hills of ruin climbs 
Industrious to conceal great Bourbon's crimes.' 



CHAP. rV.] ADDISON. 93 

ance that they are poor. In them he dealt with passions, humcir; 
he produced in his opera some lively and smiling images ; in his tragedy 
some noble or moving accents ; he emerged from reasoning and pure 
dissertation; he acquired the art of rendering morality visible and 
truth expressive ; he knew how to give ideas a physiognomy, and that 
»n attractive one. Thus was the finished writer perfected by contact 
with ancient and modern, foreign and national urbanity, by the sight ol 
the fine arts, by experience of the world and study of style, by con- 
tinuous and delicate choice of all that is agreeable in things and men, 
in life and art. 

His politeness received from his character a singular bent and charm. 
It was not external, simply voluntary and oflicial ; it came from the 
heart. He was gentle and kind, of a refined sensibility, so timid even 
as to remain quiet and seem dull in a numerous company or be- 
fore strangers, only recovering his spirits before intimate friends, and 
confessing that he could not talk well to more than one. He could not 
endure a sharp discussion ; when the opponent Avas intractable, he pre- 
tended to approve, and for punishment, plunged him discreetly into his 
own folly. He withdrew by preference from political arguments ; being 
invited to deal Avith them in the Spectator, he contented himself with 
inoffensive and general subjects, which could interest all whilst shock- 
ing none. He would have suffered in making others suffer. Though 
a very decided and faithful Whig, he continued moderate in polemics ; 
and in a time when conquerors legally attempted to assassinate or ruin 
the conquered, he confined himself to show the faults of argument 
made by the Tories, or to rail courteously at their prejudices. At 
Dublin he went first of all to shake the hand of Swift, his great and 
fallen adversary. Insulted bitterly by Dennis and Pope, he refused to 
employ against them his influence or his wit, and praised Pope to the 
end. What could be more touching, when we have read his life, than 
his essay on kindness? we perceive that he is unconsciously speaking of 
himself; 

* There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good- 
nature, or something which must hear its appearance, and supply its place. For 
tliis reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, 
whi( ;h is what we express by the word good-breeding. . . . The greatest wits I 
have conversed with are men eminent for their humanity. . . . Good-nature is 
genei illy born with us ; health, prosperity, and kind treatment from the woild 
are great cherishers of it where they find it.' * 

It so happens that he is involuntarily describing his own charm and 
his own success. It is himself that he is unveiling; he was very pros- 
perous, and his good fortune spread itself around him in affectionate 
sentiments, in constant discretion, in calm cheerfulness. At college he 
was distinguished ; his Latin verses made him a fellow at Oxford ; he 



Spectator, No. 169. 



94 I'HE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOR IF 

spent ten years there in grave amusements and the studies which pleased 
him. From the age of twenty-two, Dryden, the prince of literature^ 
praised him splendidly. When he left Oxford, the ministers gave him 
a pension of three hundred pounds to finish his education, and prepare 
him for public service. On his return from his travels, his poem on 
Blenheim placed him in the first rank of the Whigs. He became a 
member of Parliament, twice Secretary for Ireland, Under-Secretary o^ 
State, Secretary of State. Party hatred spared him ; amid the almost 
universal defeat of the Whigs, he was re-elected ; in the fuiious war of 
Whigs and Tories, both united to applaud his tragedy of Cato ; the 
most cruel pamphleteers respected him ; his uprightness, his talent, 
seemed exalted by common consent above discussion. He lived in 
abundance, activity, and honours, wisely and usefully, amid the assi- 
duous admiration and constant affection of learned and distinguished 
friends, who could never have too much of his conversation, amid the 
applause of all the good men and all the cultivated minds of England. 
If twice the fall of his party seemed to destroy or retard his fortune, he 
maintained his position without much effort, by reflection and coolness, 
prepared for all that might happen, accepting mediocrity, confirmed in 
a natural and acquired calmness, accommodating himself without yield- 
ing to men, respectful to the great without degrading himself, free from 
secret revolt or internal suffering. These are the sources of his talent ; 
could any be purer or finer ? could anything be more engaging than 
worldly polish and elegance, without the factitious ardour and the com- 
pljmentary falseness of the world? And will you look for a more 
amiable conversation than that of a good and happy man, whose know- 
ledge, taste, and wit are only employed to give you pleasure ? 

III. 

This pleasure will be useful to you. Your interlocutor is as grave 
as he is polite ; he would and can instruct as well as amuse you ; his 
education has been as solid as it has been elegant ; he even confesses in 
the Spectator that he prefers the serious to the funny style. He is 
naturally reflective, silent, attentive. He has studied literature, men, 
and things, with the conscientiousness of a scholar and an observer. 
When he travelled in Italy, it was in the English style, noting the 
difference of manners, the peculiarities of the soil, the good and ill effects 
of various governments ; storing himself with concise reminiscences, 
circumstantial mementoes on taxes, buildings, minerals, atmosphere, 
harbours, administration, and I cannot say how many other things.' 
An English lord, who travels in Holland, goes simply into a cheese-shop, 
in order to see for himself all the stages of the manufacture ; he returns, 
Uke Addison, provided with exact statistics, complete notes : this mass 
of verified information is the foundation of the common sense of English. 

■' See, for instance, bis chapter on the Republic of Sai\ Marino. 



fJHAP IV.J ADDISON. 95 

men. Addison added to it experience of business, liav^mg been succes- 
sively, or at the same time, a journalist, a member of Parliament, a 
statesman; hand and heart in all the fights and chances of party. Mere 
literary education only makes good talkers, cible to adorn and publish 
ideas which they do not possess, and which others furnish for them. If 
writers wish to invent, they must look to events and men, not to booka 
and drawing-rooms ; the conversation of special men is more useful to 
them than the study of perfect periods ; they cannot think for them* 
selves, Imt in so far as they have lived or acted. Addison knew how to 
act and live. When we read his reports, letters, and discussions, we 
feel that politics and government have given him half his mind. To 
exercise patronage, to handle money, to interpret the law, to divine the 
motives of men, to foresee the changes of public opinion, to be com- 
pelled to judge rightly, quickly, and twenty times a day, on present and 
great interests, under the inspection of the public and the espionnage 
of enemies ; all this nourished his reason and sustained his discourses. 
Such a man might judge and counsel his fellows ; his judgments were 
not amplifications arranged by a process of the brain, but observations 
controlled by experience : he might be listened to on moral subjects as 
a physician was on physical subjects ; we could feel that he spoke with 
authority, and that we were instructed. 

After having listened a little, people felt themselves better ; for they 
recognised in him from the first a singularly elevated soul, very pure, so 
much attached to uprightness that he made it his constant and his 
dearest pleasure. He naturally loved beauty, kindness and justice, 
science and liberty. From an early age he had joined the Liberal party, 
and he continued in it to the end, hoping the best of human virtue and 
reason, noting the wretchedness into which people fell who abandoned 
their dignity with their independence.^ He followed the lofty dis- 
coveries of the new physical sciences, so as to raise still more the idea 
which he had of God's work. He loved the deep and serious emotions 
which reveal to us the nobility of our nature and the infirmity of our 
condition. He employed his talent and all his writings in giving us the 
notion of what we are worth, and of what we are to be. 01 two 

* Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax : 

' Liberty, thou Goddess heavenly bright. 
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight 
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign. 
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train. . . . 
'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, 

And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.* 
About the Republic of San Marino he writes : 

' Nothing can be a greater instance of the natural love that mankind has fot 
liberty, and of their aversion to an arbitrary government, than such a savage 
mountain covered with people, and the Campania of Rome, which lies in th? 
eame country, almost destitute of inhabitants.' — Remarks on Italy i. 406. 



06 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK in 

tragedies which he composed or contemplated, one wav<? on the death of 
Cato, the most virtuous of the Romans ; the other on that of Socrates, 
the most virtuous of the Greeks. At the end of the first he felt some 
scruples ; and for fear of excusing suicide, he gave Cato some remorse. 
His opera of Rosamond was finished with the injunction to prefer pura 
love to forbidden joys ; the Spectator^ the Tatler, the Giiardian, are mera 
lay sermons. Moreover, he practised his maxims. When he was ia 
office, his integrity was perfect ; he served men — often those whom lie 
did not know — always gratuitously, refusing even disguised presents. 
When out of office, his loya.ty was perfect ; he maintained his opinions 
and friendships without bitterness or baseness, boldly praising his fallen 
protectors,! fearing not thereby to expose himself to the loss of his only 
remaining resources. He was naturally noble, and he was so rationally. 
He considered that there is common sense in honesty. His first care, 
is he said, was to range his passions on the side of truth. He had made 
for himself a portrait of a rational creature, and he made his conduct 
conformable to this by reflection as much as by instinct. He rested 
every virtue on an order of principles and proofs. His logic fed his 
morality, and the uprightness of his mind carried out the justice of his 
heart. His religion, English in every sense, was after the like fashion. 
He rested his faith on a regular succession of historical discussions : * 
he established the existence of God by a regular succession of moral 
deductions ; minute and solid demonstration was throughout the guide 
and author of his beliefs and emotions. Thus disposed, he loved to 
conceive God as the rational head of the world ; he transformed acci- 
dents and necessities into calculations and directions ; he saw order and 
providence in the conflict of things, and felt around him the wisdom 
which he attempted to establish in himself. He trusted in God as a 
good and just being, who felt himself in the hands of a good and just 
being. He lived willingly in his knowledge and presence, and thought 
of the unknown future which was to complete human nature and accom- 
plish moral order. When the end came, he went over his life, and 
discovered that he had done some wrong or other to Gay: this wrong 
was doubtless slight, since Gay had no suspicion of it. Addison begged 
him to come to his bedside, and asked his pardon. When he was about 
to die, he wished still to be useful, and sent for his son-in-law. Lord 
Warwick, whose levity had disturbed him more than once. He wai 
so weak that at first he could not speak. The young man, after waiting 
a while, said to him : ' Dear Sir, you sent for me, I believe ; I hope 
that you have some commands ; I shall hold them most sacred.' The 
dying man with an effort pressed his hand, and replied gently : * See 
in what peace a Christian can die.' * Shortly afterwards he expired. 

^ Halifax, for instance. 

^ Of the Christian Religion. 

' Addison's Works, vi. 535. 



iiWAP. IV.] ADDISON, 97 

IV. 

' The great and only end of these speculations,' says Addison, in a 
number of the Spectator, ' is to banish vice and ignorance out of the 
territories of Great Britain.' And he kept his word. His papers are 
•wholly moral — advice to families, reprimands to thoughtless women, a 
portrait of an honest man, remedies for the passions, reflections on God, 
the future life. I hardly know, or rather I know very well, what 
SU/^cess a newspaper full of sermons would have in France. In England 
it was extraordinary, equal to that of the most fortunate modern 
novelists. In the general disaster of the reviews, ruined by the Stamp 
Act, the Spectator doubled its price, and held its ground. This was 
because it offered to Englishmen the picture of English reason : the 
talent and the teaching were in harmony with |;he needs of the age and 
of the country. Let us endeavour to describe this reason, which was 
gradually eliminated from Puritanism and its rigidity, from the liestora- 
tion and its excess. The mind attained its balance together with religion 
and the state. It conceived the rule, and disciplined its conduct ; it 
diverged from a life of excess, and confirmed itself in a sensible life ; 
it shunned physical and prescribed moral existence. Addison rejects 
with scorn gross corporeal pleasure, the brutal joy of noise and motion : 

* I would nevertheless leave to the consideration of those who are the patrons of 
tins monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in some measure, of 
an aftrout to their species, in treating after this manner the human face divine. ' ^ 

' Is it possible that human nature can rejoice, in its disgrace, and take pleasure 
in seeing its own figure turned to ridicule, and distorted into forms that raise 
horror and aversion ? There is something disingenuous and immoral in the being 
abh to bear such a sight. ' * 

Of course he sets himself against licence \rithout artlessness and the 
systematic debauchery which was the taste and the shame of the Resto- 
ration. He wrote whole articles against young fashionable men, ' a 
sort of vermin ' who fill London with their bastards ; against profes- 
sional seducers, who are the ' knights-errant ' of vice. 

* "When men of rank and figure pass away their lives in these criminal pursuits 
and practices, they ought to consider that they render themselves more vile and 
jlespicable than any innocent man can be, whatever low station his fortune oi 
birth have placed him in.'^ 

He severely jeers at women who expose themselves to temptations, and 

whom he calls * salamanders : * 

* A salamander is a kind of heroine in chastity, that treads upon fire, and lives 
In the midst of flames without being hurt. A salamander knows no distinction of 
sex in those she converses with, grows familiar with a stranger at first sight, and 
is not so narrow-spirited as to observe whether the person she talks to be in breeches 

^ Spectator, No. 173. « Tatler, No. 108. * Gua/rdian, No. 133. 

V^OL. II. - G 



98 THE CLASSIC AGE. fBOOK 111 

or petticoat!. She admits a male visitant to her bedside, plays with him a whol« 
afternoon at picquet, walks with him two or three hom-s by moonlight.'' 

He fights like a preacher against the fashion of low dresses, and gravely 
demands the tucker and modesty of old times : 

* To prevent these saucy familiar glances, 1 would entreat my gentle readers to 
sew on their iTickers again, to retrieve the modesty of their characters, and not to 
imitate the nakedness, but the innocence, of their mother Eve. In short, modesty 
gives the maid greater beauty than even the bloom of youth ; it bestows on th« 
wife the dignity of a matron, and reinstates the widow in her virginity. ' * 

You Avill find, further on, lectures on the masquerades, which end witb 
a rendezvous ; precepts on the number of glasses people might drink, 
and the dishes of which they might eat ; condemnations of licentious 
professors of irreligion and immorality ; all maxims now somewhat 
stale, but then new and useful, because Wyclierley and Rochester had 
put the opposite maxims into use and credit. Debauchery passed for 
French and fashionable : this is why Addison proscribes in addition all 
French frivolities. He laughs at women who receive visitors in their 
dressing-rooms, and speak aloud at the theatre : 

• There is nothing which exposes a woman to greater dangers, than that gaiety 
and airiness of temper, which are natural to most of the sex. It should be there- 
fore the concern of every wise and virtuous woman to keep this sprightliness from 
degenerating into levity. On the contrary, the whole discourse and behaviour of 
the French is to make the sex more fantastical, or (as they are pleased to term it) 
more awakened, than is consistent either with virtue or discretion.' ^ 

You see already in these strictures the portrait of the sensible house- 
wife, the modest English Avife, domestic and grave, taken up with her 
husband and children. Addison returns a score of times to the artifices, 
the pretty affected babyisms, the coquetry, the futilities of women. 
He cannot suffer languishing or lazy habits. He is full of epigrams, 
written against flirtations, extravagant toilets, useless visits.* He 
writes a satirical journal of a man Avho goes to his club, learns the 
news, yawns, studies the barometer, and thinks his time well occupied. 
He considers that our time is a capital, our business a duty, and our 
life a task. 

Only a task. If he holds himself superior to sensual life, he if 
inferior to philosophical life. His morality, thoroughly English, always 
crawls among commonplaces, discovering no principles, making na 
deductions. The fine and lofty aspects of the mind are wanting. 
He gives inimitable advice, a clear watchword, justified by what 
happened yesterday, useful for to-morrow. He observes that fathers 
must not be inflexible, and that they often repent driving their children 
to despair. He finds that bad books are pernicious, because their 
endurance carries their poison to future ages. He consoles a woman 

' Spectator, No. 198. ' Guardian, No. 100. 

' Spectator, No. 45. * Jbid. Nos. 317 and 833 



CHAP. IV.] ADDISON <)9 

who has lost her sweetheart, by showing her the misfortunes of so many 
other people who are suffering the greatest evils at the same time. His 
Spectator is only an honest man's manual, and is often like the Complete 
Laimjer. It is practical, its aim being not to amuse, but to correct u&. 
The conscientious Protestant, nourished with dissertations and morality, 
demands an effectual monitor and guide ; he would like his reading to 
influeace his conduct, and his newspaper to suggest a resolution. To 
this end Addison seeks motives everywhere He thinks of the future 
life, but does not forget the present ; he rests virtue on interest, rightly 
understood. He strains no principle to its limits ; he accepts them all, 
as they are to be met with in the human domain, according to their 
manifest goodness, tracing only the primary consequences, shunning 
the powerful logical pressure which spoils all by expressing too much 
See him establishing a maxim, recommending constancy for instance ; 
his motives are mixed and incongruous : first, inconstancy exposes us 
to scorn ; next, it puts us in continual distraction ; again, it hinders us 
as a rule from attaining our end ; moreover, it is the great feature of 
every human and mortal being; finally, it is most opposed to the 
inflexible nature of God, who ought to be our model. The whole is 
illustrated at the close by a quotation from Dryden and a verse from 
Horace. This medley and jumble describe the ordinary mind which 
remains on the level of its audience, and the practical mind, which 
knows how to dominate over its audience. Addison persuades the 
public, because he draws from the public sources of belief. He is 
powerful because he is vulgar, and useful because he is narrow. 

Picture now this mind, so characteristically mediocre, limited to the 
discovery of good motives of action. What a reflective man, always 
equal and dignified ! What a store he has of resolutions and maxims I 
All rapture, instinct, inspiration, and caprice, are abolished or disci- 
plined. No case surprises or carries him away. He is always ready 
and protected ; so much so, that he is like an automaton. Argument 
has frozen and invaded him. See, for instance, how he puts us on 
our guard against involuntary hypocrisy, announcing, explaining, dis- 
tinguishing the ordinary and extraordinary modes, dragging on with 
exordiums, preparations, methods, allusions to Scripture.^ After six 
lines of this morality, a Frenchman would go out for a mouthful of 
fresh air. What in the name of heaven would he do, if, in order to 
move him to piety, he was told^ that God's omniscience and omnipre- 
sence furnished us with three kinds of motives, and then subdivided 
these motives into first, second, and third ? To put calculation at 
every stage; to come with weight and figures into the thick of human 
passions, to ticket them, classify them like bales, to tell the public that 
the inventory is complete ; to lead them, with the reckoning in their 
hand, and by the mere virtue of statistics, to honour and duty, — such is 

» Spectator, No. 399. » BM. No. 571. 



too THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

the morality of Addison and of England. It is a sort of commercial 

common sense applied to the interests of the soul ; a preacher here is 
only an economist in a white tie, who treats conscience like food^ and 
refutes vice as a set of prohibitions. 

There is nothing sublime or chimerical in the end which he seCs 
before us ; all is practical, that is, business-like and sensible : the 
question is, How * to be easy here and happy afterwards.' To be easy. 
is a word which has no French equivalent, meaning that comfortable 
state of the mind, a means of calm satisfaction, approved action and 
serene conscience. Addison makes it consist in labour and manly 
functions, carefully and regularly discharged. We must see with 
what complacency he paints in the Freeholder and Sir Roger the grave 
pleasures of a citizen and proprietor: 

* I have rather chosen this title (the Freeholder) than any other, because it is 
what I most glory in, and what most effectually calls to my mind the happiness of 
that government under which I live. As a Britisli freeholder, I should not scruple 
taking place of a French marquis ; and when I see one of my countrymen amus- 
ing himself in his little cabbage-garden, I naturally look upon him as a greater 
person than the owner of the richest vineyard in Champagne. . . . There is an 
unspeakable pleasure in calling anything one's own. A freehold, though it be 
but in ice and snow, will make the owner pleased in the possession, and stout in 
the defence of it. ... I consider myself as one who give my consent to every 
law which passes. ... A freeholder is but one remove from a legislator, and for 
that reason ought to stand up in the defence of those laws which are in some 
degree of his own making. ' * 

These are all English feelings, made up of calculation and pride, ener- 
getic and austere ; and this portrait is capped by that of the married 
man: 

* Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion ; and 
this I think myself amply possessed of, as I am the father of a family. I am per- 
petuallj'- taken up in giving out orders., in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, 
in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments. ... I look 
upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty, in which I am myself both king and 
priest. . . . When I see my little troop before me, I rejoice in the additions I havo 
made to my species, to my country, and to my religion, in having produced such 
a number of reasonable creatures, citizens, and Christians. I am pleased to see 
myself thus perpetuated ; and as there is no production compartible to that of a 
human creature, I am more proud of having been the occasion of ten such glorious 
productions., than if I had built a hundred pyramids at my own expense, or 
published as many volumes of the finest wit and learning. ' * 

If now you take the man away from his estate and his household, 
alone with himself, in moments of idleness or reverie, you will find 
him just as positive. He observes, that he may cultivate his own 
reasoning power, and that of others ; he stores himself with morality ; 
he wishes to make the most of himself and of existence. The northern 
races willingly direct their thoughts to final dissolution and the dark 

> Frethold&r, No. 1. '' Spectator, No. 500. 



CHAP. IV J ADDISON. 101 

future. Addison often chose for his promenade gloomy Westminster 
Abbey, Tfitli its many tombs : 

* Upon my going into the church I entertained myself with the digging of a 
grave ; and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a 
bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time 
or other had a place in the composition of an human body. ... I consider that 
great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries and make our appearance 
together.' 1 

And suddenly his emotion is transformed into profitable meditations. 
Under his morality is a balance which weighs the quantities of happi- 
ness. He stirs himself by mathematical comparisons to prefer the 
future to the present. He tries to realise, amidst an assemblage of 
dates, the disproportion of our short life to infinity. Thus arises this 
religion, a product of melancholic temperament and acquired logic, in 
which man, a sort of calculating Hamlet, aspires to the ideal by making 
a good business of it, and maintains his poetical sentiments by financial 
additions. 

In such a subject these habits are offensive. We ought not to try 
and over-define or prove God ; religion is rather a matter of feeling 
than of science ; we compromise it by exacting too rigorous demonstra- 
tions, and too precise dogmas. It is the heart which sees heaven ; 
if you would make me believe in it, as you make me believe in the 
Antipodes, by geographical accounts and probabilities, I shall barely or 
not at all believe. Addison has little more than his college arguments 
or edification, very like those of the Abbe Pluche,^ which let in objec- 
tions at every cleft, and which we can only regard as dialectical essays, 
or sources of emotion. Add the motives of interest and calculations 
of prudence, which can make recruits, but not converts ; these are his 
proofs. There is an element of coarseness in this fashion of treating 
divine things, and we like still less the exactness with which hf explains 
God, reducing him to a mere magnified man. This preciseness and this 
narrowness go so far as to describe heaven : 

* Though the Deity be thus essentially present through all the immensity of 
gpace, there is one part of it in wliich he discovers himself in a most transcendent 
and visible glory. ... It is here where the glorified body of our Saviour resides, 
and where all the celestial hierarchies, and the innumerable hosts of angels, are 
represented an perpetually surrounding the seat of God with hallelujahs and hymns 
cf praise. . . . With how much skill must the throne of God be erected ! . . . 
How great must be the majesty of that place, where the whole art of creation has 
been employed, and where God has chosen to shew himself in the most magnificent 
manner ! What must be the architecture of infinite power under the direction oi 
infinite wisdom ?'* 

' Spectator, Nos. 26 and 575. 

* The Abbe Pluclie (1G88-1761) was the author of a Systeme de la li'atm 
and several other works. — Tr. 

* Spectator, ^o. 580; see also No. 531. 



102 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

Moreover, the place must be very grand, and they have music there : 
it is a noble palace ; perhaps there are antechambers. Enough ; I will 
not continue. The same dull and literal precision makes him inquire 
what sort of happiness the elect have.^ They will be admitted into the 
councils of Providence, and will understand all its proceedings : 

' There is, doubtless, a faculty in spirits by which they apprehend one anothef 
as our senses do material objects ; and there is no question but our souls, when 
tL ey are disembodied, or placed in glorified bodies, will by this faculty, in what* 
ever part of space they reside, be always sensible of the Divine Presence.'* 

This grovelling philosophy repels you. One word of Addison will 
justify it, and make you understand it : * The business of mankind in 
this life is rather to act than to know.' Now, such a philosophy is as 
useful in action as flat in science. All its faults of speculation become 
merits in practice. It follows in a prosy manner positive religion.^ 
What support does it not attain from the authority of an ancient tradi- 
tion, a national institution, an established priesthood, visible ceremonies, 
every-day customs ! It employs as arguments public utility, the ex- 
ample of great minds, heavy logic, literal interpretation, and unmistake- 
able texts. What better means of governing the crowd, than to degrade 
proofs to the vulgarity of its intelligence and needs? It humanises 
the Divinity : is it not the only way to make men understand him ? It 
defines almost obviously a future life : is it not the only way to cause 
it to be wished for ? The poetry of high philosophical deductions is 
weak beside the inner persuasion, rooted by so many positive and de- 
tailed descriptions. In this way an active piety is born ; and religion 
thus constructed doubles the force of the moral spring. Addison's is 
admirable, because it is so strong. Energy of feeling rescues wretched- 
ness of dogma. Beneath his dissertations we feel that he is moved ; 
minutise, pedantry disappear. We see in him now only a soul deeply 
penetrated with adoration and respect ; no more a preacher classifying 
God's attributes, and pursuing his trade as a good logician ; but a man 
who naturally, and of his own bent, returns to a lofty spectacle, goea 
with awe into all its aspects, and leaves it only with a renewed or 
overwhelmed heart. The sincerity of his emotions makes us respect 
even his catechetical prescriptions. He demands fixed days of devotion 
and meiitation to recall us regularly to the thought of cur Creator 
and of our faith. He inserts prayers in his paper. He forbids oaths, 
and recommends to keep always before us the idea of a sovereign 
Master : 

* Suck an habitual homage to the Supreme Being would, in a particular manner, 
banish from among us that prevailing impiety of using his name on tho most 
trivial occasions. . . . What can we then think of those who make use of so 
tremendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and ^ost 

» Spectator, Nos. 237, 571, 600. 

« IHd. No. 57J ; see also Nos. 237, GOO. » Tatler, No. 257. 



CHAP. IV.] ADDISON. ^ji, 

inicertinent passions ? of those who admit it into the most familiar qnestlons and 
assertions, ludicrous phrases, and works of humour? not to" mention those who 
violate it by solemn perjuries ! It would be an affront to reason to endeavour to 
set forth the horror and profaneness of such a practice.'* 

A Frencliman, at the first word, hearing himself forbidden to SAvear, 
would probably laugh ; in his eyes that is a matter of good taste, not 
of morality. But if he had heard Addison himself pronouncing what 
I have written, he would laugh no more, 

V. 

It is no small thing to make morality fashionable. Addison did it, 
Bnd it remained in fashion. Formerly honest men were not polished, 
and polished men were not honest ; piety was fanatical, and urbanity 
depraved ; in manners, as in letters, one could meet only Puritans or 
libertines. For the first time Addison reconciled virtue with elegance, 
taught duty in an accomplished style, and made pleasure subservient 
iio reason : 

* It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven, to in- 
habit among men ; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have 
brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in 
clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in colfee-houses. I would therefore, in a 
very particular manner, recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated 
families, and set apart an hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter ; 
and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually 
served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea-equipage.'* 

In this you may detect an inclination to smile ; it is the tone of a 
polished man, who, at the first sign of ennui, turns round, delicately 
laughs at himself, and tries to please. It is Addison's general tone. 

What an art it is to please ! First, the art of making oneself under- 
stood, at once, always, completely, without difficulty to the reader, 
without reflection, without attention. Figure to yourself men of the 
world reading a page between two mouthfuls of ' bohea-rolls,' ladies 
interrupting a phrase to ask when the ball begins : three special or 
learned words would make them throw the paper down. They only 
desire clear terms, in common use, into which wit enters all at once, as 
it enters ordinary converse ; in fact, for them reading is only a conversa- 
tijn, and a better one than usual. For the select world refines language. 
It does not suffer the risks and approximations of extempore and inex- 
perienced speaking. It requires a knowledge of style, like a knowledge 
of external forms. It will have exact words to express the fine shades 
of thought, and measured words to preclude shocking or extreme im- 
pressions. It wishes fox developed phrases, which, presenting the same 
idea, under several aspects, may impress it easily upon its desultory 
mind. It demands harmonies of words, wliich, presenting a known 

> Spectator, No. 531. 2 ji^^ '^^^ jq. 



104 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

idea in a smart form, may introduce it in a lively manner to its desul- 
tory imagination. Addison gives it all that it desires ; his writings ar« 
the pure source of classical style ; men never spoke in England better. 
Ornaments abound, and rhetoric has no part in them. Throughout 
we have just contrasts, which serve only for clearness, and are not 
too much prolonged; happy expressions, easily discovered, which give 
thhigs a new and ingenious turn ; harmonious periods, in which the 
sounds flow into one another with the diversity and sweetness of a 
quiet stream ; a fertile vein of inventions and images, through which 
funs the most amiable irony. We trust one example will suffice : 

* He is not obliged to attend her (Nature) in the slow advances which she makei 
from one season to another, or to observe her conduct in the successive production 
of plants and flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the 
spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it the 
more agreeable. His rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines may flower together, 
and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His 
soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper either for oaks 
or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every climate. Oranges may grow 
wild in it ; myrrh may be met with in every hedge ; and if he thinks it proper to 
have a grove of spices, he can quickly command snn enough to raise it. If all this 
will not furnish out any agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, 
with richer scents and higher colours, than any that grow in the gardens of nature. 
His concerts of birds may be as full and harmonious, and his woods as thick and 
gloomy as he pleases. He is at no more expense in a long vista than a short one, 
and can as easily throw his cascades from a precipice of half a mile high as from 
one of twenty yards. He has his choice of the winds, and can turn the course 
of his rivers in all the variety of meanders that are most dehghtful to the reader's 
imagination.'^ 

I find here that Addison profits by the rights which he accords, and 
is amused in explaining to us how we may amuse ourselves. Such is 
the charming tone of society. Reading this book, we fancy it still 
more amiable than it is : no pretension ; no efforts ; endless contrivance; 
employed unconsciously, and obtained without asking ; the gift of being 
lively and agreeable; a refined banter, raillery without bitterness, a 
sustained gaiety ; the art of finding in everything the most blooming 
and the freshest flower, and to smell it without bruising or sullying it , 
science, politics, experience, morality, bearing their finest fruits, adorn- 
ing them, offering them at a chosen moment, ready to withdraw them 
as soon as conversation has received the flavour, and before it is tired 
of th(!m ; ladies placed in the first rank,^ arbiters of refinement, sur- 
rounded with homage, crowning the politeness of men and the brilliancy 
of society by the "attraction of their toilettes, the delicacy of their wit, 
and the charm of their smiles ; — such is the familiar spectacle in which 
the writer has formed and delighted himself. 

So many advantages are not without their inconvenience. Th« 



Spectator, No. 418. * Ihid. Nos. 423, 265. 



CHAP. IV.J ADDISON. 105 

compliments of society, wliich attenuate expressions, blunt the style ; 
by regulating what is instinctive and moderating what is vehement, 
they make speech threadbare and uniform. We must not always seek tc 
please, above all, the ear. Monsieur Chateaubriand boasted of not ad- 
mitting a single elision into the song of Cymodocee; so much the worse 
for Cymodocee. So the commentators who have noted in Addison the 
balance of his periods, do him an injustice.^ They exphiin why he 
slightly wearies us. The rotundity of his phrases is a scanty merit, 
and mars the rest. To calculate longs and shorts, to be always think- 
ing of sounds, of final cadences, — all these classical researches spoil a 
writer. Every idea has its accent, and all our labour ought to be to 
make it free and simple on paper, as it is in our mind. We ought 
to copy and mark our thought with the flow of emotions and images, 
which raise it, caring for notliing but its exactness and clearness. One 
true phrase is worth a hundred periods : the first is a document which 
fixes for ever a movement of the heart or the senses ; the other is a 
toy to amuse the empty heads of verse-makers. I would give twenty 
pages of Flechier for three hues of Saint-Simon. Regular rhythm 
mutilates the impetus of natural invention ; the shades of inner vision 
vanish ; we see no more a soul which thinks or feels, but fingers which 
scan. The continuous period is like the shears of La Quintinie,^ which 
crop all the trees round, under pretence of beautif) ing. This is why 
there is a coldness and monotony in Addison's style. He seems to 
be listening to himself. He is too measured and correct. His most 
touching stories, like that of Theodosius and Constantia, touch us only 
partially. Who could feel inclined to weep over such periods as 
these ? 

* Constantia, who knew that nothing but the report of her marriage could have 
driven him to such extremities, was not to be comforted : she now accused herself 
for having so tamely given an ear to the proposal of a husband, and looked upon 
the new lover as the murderer of Theodosius : in short, she resolved to suffer the 
utmost effects of her father's displeasure, rather than to comply with a marriage 
which appeared to her so full of guilt and horror.'^ 

Is this the way to paint horror and guilt? Where are the motions of 
passion which Addison pretends to paint? The story is related, not 
seen. 

The classic simply cannot see. Always measured and rational, his 
first care is to proportion and arrange. He has his rules in his pocket, 
and brings them out for everything. He does not rise to the source of 
the beautiful at once, like genuine artists, by force and lucidity of 



* See, in the notes of No. 409 of the Spectator^ the pretty minute analysis of 
Hurd, the decomposition of the period, the proportion of long and short syllables, 
the study of the finals. A musician could not have done better. 

2 La Quintinie (16.26-1688) was a celebrated gardener under Louis XIV., and 
planned the gardens of Versailles. 

» Sprxtat^-r, No. 164. 



106 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK HI 

natural inspiration ; he lingers in the middle regions, amid precepts, 
subject to taste and common sense. This is why Addison's criticism is 
so solid and so poor. They who seek ideas will do well not to read his 
Esswfs on Imagination^^ so much praised, so well written, but so scant 
of philosophy, and so commonplace, dragged down by the intervention 
of final causes. His celebrated commentary on Paradise Lost is little 
better than the dissertations of Batteux and Bossu. In one place he 
compares, almost in a line, Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The fine arrange- 
ment of a poem is with him the best merit. The pure classics enjoy 
better arrangement and good order than artless truth and strong 
originality. They have always their poetic manual in their hands : if 
you agree with the pattern of to-day, you have genius; if not, not. 
Addison, in praise of Milton, establishes that, according to the rule of 
epic poetry, the action of Paradise Lost is one, complete and great ; 
that its characters are varied and of universal interest, and its senti- 
ments natural, appropriate, and elevated; the style clear, diversified, 
and sublime. Now you may admire Milton; he has a testimonial from 
Aristotle. Listen, for instance, to cold details of classical dissertation : 

* Had I followed Monsieur Bossii's method in my first paper on Milton, I should 
have dated the action of Paradise Lost from the beginning of Raphael's speech in 
this book. ' ^ 

* But, notwithstanding the fineness of this allegory (Sin and Death) may atone 
for it (the defect in tlie subject of his poem) in some measure, I cannot think that 
persons of such a chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem.'* 

Further on he defines poetical machines, the conditions of their 
structure, the advantage of their use. He seems to me a carpenter 
verifying the construction of a staircase. Do not suppose that artifi- 
ciality shocks him ; he rather admires it. He finds the violent 
declamations of the Miltonic divinity and the royal compliments, 
indulged in by the persons of the Trinity, sublime. The campaigns 
of the angels, their bearing in chapel and barrack, their scholastic 
disputes, their bitter puritanical or pious royalistic style, do not strike 
him as false or disagreeable. Adam's pedantry and household lectures 
appear to him suitable to the state of innocence. In fact, the classics 
of the last two centuries never looked upon the human mind, except 
in its cultivated state. The child, the artist, the barbarian, the 
inspired man, escaped them; so, of course, did all who were beyond 
humanity : their world was limited to the earth, and to the earth of 
the study and drawing-rooms ; they rose neither to God nor nature, or 
if they did, it was to transform nature into a narrow garden, and God 
into a moral scrutator. They reduced genius to eloquence, poetry to 
discourse, the drama to a dialogue. They regarded beauty as if it were 
reason, a sort of middle faculty, not apt for invention, potent in rules, 
balancing imagination like conduct, and making taste the arbiter ol 

" » See Spectator, No. 411-No. 433. '-^ Ihid. No. 337. » Ihid. No. 373 



CRAP. IV.] ADDISON. 107- 

letteis, as it made morality the arbiter of actions. They dispensed with 
the play on words, the sensual grossness, the flights of imagination, the 
atrocities, and all the bad accompaniments of Shakspeare;^ but they 
only half imitated him in tlie deep intuitions by which he pierced the 
human heart, and discovered therein the God and the animal. They 
wanted to be moved, but not overwhelmed ; they allowed themselves 
to be impressed, but demanded to be pleased. To please rationally 
was the object of their literature. Such is Addison's criticism, which 
resembles his art ; born, like his art, of classical urbanity ; fit, like his 
art, for the life of the world, having the same solidity and the same 
limits, because it had the same sources, to wit, rule and gratification. 

VI. 

But we must consider that we are in England, and that we find there 
many things not agreeable to a Frenchman. In France, the classical 
age attained perfection ; so that, compared to it, other countries lack 
somewhat of finish. Addison, elegant at home, is not quite so in 
France. Compared with Tillotson, he is the most charming man pos- 
sible ; compared to Montesquieu, he is only half polished. His converse 
is hardly sparkling enough ; the quick movement, the easy change ot 
tone, the facile smile, readily dropt and readily resumed, are hardly 
visible. He drags on in long and too uniform phrases ; his periods are 
too square ; we might cull a load of useless words. He tells us what he 
is going to say : he marks divisions and subdivisions ; he quotes Latin, 
even Greek ; he displays and protracts without end the serviceable and 
sticky plaster of his morality. He has no fear of being wearisome. 
That is not a point of fear amongst Englishmen. Men w^ho love long 
demonstrative sermons of three hours are not difficult to amuse. Re- 
member that here the women like to go to meeting, and are entertained 
by listening for half a day to discourses on drunkenness, or on the 
sliding scale for taxes : these patient creatures require nothing more 
than that conversation should be lively and piquant. Consequentl} 
they can put up with a less refined politeness and less disguised com- 
pliments. When Addison bows to them, which happens often, it is 
gravely, and his reverence is always accompanied by a warning. Take 
the following on the gaudy dresses : 

* I looked with as mnch pleasure upon this little party-coloured assembly, as 
upon a bed of tulips, and did not know at first whether it might not be an embassy 
of Indian queens ; but upon my going about into the pit, aud taking them in front, 
I was immediately undeceived, and saw so much beauty in every face, that I found 
them all to be English. Such eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads, could be the 
growth of no other country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from ob- 
Berving any further the colour of their hoods ,'tho ugh I could easily j^erceive, by 
that unspeakable satisfaction which appeared in their looks, that their owe 
thoughts were wholly taken up on those pretty ornaments they wore upon theil 
heads/ * 

» Spectato? ^9, 40. 58. ^ Ibid. No. 265 ' 



108 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ffv 

In this discreet raillery, modified by an almost official admiration, you 
perceive the English mode of treating women : man, by her side, is 
always a lay-preacher ; they are for him charming children, or useful 
housewives, never queens of the drawing-room, or equals, as amongst 
the French. When Addison wishes to bring back the Jacobite ladies 
to the Protestant party, he treats them almost like little girls, to whom 
we promise, if they will be good, to restore their doll or their cake : 

* They should first reflect on the great sufferings and persecutions to whicli 
they expose themselves by the obstinacy of their behaviour. They lose theii 
elections in every club where they are set up for toasts. They are obliged by their 
principles to stick a patch on the most unbecoming side of their foreheads. They 
forego the advantage of birthday suits. . . . They receive no benefit from the army, 
and are never the better for all the young fellows that wear hats and feathers. 
They are forced to live in the country and feed their chickens ; at the same time 
that they might show themselverj at court, and appear in brocade, if they behaved 
themselves well. In short, what must go to the heart of every fine woman, they 
throw themselves quite out of the fashion. ... A man is startled when he sees u 
pretty bosom heaving with such party-rage, as is disagreeable even in that sex 
which is of a more coarse and rugged make. And yet such is our misfortune, that 
we sometimes see a pair of stays rendy to burst with sedition ; and hear the most 
masculine passions expressed in the sweetest voices. . . . Where a great number 
of flowers groAv, the ground at distance seems entirely covered with them, and we 
must walk into it, before we can distinguish the several weeds that spring up in 
such a beautiful mass of colours. ' * 

This gallantry is too deliberate; we are somewhat shocked to see a 
woman touched by such thoughtful hands. It is the urbanity of a 
moralist ; albeit he is well bred, he is not quite amiable ; and if a 
Frenchman can receive from him lessops of pedagogy and conduct, he 
must come over to France to find models of manners and conversation. 
If the first care of a Frenchman in society is to be amiable, that of 
an Englishman is to be dignified ; their mood leads them to immobility, 
as ours to gestures ; and their pleasantry is as grave as ours is gay. 
Laughter with them is inward ; they shun giving themselves up to it ; 
they are amused silently. Make up your mind to understand this kind 
of temper, it will end by pleasing you. When phlegm is united to 
gentleness, as in Addison, it is as agreeabie as it is piquant. We are 
charmed to meet a lively man, who is yet master of himself. We are 
astonished to see these contrary qvialities together. Each heightens 
and modifies the other. We are not repelled by venomous bitterness, 
as in Swift, or by continuous buffoonery, as in Voltaire. We rejoice 
altogether in the rare union, which for the first time combines serious 
bearing and good humour. Kead this little satire against the bad taste 
of the stage and the public : 

• There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement 
to the town than Signer Nicolini's combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which 

' Freeholder, No. 2(5. 



CHAF. IV. j ADDISON. 10§ 

has been very often exhibited to tlie general satisfaction of most of the nobility and 

gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. . . . The first lion was a candle-snufFer, 
who being a fellow of a testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not 
suffer himself to be hilled so easily as he ought to have done. . . . The second lion 
was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and had the character of a 
mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was 
too sheepish for his part ; insomuch that, after a short modest walk upon the 
stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him, 
and giving him an opportunity of shewing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, 
indited, that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured doublet ; but this was 
only to make work for himself, in his private character of a tailor. . . . The act- 
ing lion at present is, as I am informed, a country gentleman, who does it for his 
diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says, very handsomely, in 
his own excuse, that he does not act for gain, that he indulges an innocent plea- 
sure in it ; and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in 
gaming and drinking. . . . This gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy 
mixture of the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and 
has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man. 
... In the meantime, I have related this combat of the Hon, to show what are at 
present the reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain. ' ^ 

There is much originality in this grave gaiety. As a rule, singu- 
larity is in accordance with the taste of the nation ; they like to be 
struck strongly by contrasts. Our literature seems to them threadbare ; 
we again find them not delicate. A number of the Spectator which 
seemed pleasant to London ladies would have shocked people in Paris. 
Thus, Addison relates in the form of a dream the dissection of a beau's 
brain : 

* The pineal gland, which many of our modem philosophers suppose to be the 
seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange -flower water, and was 
encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or 
mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye ; insomuch that the soul, if 
there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her 
own beauties. We observed a large antmm or cavity in the sinciput, that was 
filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery. . . . "We did not find anything very 
remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or, as we may trans- 
late it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn, and decayed with 
use ; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye 
towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.' * 

Tliese anatomical details, which would disgust us, amused a positive 
mind; crudity is for him only exactness ; accustomed to precise images, 
he fiuds no objectionable odour in the medical style. Addison does not 
share our repugnance. To rail at a vice, he becomes a mathematician, 
an economist, a pedant, an apothecary. Special terms amuse him. He 
gets up a court to judge crinolines, and condemns petticoats in techni- 
cal formulas. He teaches how to handle a fan as if he were teaching 
to prime and load muskets. He draws up a list of men dead or in- 

1 Spectator, No. 13. « Ibid. No. 275. 



no THE CLAgiSIC AGE. [BOOK Ul 

jured by lore, anJ the ridiculous causes which have reduced them Ue 
such a condition : 

* Will Simple, smitten at the Opera by the glance of an eye that was aimed aA 
one who stood by him. 

* Sir Christoplier Crazy, Bart., hurt by the brush of a whalebone petticoat. 

* Ned Courtly, presenting Flavia with her glove (which she had dropped on 
jmrpose), she received it and took away his life with a curtsey. 

* John Gosselin, having received a slight hurt from a pair of blue eyes, as ht 
was making his escape, was dispatched by a smile.' ^ 

Other statistics, with recapitulations and tables of numbers, relate th« 
history of the Leucadian leap : 

*Arid£eus, a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife ol 
Thespis, escaped without damage, saving only that two of his foreteeth were struck 
out, and his nose a little flatted. 

* Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured of 
Bathyllus, leaped and died of his fall ; upon which his wife married her gallant. ' ' 

You see this strange mode of painting human folly : in England it 
is called humour. It contains an incisive good sense, the habit of re- 
straint, business habits, but above all a fundamental energy of invention. 
The race is less refined, but stronger ; and the pleasures which content 
its mind and taste are like the liquors which suit its palate and its 
stomach. 

This potent Germanic spirit breaks even in Addison through his 
classical and Latin exterior. Albeit he relishes art, he still loves 
nature. liis education, which has loaded him with maxims, has not 
destroyed his virgin sentiment of truth. In his travels in France he 
preferred the wildness of Fontainebleau to the correctness of Versailles. 
He shakes off worldly refinements to praise the simplicity of the old 
national ballads. He explains to his public the sublime images, the vast 
passions, the deep religion oi' Paradise Lost. It is curious to see him, com- 
pass in hand, kept back by Bossu, fettered in endless arguments and 
academical phrases, attaining with one spring, by strength of natural 
emotion, the high unexplored regions to which Milton rose by the 
inspiration of faith and genius. He would not say, with Voltaire, that 
Ihe allegory of Sin and Death is enough to make people sick. He has a 
foundation of grand imagination, which makes him indifferent to the 
little refinements of social civilisation. He sojourns willingly amid the 
grandeur and marvels of the other world. He is penetrated by the 
presence of the Invisible, he must escape from the interests and hopes 
of the petty life in which we crawL^ This sdttrce of faith gushes from 
him everywhere ; in vain is it enclosed in the regular channel of official 
dogma; the tests and arguments with which it is covered do not hide 
its true origin. It springs from the grave and fertile imagination which 
can only be satisfied with a sight of what is beyond. 

» Spectator, No. 377. * IMd. No. 233. 

3 See tlie last thirty numbers of the l^pcctator. 



VHAP. IVj ADDISON IJJ 

Such a faculty swallows a man up : and if we descend to the exami- 
nation of literary qualities, we find it at the bottom as well as at the 
top. Nothing in Addison is more varied and rich than the changes and 
the scenery. The driest morality is transformed under his hand into 
pictures and stories. There are letters from all kinds of men, clergy- 
men, common people, men of fashion, who keep their own style, and 
disguise their advice under the form of a little novel. An ambassador 
from Bantam jests, like Montesquieu, at the lies of European politeness. 
Greek or Oriental tales, imaginary travels, the vision of a Scotch seer, 
the memoirs of a rebel, the history of ants, the transformations of an 
ape, the journal of an idle man, a walk in Westminster, the genealog]^ 
of humour, the laws of ridiculous clubs ; in short, an inexhaustible 
mass of pleasant or solid fictions. The allegories are most frequent. We 
feel that the author is pleased in this magnilicent and fantastic world ; 
he is giving himself a sort of opera ; his eyes must look on colours. 
Here is a paper on religions, very Protestant, but as sparkling as it is 
ingenious : pleasure here did not consist, as in France, in the vivacity 
and variety of tone, but in the splendour and justice of invention : 

* The middle figure, which immediately attracted the eyes of the whole com- 
pany, and was much bigger than the rest, was formed like a matron, dressed in the 
habit of an elderly woman of quality in Queen Elizabeth's days. The most re- 
markable parts of her dress were the beaver with the steeple crown, the scarf that 
was darker than sable, and the lawn apron that was whiter than ermine. Her 
gown was of the richest black velvet, and just upon her heart studded with large 
diamonds of an inestimable value, disposed in the form of a cross. Slie bore an 
inexpressible cheerfulness and dignity in her aspect ; and though she seemed in 
years, appeared with so much spirit and vivacity, as gave her at the same time an 
air of old age and immortality. I found my heart touched with so much love 
and reverence at the sight of her, that the tears ran down my face as I looked 
upon her ; and still the more I looked upon her, the more my heart was melted 
with the sentiments of filial tenderness and duty. I discovered every moment 
something so charming in this figure, that I could scarce take my eyes off it. 
On its fight hand there sat the ligure of a woman so covered with ornaments, 
that hei fece, her body, and her hands were almost entirely hid under them. 
The little- you could see of her face was painted, and what I thought very odd^ 
had something in it like artificial wrinkles ; but I was the less surprised at it, 
when 1 saw upon her forehead an old-fashioned tower of grey hairs. Her -head- 
dress rose very high by three several stories or degrees ; her garments had a thou- 
sand colours in them, and were embroidered with crosses in gold, silver, and silk ; 
she had nothing on, so much as a glove or a slipper, which was not marked with 
this figure ; nay, so superstitiously fond did she appear of it, that she sat cross- 
legged. . . . The next to her was a figure which somewhat puzzled me ; it was 
that of a man looking, with horror in his eyes, upon a silver bason filled with 
water. Observing something in his countenance that looked like lunac}', I fancied 
at fijTst that he was to express that kind of distraction which the physicians call 
the Hydrophobia ; but considering what the intention of the show was, I iJ i 
mediately recollected myself, and concluded it to be Anabaptism.' • 

» Tatler, No. 257. 



112 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

The reader must guess what these two first figures meant. They will 
please an Anglican more than a Catholic ; but 1 think that a Catholic 
himself cannot help recognising the fidness and freshness of the liction. 
Genuine imagination naturally ends in the invention of characters 
For, if you clearly represent to yourself a situation or an action, you 
will see at the same time the whole network of its connection ; the 
passion and faculties, all the gestures and tones of voice, all details of 
dress, dwelling, society, which flow from it, will bring their precedents 
and their consequences ; and this multitude of ideas, slowly organised, 
w'A at last be concentrated in a single sentiment, from which, as from a 
deep spring, will break forth the portrait and the history of a complete 
cliaracter. There are several such in Addison ; the quiet observer 
Will Honeycomb, the country Tory Sir Roger de Coverley, which are 
not satirical theses, like those of La Bruyere, but genuine individuals, 
like, and sometimes equal to, the characters of the great contemporary 
novels. In fact, he invents the novel, without suspecring it, at the 
same time and in the same way as his most illustrious neighbours. His 
characters are taken from life, from the manners and conditions of the 
time, described at length and minutely in all the parts of their education 
and surroundings, with the precision and positive observation, marvel- 
lously real and English. A masterpiece as well as an historical record 
is Sir Roger de Coverley, the country gentleman, loyid servant of con- 
stitution and church, justice of the peace, patron of the church, whose 
estate shows on a small scale the structure of the English nation. This 
domain is a little state, paternally governed, but still governed. Sir 
Roger rates his tenants, passes them in review in church, knows their 
affairs, gives them advice, assistance, commands ; he is respected, 
obeyed, loved, because he lives with them, because tlie simplicity of his 
tastes and education puts him almost on a level with them ; because in 
his position as magistrate, old landholder, rich man, benefactor, and 
neighbour, he exercises a moral and legal, a useful and respected autho- 
rity. Addison at the same time shows in him the solid and peculiar 
English character, built of heart of oak, with all the knots of the primi- 
tive bark, which can neither be softened nor planed down, a great fimd 
of kindness which extends to animals, love of country and bodily 
exercises, a disposition to command and discipline, the feeling oi 
subordination and respect, much common sense and little finesse, the 
habit of displaying and establishing in public his singularities and 
oddities, careless of ridicule, without thought of bravado, solely because 
these men acknowledge no judge but themselves. A hundred traits depict 
the times ; a lack of reading, a remnant of belief in witchcraft, peasant 
and hunting manners, the ignorances of an artless or backward mind. 
Sir Roger gives the children, who answer their catechism well, a Bible 
for themselves, and a quarter of bacon for their mothers. When a 
verse pleases him, he sings it for half a minute after the congregation 
has finished* He kills eight fat pigs at Christmas, and sends a pudding 



CHAP. IV.] ADDISON. 113 

and a pack of cards to each poor familj- in the parish. Wlien he goes 
to the theatre, he supplies liis servants with cudgels to protect them- 
selves from the thieves wliich, he says, infest London. Addison returns 
a score of times to the old knight, always discovering some new aspect 
of his character, a disinterested observer of humanity, curiously assi- 
duous and discerning, a true creator, having but a step to go to enter, 
like Richardson and Fielding, upon the great work of modern literature, 
ihe novel of manners and customs. 

Beyond this, all is poetry. It has flowed through his prose a thou- 
sand times more sincere and beautiful than in his verses. Rich oriental 
fancies are displayed, not with a shower of sparks as in Voltaire, but 
under a calm and abundant light, which makes the regular f^lds of their 
purple and gold undulate. The music of the long cadenced and tranquil 
phrases leads the mind sweetly amidst romantic splendours and enchant- 
ments, and the deep sentiment of ever young nature recalls the happy 
quietude of Spenser.* Through gentle railleries or moral essays we 
feel that his imagination is happy, delighted in the contemplation of the 
sway of the forests which clothe the mountains, the eternal verdure of 
the valleys, invigorated by fresh springs, and the wide horizons undulat- 
ing to the border of the distant sky. Great and simple sentiments come 
naturally to unite these noble images, and their measured harmony- 
creates a unique spectacle, worthy to fascinate the heart of an honest 
man by its gravity and sweetness. Such are the Visions of Mirza, 
which I will give almost entire : 

* On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my forefathers 
I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning de- 
votions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in order to pa<^s the rest of the day in 
meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself oh the tops of the mountains, 
I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life ; and passing 
from one thought to another : Surely, said I, man is but a shadow and life a dream. 
Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was 
not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little 
musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him. he applied it to his lips, 
isad began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought 
into a "-Lriety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different 
from any thing I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs 
that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in Paradise, 
t: wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures 
of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures. . , . 

' He (the genius) then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing 
me on the top of it, Cast thy e5'-es eastward, said he, and tell me what thou seest. 
I see, said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it. The 
valley thct thou seest, said he, is the Vale of Misery, and tlio tide of water that thou 
Boest is part of the great tide of eternity. What is the reason, said I, that the tide 
I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at 
the other ? What thou seest, said l.e, is that portion of eternity which is called 

• Storfj' of Alidallah and of Ililpa. 
VOL. II ii 



114 ruE CLASSKJ Aufi. [BOOK 1I\ 

time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to itt 
consummation. Examine now, said he, this sea that is bounded with darkness 
at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it. I see a bridge, said I, 
standing in the midst of the tide. The bridge thou seest, said he, is human life ; 
consider it attentively. Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it con- 
sisted of three score and ten entire arches, with several broken arches, which added 
to those that were entire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was 
counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thou ■ 
sajid arches : but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in tlit 
ruinous condition I now beheld it. But tell me further, said he, what thou dis- 
coverest on it. I see multitudes of people passing over it, said I, and a black 
cloud hanging on each end of it. As I looked more attentively, I saw several of 
the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed under- 
neath it ; and upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable trap- 
doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, 
but they fell through them into the tide, and immediately disappeared. These 
hidden pit-falls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngi 
if people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them, 
rhey grew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together 
towards the end of the arches that were entire. 

* There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that con- 
tinued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after 
another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk, 

* I passed some time in the contemplation of this w/Duderful structure, and the 
great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melan- 
choly to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and 
catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking 
up towards heaven in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation 
stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles 
that glittered in their ej^es and danced before them ; but often when they thought 
themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sunk. la 
this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, and others 
with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on 
trap -doors wliich did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have 
escaped had they not been thus forced upon them. . . . 

* I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas, said I, man was made in vain ! How is 
he given away to misery and mortality ! tortured in life, and swallowed up in 
death ! — The genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so 
uncomfortable a prospect. Look no more, said he, on man in the first stage of his 
existence, in his setting out for eternity ; but cast thine eye on that thick mist 
into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it. I 
directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius strengthenjd 
it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too 
thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the farther end, and 
spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running 
khrough the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The clouds still 
tci=ced on one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing in it : but the 
other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were 
covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining 
»eas tjiat ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with 
L'-ariands upon theiv heads, passing among tlie trees, lying down bjv'tlie sides 07 



iJHAP IV.] ADDISON 115 

the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers ; and could hear a confused harmony 
of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness 
grew in me upon the discorery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of 
an ea^ie, that I might fly away to those happy seats ; but the genius told me there 
was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening ct ery 
moment upon the bridge. The islands, said he, that lie so fresh and green before 
thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou 
oanst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore ; there are myriad? 
of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching farther than thine 
eye, or even thine imagination, can extend itself. These are the mansions of good 
men after death, who according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they 
excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures 
*f different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those Avho 
are settled in them : every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective 
inhabitants. Are not these, Mirza, habitations worth contending for ? Does 
life appear miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward ? Is 
death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence ? Think not 
man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him. — I gazed with 
inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, shew me now, 
I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the 
ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant. The genius making me no answer, 
I turned me about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had 
Lift me ; I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating ; 
l'\it instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw 
nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing 
upon the sides of it.' * 

In this ornate moral sketch, this fine piece of argument, so correct and 
so eloquent, this ingenious and noble imagination, I find an epitome of 
all Addison's characteristics. These are the I^nglish tints which dis- 
tinguish this classical age from that of the French : a narrower and 
more practical argument, a more poetical and less eloquent urbanity, 
a structure of mind more inventive and more rich, less sociable and 
less reliuod. 



Spectator, No. J.^. 



116 THE CLASSIC AGE. fBOOK lU 



CHAPTER y. 

Swift. 

1. Swift's origin — Character — Pride — Sensitiveness — His life in Sir Willi&ai 
Temple's house — At Lord Berkeley's — Political life — Influence — FailuJ-e 
— Private life — Lovemaking — Despair and insanity. 

II. His wit — His power, and its limits — Prosaic and positive mind — Holdii.g 

a mean position between vulgarity and genius — Why destructive. 
IIL The pamphleteer — How literature now concerns itself with politics- Dif- 
ference of parties and pamphlets in France and England — Conditions oi 
the literary pamphlet — Of the effective pamphlet — These pamphlets arc 
special and practical — The Examiner — The Drapier's Letters — A Short 
Character oJ^Thomas Earl of Wharton — An Argument against Abolish- 
ing Christianity — Political invective — Personal defamation — Ineisivd 
common sense — Grave irony. 
IV. The poet — Comparison of Swift and Voltaire — Gravity and harshness of 
his jests — Bickerstaff — Coarseness of his gallantry — Cadenus and Vanessa 
— His prosaic and realistic poetry — The Grand Question Debated — 
Energy and sadness of his shorter poems — Verses on his own Death — His 
excesses. 

V. The narrator and philosopher — A Tale of a Tub — His opinion on religion, 
science, philosophy, and reason — How he maligns human intelligence — 
Gulliver's Travels — His opinion on society, government, rank, and pro- 
fessions — How he maligns human nature — Last pamphlets — Composition 
of his character and genius. 

IN 1685, in the great hall of Dublin University, the professors en- 
gaged in examining for the bachelor's degree enjoyed a singulai 
spectacle : a prjor scholar, odd, awkward, with hard blue eyes, an 
orphan, friendless, poorly supported by the charity of an uncle, having 
failed once before to take his degree on account of his ignorance of 
logic, had come up again without having condescended to read logic. 
To no purpose his tutor set before him the most respectable folios — 
Smiglecius, Kechermanuas, Burgerdiscius. He turned over a few pages, 
and shut them directly. When the argumentation came on, the proctor 
was obliged to 'reduce Ins replies into syllogism,' He was asked how 
he could reason well without rules ; he replied that he did reason pretty 
well without them. This folly shocked ihem ; yet he was received, 
though barely, speciali gratia, says the register, and the professors 
went away, doubtless with pitying smiles, lamenting the feeble brain f| 
Jonathan Swift. 



CHAP, v.] SWIFT. 117 

I. 

This was his first humiliation and his first rebellion. His whole 

life was like this moment, overwhelmed and made wretched by sorrows 
and hatred. To what excess they rose, his portrait and his history 
alone can show. He had an exaggerated and terrible pride, and made 
the haughtiness of the most powerful ministers and most mighty lords 
bend beneath his arrogance. A simple journalist, possessing nothing 
but a small Irish living, he treated with them on an equality. Harley, 
the prime minister, having sent him a bank bill for his first articles, 
he was offended at being taken for a paid man, returned the money, 
demanded an apology ; he received it, and wrote in his journal : ' i 
have taken Mr. Harley into favour again.'* On another occasion, 
having observed that St. John, Secretary of State, looked upon him 
coldly, he rebuked him for it : 

* One thing I warned him of, never to appear cold to me, for I would not be 
treated like a school-boy ; that I expected every great minister who honoured me 
with his acquaintance, if he heard or saw anything to ray disadvantage, would let 
me know in plain words, and not put me in pain to guess by the change or coldness 
of his countenance or behaviour ; for it was what I would hardly bear from a 
crowned head ; and I thought no subject's favour was worth it : and that I de- 
signed to let my Lord Keeper and M. Harley know the same thing, that they nnght 
use me accordingly. ' * 

St. John approved of this, made excuses, said that he had passed 
several nights at * business, and one night at drinking,' and that his 
fatigue might have seemed like ill-humour. In the minister's drawing- 
room Swift went up and spoke to some obscure person, and compelled 
the lords to come and speak to him : 

* Mr. secretary told me the Duke of Buckingham had been talking to him much 
about me, and desired my acquaintance. I answered, it could not be, for he had 
not made sufficient advances. Then the Duke of Shrewsbury said, he thought the 
Duke was not used to make advances. I said, I could not help that ; for I always 
expected advances in proportion to men's quality, and more from a duke tha» 
other men.'* 

* Saw Lord Halifax at court, and we joined and talked, and the Duchess of 
Shrewsbury came up and reproached me for not dining with her : I said that was 
not so soon done ; for I expected more advances from ladies, especially duchesses : 
She promised to comply. . . . Lady Oglethorp brought me and the Duchess of 
Hamilton together to-day in the drawing-room, and I have given her some en- 
couragement, but not much.' * 

» In Swift's Works, ed. W. Scott, 19 vols. 1814 ; Journal to Stella, ii. Feb. 13 
(1710-11). He says also (Feb. 7) : ' I will not see him (M. Harley) till he makes 
amends. ... I was deaf to all entreaties, and have desired Lewis to go to hinj, 
and let him know that I expected farther satisfaction. If we let these gresi 
Biinisters pretend too much, there will be no governing them. ' 

* Ibid. April 3, 1711. ^ Ibid. May 10, 1711. ^ Ibid. Oct. 7, 1711. 



118. THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

He trmm plied in hia arrogance, ancT said with a restrained joy, full oi 



Yen seance 



* 1 generally am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so 
proud tliat I make all the lords come up to me. One passes half an hour pleasant 

enough. * 

He carried his triumph to brutality and tyranny; writing to tho 
Duchess of Queensberry, he says : 

* I am glad you know your duty ; for it has been a known and established rule 
above twenty years in England, that the first advances have been constantly mad€ 
me by all ladies who aspired to my acquaintance, and the greater their quality, 
the greater were their advances. ' ^ 

The famous General Webb, with his crutch and cane, limped up two 
flights of stairs to congratulate and invite him ; Swift accepted, then 
an hour later withdrew his consent, preferring to dine elsewhere. He 
seemed to look upon himself as a superior being, exempt from the 
necessity of ceremony, entitled to homage, caring neither for sex, rank, 
nor fame, whose business it was to protect and destroy, distributing 
favours, insults, and pardons. Addison, then Lady Gilford, a friend o/ 
twenty years, having offended him, he refused to take them back into 
his favour until they had asked his pardon. Lord Lansdown, Secretary 
for War, being annoyed by an expression in the Examiner, Swift says : 

* This I resented highly that he should complain of me before he spoke to me. 
I sent him a peppering letter, and would not summon him by a note, us I did tha 
rest ; nor ever will have anything to say to him, till he begs my pardon.' ' 

He treated art like man, writing a thing off, scorning the wretched 
necessity of reading it over, putting his name to nothing, letting every 
piece make its way on its own merits, unassisted, without the prestige 
of his name, recommended by none. He had the soul of a dictator, 
marred by power, and saying openly : * All my endeavours from a boy 
to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and fortune, 
that I might be treated like a lord. . . . Whether right or wrong, it ia 
no great matter ; and so the reputation of great learning does the work 
of a blue ribbon, or of a coach and six horses.' * But he thought this 
power and rank due to him ; he did not ask, but expected them. * I 
will never beg for myself, though I often do it for others.' He desired 
dominion, and acted as if he had it. Hatred and misfortune find their 
native soil in these despotic minds. They live like fallen kings, always 
insulting and hurt, having all the miseries but none of the consolations 
of pride, unable to relish either society or solitude, too ambitious to be 
content with silence, too haughty to use the world, born for rebellion 
and defeat, destmed by their passions and impotence to despair and to 
talent. « 

^ Swift's Woiks, xvii. p. 352. 

* Journal to Stella, iii., March 27, 1711-12 » Letter to Pope. 



CBAP. V.J SWIFT. 119 

Sensitiveness in tMs case aggravated the stings of pride. Under 
this outward calmness raged furious passions. There was within him a 
ceaseless tempest of wrath and desire : 

* A person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to 
look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that 
would do mischief, if I would not give it employment.' 

Resentment was deeper and hotter with him than with other men. 
Listen to the deep sigh of joyful hatred with which he sees his enemies 
under his feet : 

* The whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while 
they are drowning ; and the great men making me their clumsy apologies.' ^ * It 
is good to see what a lamentable confession the whigs all make of my ill usage. ' * 

And soon after : * Rot them, for ungrateful dogs ; I will make therr 
repent their usage before I leave this place.' ^ He is satiated and con- 
tented ; like a wolf or a lion, he cares for nothing else. . 

This fury led him to every sort of madness and violence. His 
Drapier''s Letters had roused Ireland against the government, and the 
government had set up a proclamation offering a reward to any one who 
would denounce the Draper. Swift came suddenly into the reception- 
chamber, elbowed the groups, went up to the lord-lieutenant, with in- 
dignation on his countenance and thundering voice, and said : 

* So, my lord, this is a glorious exploit that you performed yesterday, in suffer- 
ing a proclamation against a poor shopkeeper, whose only crime is an honest en- 
deavour to save his country from ruin. ' * 

And he broke out into railing amidst general silence and amazement. 

The lord-lieutenant, a man of sense, answered calmly. Before such a 
torrent men turned aside. This chaotic and self-devouring heart could 
not understand the calmness of his friends; he asked them : 'Do not 
the corruptions and villanies of men eat your flesh, and exhaust your 
spirits?'^ 

Resignation was repulsive to him. His actions, sudden and strange^ 
broke in upon his silent moods like flashes of lightning. He was 
eccentric and violent in everything, in his pleasantry, in hi? private 
affairs, with his friends, with unknown people ; he was often taken for a 
madman. Addison and his friends had seen for several days at the St. 
James' Coffee-house a singular parson, who put his hat on the table, 
walked for half an hour backward and forward, paid his money, and 
left, having attended to nothing and said nothing. They called him 
the mad parson. One day this parson perceives a gentleman *ju8t 

1 Journal to Stella, ii. Sept. 9, 1710. ' Ibid. Sept. 30, 1710. 

3 Ibid. Nov. 8, 1710. -* Swift's Life, by Roscoe, i. 56. 

^ Sicift's Life, by W. Scott, i. 279. 



120 THE CLASSIC AGE. fBOOK III 

come out of the country, went straight up to him, and in a very abrupt 
manner, without any previous salate, asked him, " Pray sir, do you 
know any good weather in the world ? " After staring a little at the 
singularity of Swift's manner and the oddity of the question, the gentle- 
man answered, '* Yes, sir, I thank God, I remember a great deal of good 
weather in my time." " That is more," said Swift, " than I can say. 1 
never remember any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet 
or too dry ; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the 
year 'tis all very well."' ^ Another day, dining with the Earl of Bur- 
lington, the Dean said to the mistress of the house, ' Lady Burlington, 
I hear you can sing ; sing me a song,' The lady looked on this un- 
ceremonious manner of asking a favour with distaste, and positively 
refused. He said, 'she should sing, or he would make her. Why, 
madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge- 
parsons ; sing when I bid you I' As the earl did nothing but laugh 
at this freedom, the lady was so vexed, that she burst into tears, and 
retired. His first compliment to her, when he saw her again, was, 
* Pray, madam, are you as proud and as ill-natured now, as when I 
saw you last?'^ People were astonished or amused at these outbursts; 
I see in them sobs and cries, the explosion of long overwhelming and 
bitter thoughts ; they are the starts of a mind unsubdued, shuddering, 
rebelling, breaking the barriers, wounding, crushing, or bruising every 
one on its road, or those who wish to stop it. Swift became mad at last ; 
he felt this madness coming, he has described it in a horrible manner; 
beforehand he has tasted all the disgust and bitterness of it ; he showed 
it on his tragic face, in his terrible and wan eyes. This is the power- 
ful and mournful genius which nature gave up as a prey to society and 
life ; society and life poured all their poisons in him. 

He knew what poverty and scorn were even at the age when the 
mind expands, when the heart is full of pride,^ when he was hardly 
maintained by the alms of his family, gloomy and Avithout hope, feeling 
his strength and the dangers of his strength."* At twenty-one, as secre- 
tary to Sir W. Temple, he had twenty pounds a year salary, sat at the 



1 Sheridan's Life of Swift. » "VV. Scott's Life of Swift, i. 477. 

^ At that time he had already begun the Tale of a Tub. 

* He addresses his muse thus, in Verses occasioned by Sir Willia'n Tefti^iti'i 
late illness and recovery, xiv. 45 : 

* Wert thou right woman, thou should'st scorn to look 

On an abandoned wretch by hopes forsook ; 

Forsook by hopes, ill fortune's last relief, 

Assign'd for life to unremitting grief; 

To thee I owe that fatal bend of mind 

Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined ; 

To thee, what oft I vainly strive to hide, 

That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride.' 



CHAP. VJ SWIFT. 121 

same table with the upper servants,^ wrote Pindaric odes in honour of 
his master, spent ten years amidst tl:ie humiliations of servitude 
and the familiarity of the servants' hall, obliged to adulate a gouty 
and flattered courtier, to submit to my lady his sister, acutely 
pained, * when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of 
humour,'^ lured by false hopes, forced after an attempt at inslepen- 
dence to resume the livery which was choking him. * When you find 
years coming on, without hopes of a place at court, ... I directly 
advise you to go upon the road, which is the only post of honour left 
you ; there you will meet many of your old comrades, and live a short 
life and a merry one.' ^ This is followed by instructions as to the con- 
duct servants ought to display when led to the gallows. Such is his 
Directions to Servants; he was relating what he had suffered. At the 
age of thirty-one, expecting a place from William iii., he edited the 
works of his patron, dedicated them to the sovereign, sent him a memo- 
rial, got nothing, and fell back upon the post of chaplain and private 
secretary to the Earl of Berkeley. He soon remained only chaplain to 
that nobleman, feeling all the disgust which the part of ecclesiastical 
valet must inspire in a man of feeling. 

• You know T honour the cloth ; I design to be a parson's wife. . . • 
And over and above, that I may have your excellency's letter 
With an order for the chaplain aforesaid, or instead of him a better.** 

Their excellencies, having promised him the deanery of Derry, gave it 
to another. Driven to politics, he wrote a Whig pamphlet, A Dis- 
course on the Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Home, received 
from Lord Halifax and the party leaders a score of fine promises, and 
was neglected. Twenty years of insults without revenge, and humi- 
hations without respite ; the inner tempest of nourished and crushed 
hopes, vivid and brilliant dreams, suddenly faded by the necessity of 
a mechanical duty ; the habit of hatred and suffering, the necessity of 
concealing these, the baneful consciousness of superiority, the isolation 
of genius and pride, the bitterness of accumulated rage and pent-vip 
scorn, — these were the goads which pricked him like a bull. More 
than a thousand pamphlets in four years, stung him still more, with 
fiuch designations as renegade, traitor, and atheist. He crushed them 
all, set his foot on the Whig ])arty, solaced himself with the poignant 
jleasure of victory. If ever a soul was saturated with the joy of tearing, 

* These assertions have been denied. See Roscoe's Life of Swiff, i. 14. — Tr. 

' * Dou't you remember how I used to be in pain when Sir William Templd 
would look cold and out of humour for three or four day^, and 1 ut,e.l to o.^i* 
pect a hundred reasons ? I have plucked up my spirit since then, faith ; li« 
•lioiled a fine gentleman.' — Journal to Stella, April 4, 1710-11. 

' Directions to Servants, xii. ch. iii. 434. 

■» Mrs. Harris' Petition, xiv. 52. 



122 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

outraging, unci destroying, it was his. Excess of scorn, implacable 
irony, crushing logic, the cruel smile of the foeman, who sees before- 
hand the mortal spot in which he will strike his enemy, advances 
towards him, tortures him deliberately, eagerly, with enjoyment, — such 
were the feelings which had leavened him, and which broke from him 
with such harshness that he hindered his own career ;^ and that of so 
many high places for which he stretched out his hands, there remained 
for him only a deanery in poor Ireland. The accession of George 1. 
exiled him thither; the accession of George ii., on which he had 
counted, confined him there. He contended there first against popular 
hatred, then against the victorious minister, then against entire hu- 
manity, in sanguinary pamphlets, despairing satires ;^ he tasted there 
once more the pleasure of fighting and wounding ; he suffered there 
to the end, soured by the advance of years, by the spectacle of oppres- 
sion and misery, by the feeling of his own impotence, enraged to have 
to live amongst ' an enslaved people,' chained and vanquished. He 



* I find myself disposed every year, or rather eveiy month, to be more angry 
and revengeful ; and my rage is so ignoble, that it descends even to resent the 
folly and baseness of the enslaved people among whom 1 live.' ^ 

This cry is the epitome of his public life ; these feelings are the mate- 
rials which public life furnished to his talent. 

He experienced these feelings also in private life, more violent and 
familiar. He had brought up and purely loved a charming, well-in- 
formed, modest young girl, Esther Johnson, who from infancy had loved 
and reverenced him alone. She lived with him, he had made her his 
confidante. From London, during his political struggles, he sent her the 
full journal of his slightest actions.; he wrote to her twice a day, with 
extreme ease and familiarity, with all the playfulness, vivacity, petting 
and caressing names of tenderest attachment. Yet another girl, beau- 
tiful and rich, Miss Vanhomrigh, attached herself to him, declared her 
passion, received from him several marks of his own, followed liim to 
Ireland, now jealous, now submissive, but so impassioned, so unhappy, 
that her letters might have broken a harder heart : 

* If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by ma 
long. ... I am sure I could have borne the rack much better, than those killing, 
killing words of you. ... Oh that you may have but so much regard for me left, 
that this complaint may touch your soul with pity ! ' •* 

She pined and died. Esther Johnson, who had so long possessed 



1 By the Tale oj a Tub with the clergy, and by the Prophesy of Windsor 
with the queen. 

2 Drapier's Letters, OuUwefs Travels, Rhapsody on Poetry. A Modest Pro 
posal for preventing the Children, etc., and several pamphlets on Ireland. 

^ Letter to Lord Bolingbroke, Dublin, March 21, 1728, xvii. 274. 
* Letter of Miss Vauhomrioh, Dublin, 1714, xix. 421. 



(:hap. v.] swift. 123 

Swift's whole heart, fuffered still more. All was changed in Swift's 
house. *At my first coming (home) 1 thought I should have died 
with discontent, and was horribly melancholy while they were installing 
me.'^ He found tears, distrust, resentment, cold silence, in place ol 
familiarity and tenderness. He married Miss Johnson from duty, but in 
secret, and on condition that she should" only be his wife in name. She 
was twelve years dying; Swift went away to England as often as he could. 
His house was a hell to him ; it is thought that some secret cause had 
influenced his loves and his marriage. Delany, his biographer, having 
once found him talking with Archbishop King, saw the archbishop in 
tears, and Swift rushing by, with a countenance full of grief, and a 
distracted air. ' Sir,' said the prelate, ' you have just met the most 
unhappy man upon earth ; but on the subject of his wretchedness you 
must never ask a question.' Esther Johnson died. Swift's anguish, 
the spectres by wliich he was haunted, the horrors in which the re- 
membrance of the two women, slowly ruined and killed by his fault, 
plunged and bound him, nothing but his end can telL ' It is time for 
me to have done with the world . . , and so I would . . . and not 
die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.'^ Overwork and 
excess of emotions had made him ill from his youth : he was subject 
to giddiness ; he lost his hearing. He had long felt that reason was 
deserting him. One day he was observed ' gazing intently at the top 
of a lofty elm, the head of which had been blasted. Upon his friend's 
approach, he pointed to it, significantly adding, " I shall be like that 
tree, and die first at the top."'® His memory left him; he received 
the attentions of others with disgust, sometimes with rage. He lived 
alone, gloomy, unable to read. They say he passed a year without 
uttering a word, with a horror of the human face, walking ten hours 
a day, a maniac, then an idiot. A tumour came on one of his eyes, so 
that he continued a month without sleeping, and five men were needed to 
prevent his tearing out the eye with his nails. One of his last words 
was, ' I am mad.' When his will was opened, it was found that he left 
his whole fortune to build a madhouse. 

IL 

These passions and these miseries were necessary to inspire Gulliver's 
Travels and the Tale of a Tub. 

A strange and powerful form of mind, too, was necessary, as Eng 
lijh as his pride and his passions. Swift has the style of a surgeon and 
a judge, cold, grave, solid, unadorned, without vivacity or passion, 
manly and practical. He desired neither to please, nor to divert, nor 

1 Journal to Stella, 8th July, 1712. Miss Vanhomrigh died, however, u 
1 72 J. 

« Letter to Bohnghroke, DubUn, March 21, 1728, xvii. 276 
» Roscoe's Life of Stoift, i. 80. 



124 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

to carry people away, nor to touch ; he never hesitated, nor was re- 
dundant, nor was excited, nor made an effort. He expressed his 
tlioughts in a uniform tone, with exact, precise, often harsh terms, 
V'ith famiUar comparisons, levelling all within reach of his hand, even 
the loftiest things — especially the loftiest — with a brutal and always 
haughty coolness. He knows life as a banker knows accounts ; and his 
total once made up, he scorns or knocks down the babblers who dispute 
it in his presence. 

With the sum total he knows the items. He not only familiarly and 
vigorously seized on every object, but he also decomposed it, and kept 
an inventory of its details. His imagination was as minute as it was 
energetic. He could give you an indictment of dry facts on every 
event and object, so connected and natural as to deceive one. Gulliver''s 
Travels read like a log- book. Isaac BickerstafF's predictions were taken 
literally by the inquisition in Portugal. His account of M. du Baudrier 
seems an authentic translation. He gives to an extravagant romance 
the air of a genuine history. By this detailed and solid science he 
imports into literature the positive spirit of men of business and ex- 
perience. Nothing could be more vigorous, narrow, unhappy, for 
nothing could be more destructive. No greatness, false or true, can 
stand before him ; whatsoever he fathoms and takes in hand loses at 
once its prestige and value. Whilst he decomposes he displays the 
real ugliness, and removes the fictitious beauty of objects. Whilst he 
brings them to the level of common things, he suppresses their real 
beauty, and gives them a fictitious ugliness. He presents all their 
gross features, and nothing but their gross features. Look with him 
into the physical details of science, religion, state, and with him reduce 
science, religion, state, to the low standing of every-day events ; with 
him you will see here a Bedlam of shrivelled up dreamers, narrow and 
chimerical brains, busy in contradicting, heaping up hollow phrases in 
mouldy books, inventing conjectures, and crying them up for the truth ; 
there, a band of enthusiasts, mumbling phrases w^hich tliey do not 
understand, adoring figures of rhetoric as mysteries, attaching holiness 
or impiety to lawn -sleeves or postures, spending in persecutions or 
genuflexions the surplus of sheepish or ferocious folly with which an 
evil fate has crammed their brains ; there, again, flocks of idiots pour- 
ing out their blood and treasure for the whims or plots of a carriage- 
drawn aristocrat, out of respect for the carriage which they themselves 
have given him. What part of human nature or existence can continue 
great and beautiful, before a mind which, penetrating all details, per- 
ceives men eating, sleeping, dressing, in all dull and mean actions, 
degrading everything to the level of vulgar events, trivial circumstances 
of dress and cookery ? It is not enough for the positive mind to see 
the springs, pulleys, lamps, and whatever there is objectionable in the 
operu at which he is present ; he makes it more objectionable by calling 
k a show. It is tot enough not to ignore anything ; we must also 



(JIIAP v.] SWIFT. 125 

refuse to admire. He treats things like domestic utensils ; after reck- 
oning up their materials, lie gives them a vile name. Nature for him 
is but a caldron, and he knows the proportion and number of the 
ingredients cooking in it. In this power and this weakness you see 
beforehand the misanthropy and the talent of Swift. 

There are, indeed, but two modes of agreeing with the world: 
mediocrity of mind and superiority of intelligence — the one for the 
public and the fools, the other for artists and philosophers: the one 
consists in seeing nothing, the other in seeing all. You will respect 
the respectable, if }ou only see the surface — if you take them as they 
are, if you let yourself be duped by the fine show which they never 
fail to present. You will revere the gold-embroidered garments in 
which your masters bedizen themselves, and you will never dream of 
examining the stains hidden under the embroidery. You will be moved 
by the big words which they pronounce in a sublime voice, and you 
will never see in their pockets the hereditary phrase-book from which 
they have taken them. You will punctiliously bring them your money 
and your services; the custom will seem to you just, and you will 
accept the goose-dogma, that a goose is bound to be roasted. But, on 
the other hand, you will tolerate and even love the world, if, penetrating 
to its nature, you take the trouble to explain or imitate its mechanism. 
You will be interested in passions by an artist's sympathy or a philoso- 
pher's comprehension ; you will find them natural whilst admitting 
their force, or you will find them necessary whilst computing their 
connexion ; you will cease to be indignant against the powers which 
produce fine spectacles, or will cease to be roused by the rebounds 
which the law of cause and effect had foretold. You will admire the 
world as a grand drama, or as an invincible development ; and you will 
be preserved by the imagination or by logic from slander or disgust. 
You will extract from religion the high truths which dogmas hide, and 
the generous instincts which superstition conceals. You will perceive 
in the state the infinite benefits which no tyranny abolishes, and the 
sociable inclinations which no wickedness uproots. You will distinguish 
in science the solid doctrines which discussion never shakes, the liberal 
notions which the shock of systems purifies and expands, the splendid 
promises which the course of the present opens up to the ambition ct 
the future. "VVe can thus escape hatred by the nullity or the greatness 
of the prospect, by the inability to discover contrasts, or by the power 
to discover the harmony of contrasts. Raised above the first, sunk 
beneath the last, seeing evil and disorder, deprived of goodness and 
order, precluded from love and calmness, resigned to indignation and 
bitterness. Swift found neither a cause to cherish nor a doctrine to 
establish ; ^ he employs the whole force of an excellently armed mind 

' In his TTiOuglits on Religion (viii. 73) he says : ' The want of belief is a 
dofect that oup-lit to be concealed, when it cannot be overoonie.' ' 1 look upon 



126 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

and an excellent!) tempered character in denying and destroying : all 
his works are pamphlets. 

III. 

At this time, and in his hands, the newspaper in England attained 
its proper character and its greatest force. Literature entered the 
sphere of politics. To understand what the one became, we miul 
understand what the other Avas : art depended upon political businesi, 
and the spirit of parties made the spirit of writers. 

In France a theory arises — eloquent, harmonious, and generous ; the 
young are enamoured of it, wear a cap and sing songs in its honour : 
at night, the citizens, whilst digesting their dinner, read it and delight 
in it ; some, hotheaded, accept it, and prove to themselves their force 
of mind by ridiculing the retrogrades. On the other hand, the estab- 
lished people, prudent and timid, are mistrustful: being well off, they 
find that everything is well, and demand that kings shall continue as 
they are. Such are the two parties in France, very old, as all know ; 
not very earnest, as all see. They must talk, be enthusiastic, reason 
on speculative opinions, glibly, about an hour a day, indulging but 
outwardly in this taste ; but these parties are so well levelled, that they 
are at bottom all the same: when we understand them rightly, we will 
find in France only two parties, the men of twenty and the men of forty. 
English parties, on the other hand, were always compact and living 
bodies, united by interests of money, rank, and conscience, receiving 
theories only as standards or as a balance, a sort of secondary States, 
which, like the old orders in Rome, legally endeavour to monopolise 
the government. So, the English constitution was never more than a 
transaction between distinct powers, constrained to tolerate each other, 
disposed to encroach on each other, occupied in treating with each 
other. Politics for them are a domestic interest, for the French an 
occupation of the mind ; Englishmen make them a business, the French 
a discussion. 

Thus their pamphlets, notably Swift's, seem to us only half literary. 
For an argument to be literary, it must not address itself to an interest 
or a faction, but to the pure mind: it must be based on universal 
truths, rest on absolute justice, be able to touch all human reasons j 
otherwise, being local, it is simply useful: nothing is beautiful but 
what is general. It must also be developed regularly by analysis, 
and with exact divisions ; its distribution must give a picture of pure 
reason; the order of ideas must be inviolable; every mind must be 
able to draw thence with ease a complete conviction ; its method, its 
principles, must be sensible throughout, and at all times. The desire 
to prove well must be added to the art of proving well ; the writer 

myself, in tlie capacity of a clergyman, to be one appointed by Providence f oi 
rlefending a post assigned me, and for gaining over as many enemies as 1 can 



CHAP. V.j SWIFT. 1-27 

niufft Jinncunee Ws proof, repeat it, present it nnrler all its faces, 

desire to penetrate minds, pursue them persistently in all their retreats,- 
but he must treat his hearers like men worthy of comprehending 
and applying general truths; his discourse must be lively, noble, 
polished, and eager, so as to suit such subjects and such minds. It. 
is thus that ancient prose and French prose are eloquent, and that 
political dissertations or religious controversies have endured as models 
cf art. 

This good taste and philosophy are wanting in the positive mind ; 
it wishes to attain, not eternal beauty, but present success. Swift does 
not address men in general, but certain men. He does not speak to 
reason ers, but to a party ; he does not care to teach a truth, but to 
make an impression ; his aim is not to enlighten that isolated part of 
man, called his mind, but to move the mass of feelings and prejudices 
which constitute the actual man. Whilst he writes, his public is before 
his eyes : fat squires, puffed out with port wine and beef, accustomed 
at the end of their meals to bawl loyally for church and king ; gentle- 
men farmers, bitter against London luxury and the new importance of 
merchants ; ecclesiastics bred on pedantic sermons, and old-established 
hatred of dissenters and papists. These people have not mind enough 
to pursue a fine deduction or understand an abstract principle. One 
must calculate the facts they know, the ideas they have received, 
the interests that move them, and recall only these facts, reason only 
from these ideas, set in motion only these interests. It is thus Switt 
speaks, without development, without logical hits, without rhetorical 
effects, but with extraordinary force and success, in phrases whose 
justice his contemporaries inwardly felt, and which they accepted at 
once, because they simply told them, in a clear form and openly, what 
they murmured obscurely and to themselves. Such was the power of 
the Examiner^ which in one year transformed the opinion of three 
kingdoms ; and particularly of Drapier's Letters, which made a govern- 
ment draw back. 

Small change was lacking in Ireland, and the English ministers had 
gi\ en William Wood a patent to coin one hundred and eight thousand 
pounds of copper money. A commission, of which Newton was a 
member, verified the pieces made, found them good, and several com- 
petent judges still think that the measure was loyal and serviceable 
to the land. Swift roused the people against it, speaking to them in 
an intelligible style, and triumphed over the common sense and the 
Btate.^ 

' Brethren, friends, countrymen, and fellow-subjects, what T intend now to say 
to you is, next to your duty to God and the care of your salvation, of the greatest 

* Wliatever has been said, I do not think that he wrote them in bad faith. It 
was possible, for Swift more than for another, to believe in a minis teiial job 
He seems to me to have been at bottom an honest man. 



128 THK CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

concern to you and yonr children : your bread and clothing, and e"\ery commo« 
necessary of life depend upon it. Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you, as 
men, as Christians, as parents, and as lovers of your country +0 read tliis paper 
with the utmost attention, or get it read to you by others ; which that you may 
do at the less expence, I have ordered the printer to sell it at the lowest rate. ' * 

You see popular distrust spring up at a glance ; this is the style which 
reaches workmen and peasants; this simplicity, these details, are neces- 
sary to penetrate their belief. The author is like a draper, and they 
trust only men of their own condition. Swift goes on to accuse Wood, 
declaring that his copper pieces are not worth one.-eighth of theii 
nominal value. There is no trace of proofs : no proofs are required to 
convince the people ; it is enough to repeat the same accusation again 
and again, to abound in intelligible examples, to strike eye and ear. 
The imagination once gained, they will go on shouting, convincing 
themselves by their own cries, intractably. Swift says to his adver- 
saries : 

* Your paragraph relates further that Sir Isaac ITewton reported an assay takeo 
at the Tower of Wood's metal ; by which it appears that Wood had in all respects 
performed his contract. His contract ! With whom ? Was it with the Parlia- 
ment or people of Ireland ? Are not they to be the purchasers ? But they detest^ 
abhor, and reject it as corrupt, fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash.' ^ 

And a little farther on : 

' His first proposal is, that he will be content to coin no more (than forty 
thousand pounds), unless the exigencies of the trade require it, although his patent 
empowers him to coin a far greater quantity. ... To which if I were to answei-,, 
it should be thus : let Mr. Wood and his crew of founders and tinkers coin on, till 
there is not an old kettle left in the kingdom ; let them coin old leather, tobacco- 
pipe clay, or the dirt in the street, and call their trumpery by what name they 
please, from a guinea to a farthing ; we are not under any concern to know how 
he and his tribe of accomplices think fit to employ themselves. But I hope, and 
trust, that we are all, to a man, fully determined to have nothing to do with him 
or his ware.** 

Swift gets angry and does not answer. In fact, this is the best way to 
answer; to move such hearers you must move their blood and their 
nerves; then shopkeepers and ftirmers will turn up their sleeves, 
double their fists ; and the good arguments of their opponents will 
only increase their desire to knock them down. 

Now see how a mass of examples makes a gratuitous assertion 
probable : 

* Your Newsletter says that an assay was made of the coin. How impudent 
and insupportable is this ! Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two halfpence oi 
good metal, sends them to the Tower, and they are approved ; and these mrst 
answer all that he has already coined, or shall coin for the future. It is true, 
indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a pattern of stuff ; I cut it 



* Drapier's Letters, vii. ; Letter 1, 97. ^ Ibid. vii. ; Letter 2, 114. 

« Ihid. vii. ; Letter 2, 115. 



CHAP, v.] SWIFT. V29 

fairly off, and if he likes it, he comes or sends and compares the pattern wiiK th« 
wrliole piece, and probably we come to a bargain. But if I were to buy a hundred 
sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single wether, fat and well fleeced, by 
way of pattern, and expect the same price round for the whole hundred, without 
oulferiiig me to see them before he was paid, or giving me good security to restore 
my money for those that were lean, or shorn, or scabby, I would be none o<^ his 
customer. I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore 
carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he showed as a pattern to encouragt 
purchasers ; and this is directly the case in point with Mr. "Wood's assay. ' * 

A burst of laughter follows ; butchers and bricklayers were gained 
over. To finish, Swift showed them a practical expedient, suited to 
their understanding and their condition : 

* The common soldier, when he goes to the market or ale house, will offer hia 
money ; and if it be refused, perhaps he will sAvagger and hector, and threaten to 
beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad 
half-pence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other 
tradesman, has no more to do than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if 
it is to be paid in Wood's money ; for example, twenty-pence of that money for a 
quart of ale, and so in all things else, and never part with his goods till he gets 
the money. ' * 

Public clamour overcame the English Government ; they withdrcAv the 
money and paid Wood a large indemnity. Such is the merit of SwilVs 
arguments ; good tools, trenchant and handy, neither elegant nor bright, 
but whose value is proved by their effect. 

The whole beauty of these pamphlets is in their tone. They have 
neither the generous fire of Pascal, nor the bewildering gaiety of 
Beaumarchais, nor the chiselled delicacy of Paul Louis Courier, but an 
overwhelming air of superiority and a bitter and terrible rancour. Vast 
passion and pride, like the positive Drapier's mind just now described, 
have given all the blows their force. You should read his Public Spirit 
of the WhigSj against Steele. Page by page Steele is torn to pieces 
with a calmness and scorn never equalled. Swift approaches regularly, 
leaving no part unwounded, heaping wound on wound, every blow 
sure, knowing beforehand their reach and depth. Poor Steele, a vain, 
thoughtless fellow, is in his hands like Gulliver amongst the giants ; 
it is a pity to see a contest so unequal ; and this contest is pitiless. 
Swift crushes him carefully and easily, like an obnoxious animal 
The unfortunate man, an old officer and semi-literary man, had made 
Bwkward use of constitutional words : 

* Upon this rock the author ... is perpetually splitting, as often as ha 
ventures out beyond the narrow boimds of his literature. He has a confused 
remembrance of words since he left the university, but has lost half their mean- 
ing, and puts them together Avith no regard, except to their cadence ; as I 

' Drapier's Letters, vii. ; Letter 2, 114. ' Md. vii. ; Letter i, 101, 



130 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

remember, a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman's clostl;, some sidelong, others 
upside down, the better to adjust them to the pannels.' * 

When he judges he is worse than when he proves ; witness his Short 
Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton. He pierces him with the 
formulas of official politeness ; only an Englishman is capable of such 
phlegm and such haughtiness : 

* I have had tho honour of much conversation with his lordship, and am 
thoroughly convinced how indifferent he is to applause, and how insensible of 
reproach. ... He is without the sense of shame, or glory, as some men are 
without the sense of smelling ; and therefore, a good name to him is no more than 
a precious ointment would be to these. Whoever, for the sake of others, were to 
describe the nature of a sei'pent, a wolf, a crocodile or a fox, must be understood 
to do it without any personal love or hatred for the animals themselves. In the 
same manner his excellency is one whom 1 neither personally love nor hate. I see 
him at court, at his own house, and sometimes at mine, for I have the honour of 
his visits ; and when these papers are public, it is odds but he will tell me, as he 
once did upon a like occasion, " that he is damnably mauled," and then, with the 
easiest transition in the world, ask about the weather, or time of the day ; so that 
I enter on the work with more cheerfulness, because I am sure neither to make 
him angry, nor any way hurt his reputation ; a pitch of happiness and security 
to which his excellency has arrived, and which no philosopher before him could 
reach. Thomas, Earl of "Wharton, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, by the force of a 
wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climacteric without any 
visible effects of old age, either on his body or his mind ; and in spite of a con- 
tinual prostitution to those vices which usually wear out both. . . . Whether he 
walks or whistles, or swears, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in 
each, beyond a templar of three years standing. With the same grace, and in the 
game style, he will rattle his coachman in the midst of the street, where he ii 
governor of the kingdom ; and all this is without consequence, because it is hig 
character, and what everybody expects. . . . Tlie ends he has gained by lying, 
appear to be more owing to the frequency, than the art of them ; his lies being 
sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day, and always in a week. . . . He 
•swears solemnly he loves and will serve you ; and your back is no sooner turned, 
but he tells those about him, you are a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to 
prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel 
door. He is a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in religion ; but he chooses 
at present to whore with a papist. In his commerce with mankind, his genera.^ 
rule is, to endeavour to impose on their understandings, for which he has but one 
receipt, a composition of lies and oaths. ... He bears the gallantries of his lady 
with the indifference of a stoick ; and thinks them well recompensed, by a return 
of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father. . . . He 
was never yet known to refuse or keep a promise, as 1 remember he told a lady, 
but vith an exception to the promise he then made (which was to get her a 
pension), yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But here I 
desiie to distinguish between a promise and a bargain ; for he will be sure to keep 



' Tfie PvMic Spirit of the Whigs, iv. 405. See also in the Examiner th« 
pamphlet against Marlborough under the name of Crassus, and the comparison 
Jjetweeii Koman generosity and English meanness. 



tJHAP. v.] SWIFT. 131 

the latter, when he has the fairest offer. . . . But here I mnst -lesire the reafler'i 
paidon, if I cannot digest the following facts in so good a manner as I intended ; 
because it is thought expedient, for some reasons, that the world shonld he in- 
formed of his excellency's merits as soon as possible. ... As they are, they may 
serve for hints to any person who may hereafter have a mind to write memoirs <rf 
hlB excellency's life.' ^ 

Throughout this piece Swift^s voice has remained calm ; not a muscl<> 
of his face has moved ; no smile, flash of the eye, gesture ; he speaks 
like a statue ; but his anger grows by constraint, and bums the more 
that it shines the less 

This is why his ordinary style is grave irony. It is the weapon of 
pride, meditation, and force. The man who employs it is self-contained 
in the height of the storm within ; he is too proud to make a show of 
his passion ; he does not take the public into his confidence ; he elects 
to be solitary in his soul ; he would be ashamed to surrender ; he 
means and knows how to keep absolute possession of himself. Thus 
collected, he understands better and suffers more ; no fit of passion 
relieves his wrath or draws away his attention ; he feels all the points 
and penetrates to the depths of the opinion which he detests ; he 
multiplies his pain and his knowledge, and spares himself neither 
wound nor reflection. We must see Swift in this attitude, impassible 
in appearance, but with stiffening muscles, a heart scorched with hatred, 
writing with a terrible smile such pamphlets as this : 

* It may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent, to argue against t!ie abolishing 

of Christianity, at a juncture, when all parties appear so unanimously determined 
upon the point. . . . However, I know not how, whether from the affectation of 
singularity, or the perverseness of human nature, but so it unhappily falls out, that 
I cannot be entirely of this opinion. Nay, though I were sure an order were 
issued for my immediate prosecution by the attorney-general, I should still confess, 
that in the present posture of our affairs, at home or abroad, I do not yet see the 
absolute necessity of extirpating the Christian religion from among us. This per- 
haps may appear too great a paradox, even for our wise and paradoxical age to 
•ndure ; therefore I shall handle it with all tenderness, and with the utmost defer- 
ence to that great and profound majority, which is of another sentiment. ... I 
!ioi)e no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, 
»uch as used, in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages), to 
have an influence upon men's belief and actions ; to offer at the restoring of that, 
would indeed be a wild project ; it would be to dig up foundations ; to destroy at 
one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the kingdom. . . . Every candid 
reader will easily unders^^and my discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal 
Christianity ; the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general 
consent, as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power. ' * 



> Swift's "Works, iv. 148. 

* An Argument to prove that the Abolishing of Christianity might he attended 
with some InconvemencSf viii. 184. The Whigs were herein attacked as the frienda 

of freethinkers, 



132 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Let us then examine the advantages which this abolition of the title 
and name of Christian might have : 

* It is likewise urged, that there are, by computation, in this kingdom above leo 
thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those of my lords the bishops, would 
Buffice to maintain at least two hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and 
fn-ethinking, enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and prejttdi<e% 
who might be an ornament to the court and town. ' ^ 

* It is likewise proposed as a great advantage to the public that if we once di«» 
card the system of the gospel, all religion Avill of course be bani.-^hed for ever ; and 
consequently along with it, those grievous prejudices of education, which undei 
the names of virtue, conscience, honour, justice, and the like, are so apt to disturb 
the peace of human minds, and the notions whereof are so hard to be eradicated, 
by right reason, or free-thinking. ' ^ 

riien he concludes by doubling the insult : 

* I am very sensible how much the gentk^men of wit and pleasure are apt t« 
jiurmur, and be shocked at the sight of so many daggled-tail parsons, who hap- 
pen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes ; but at the same time, those wise 
reformers do not consider, what an advantage and felicity it is, for great wits to be 
always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and im- 
prove their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on them- 
selves ; especially when all this may be done, without the least imaginable danger 
to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature : if Chris- 
tianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and 
the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject, so calculated in all 
points whereon to display their abilities? "What wonderful productions of wit 
should we be deprived of, from those, whose genius, by continual practice, has been 
wholly turned upon raillery and invectives, against religion, and would, therefore, 
never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject? We are 
daily complaiiring of the great decline of wit among us, and woidd we take awaj 
the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left ? ' ^ 

* I do very much apprehend, that in six months time after the act is passed for 
the extirpation of the gospel, the Bank and East India stock may fall at least on« 
per cent. And since that is fifty more, than ever the wisdom of our age thought 
fit to venture, for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should Iw 
at so great a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it. ' * 

Swift is only a combatant, I admit ; but when we see at a glance thii 
common sense and this pride, this empire over the passions cf others, 
and this empire over himself, this force of hatred, and this employmeat 
of hatred, we judge that there have rarely been such combatants. Hfi 
is a pamphleteer as Hannibal was a coudoUiere, 

IV. 

On the night after the battle we usually unbend ; we sport, we 
make fun, we talk in prose and verse ; but this night is a continuation 
of the day, and the mind which leaves its trace in matters of busiuesa 
leaves its trace in amusements. 

' An Argument, etc., 188. ^ jf^^^^ 192. a ma. 196. 

i " ■ ' oAo ; final words of the Argument. 



ClUr. -S .] SWIFT. 133 

What is gayer than Voltaire's soirees f He rails ; but do you find 
any murderous intention in his railleries? He gets angry; but do you 
perceive a malignant or evil character in his passions ? In him all is 
amiable. In an instant, through the necessity of action, he strikes, 
caresses, changes a hundred times his tone, his face, with abrupt move- 
ments, impetuous sallies, sometimes as a child, always as a man of the 
world, of taste and conversation. He wishes to entertain me; he con- 
ducts me at once through a thousand ideas, without effort, to amuse 
himself, to amuse me. The agreeable host who desires to please and 
who knows how to please, who only dreads ennui, who does not dis- 
trust me, who is not constrained, who is always himself, who sparkles 
with ideas, naturalness, sportiveness ? If I was with him, and he 
raUied me, I should not be angry ; 1 should fall into his tone, I should 
laugh at myself, I should feel ihat he only wished to pass an agreeable 
hour, that he did not mean it, that he treated me as an equal and a 
guest, that he broke out into pleasantries as a Avinter fire into sparks, 
and that he was none the less pleasant, wholesome, amusing. 

Heaven grant that Swift may never jest at my expense. The positive 
mind is too solid and too dry to be gay and amiable. When he takes 
to ridicule, he does not sport with it superficially, he studies it ; he 
goes into it gravely, masters it, knows all its subdivisions and its proofs. 
This deep knowledge can only produce a withering pleasantry. Swift's, 
at bottom, is but a reductio ad absurdum^ altogether scientific. For 
instance, 7'he Art of Political Lying^ is a didactic treatise, whose plan 
might serve for a model. ' In the first chapter of this excellent treatise 
he (the author) reasons philosophically concerning the nature of the 
soul of man, and those qualities which render it susceptible of lies. He 
supposes the soul to be of the nature of a pleno-cylindrical speculum, or 
looking-glass. . . . The plain side represents objects just as they are ; 
and the cylindrical side, by the rule of catoptrics, must needs represent 
true objects false, and false objects true. In his second chapter he 
treats ai the nature of political lying; in the third of the lawfulness of 
political lying. The fourth chapter is wholly employed in this ques- 
tion, " Whether the right of coinage of political lies be wholly in the 
government." ' Again, nothing could be stranger, more worthy of an 
archiBological society, than the argument in which he convicts a 
humorous piece of Pope's^ as an insidious pamphlet against the religion- 
of the state. \{\s Art of Sinking in Poetry^ has all the appearance of 
good rhetoric ; the piinciples are laid down, the divisions justified ; the 
examples chosen with extraordinary precision and method ; it is perfect 
reason employed in the service of folly. 

His passions, like his mind, were too strong. If he wishes to scratch, 
he tears ; hig pleasantry is gloomy ; by way of a joke, he drags hia 

' Arbuthni^t is said to have written the whole or at least part of it, — Tr. 
^ IJie Rape of the Lock. ^ Pope, Arbuthno^, and Swift wrote it tngcthei 



1 34 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ITl 

reader through all the disgusting details of sickness and death. An 
old shoemaker, Partridge, had turned astrologer ; Swift, imperturbable 
cool, assumes an astrologer's title, writes maxims on the duties of th« 
profession, and to inspire confidence, begins to predict : 

* My first prediction is but a trifle ; yet I will mention it, to show how ignorant 
those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns : it relates to Part- 
ridge the almanack-maker ; I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own 
rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at 
night, of a raging fever ; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle hia 
affairs in time.' ^ 

The 29th of March being past, he relates how the undertaker came to 
hang Partridge's rooms * in close mourning;' then Ned, the sexton, 
asking 'whether the grave is to be plain or bricked ;' then Mr. White, 
the carpenter, to screw down the coffin ; then the stone-cutter with his 
monument. Lastly, a successor comes and sets up in the neighbour- 
hood, saying in his printed directions, ' that he lives in the house of the 
late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner in leather, 
physic, and astrology.' ^ You may tell beforehand the protestations of 
poor Partridge. Swift in his reply proves that he is dead, and is 
astonished at his hard words : 

* To call a man a fool and villain, an impudent fellow, only for differing from 
him in a point merely speculative, is, in my humble opinion, a very improper 
style for a person of hia education. ... I will appeal to Mr. Partridge himself, 
whether it be probable I could have been so indiscreet, to begin my predictions, 
with the only falsehood that ever was pretended to be in them ? and this in an 
affair at home.'* 

Mr. Partridge is mistaken, or deceives the public, or would cheat his 
heirs. This gloomy pleasantry becomes elsewhere still more gloomy. 
Swift pretends that his enemy, the bookseller Curll, has just been 
poisoned, and relates his agony. A house-surgeon of a hospital would 
not write a more repulsive diary more coldly. The details, worked out 
with the completeness of a Hogarth, are admirably minute, but disgust- 
ing. We laugh, or rather we grin, as before the vagaries of a madman 
in an asylum. Swift in his gaiety is always tragical ; nothing unbends 
bin ; even when he serves, he pains you. In his Journal to Stella there 
is a sort of imperious austerity ; his compliments are those of a master 
to a child. The charm and happiness of a young girl of sixteen cannot 
soften him. She has just married, and he tells her that love is 
a ' ridiculous passion, which has no being but in playbooks and 
romances ; ' then he adds, with perfect brutality : 

' Predictions for the Tear 1708 hy Isaac BicJcerstaff, ix. 150. . 

* These quotations are taken from a humorous pamphlet, Squire Bi6ier 
rtaff Detected, written by Dr. Yalden. See Swift's Works, ix. 170.- Tr 

' A Vindication ^f Isaac Bickerstaff, ix. 180. 



C?HAP. v.] S\\^1FT 135 

* I nerer yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her sex ; . . . your sex 
employ more thought, memory, and application to be fools than would serve t« 
make them wise and useful. . . . When I reflect on this, I cannot conceive you to 
be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey ; wh« 
has more diverting tricks than any of you, is an animal less mischievous and ex- 
pensive, might in time be a tolerable critic in velvet and brocade, and, for aught J 
know, would equally become them.' ^ 

Will poetry calm such a mind ? Here, as elsewhere, he is most 
niifortunate. He is excluded from great transports of imagination, as well 
as from the lively digressions of conversation. He can attain neither the 
sublime nor the agreeable ; he has neither the artist's rapture, nor the 
entertainmertt of the man of the world. Two similar sounds at the end 
of two equal lines have always consoled the greatest troubles : the old 
muse, after three thousand years, is a young and divine nurse ; and 
her song lulls the sickly natures whom she still visits, like the young, 
flourishing races amongst whom she has appeared. The involuntary 
music, in which thought wraps itself, hides ugliness and unveils nature. 
Feverish man, after the labours of the evening and the anguish of the 
night, sees at morning the beaming whiteness of the opening heaven ; 
he gets rid of himself, and the joy of nature from all sides enters with 
oblivion into his heart. If misery pursues him, the poetic afflatus, un- 
able to wipe it out, transforms it ; it becomes ennobled, he loves it, and 
thenceforth he bears it ; for the only thing to which he cannot resign 
himself is littleness. NfiU^er Faust nor Manfred have exhausted human 
grief; they drank from the cruel cup a generous wine, they did not 
reach the dregs. They enjoyed themselves and nature ; they tasted 
the greatness which was in them, and the beauty of creation; they 
pressed with their bruised hands all the thorns with which necessity 
has made our way thorny, but they saw them blossom with roses, fos- 
tered by the purest of their noble blood. There is nothing of the sort 
in Swift : what is wanting most in his verses is poetry. The positive 
mind can neither love nor understand it ; it sees therein only a machine 
or a fashion, and employs it only for vanity and conventionality. When 
in his youth he attempted Pindaric odes, he failed lamentably. I can- 
not remember a line of his which indicates a genuine sentiment of 
nature : he saw in the forests only logs of wood, and in the fields only 
sacks of corn. He employed mythology, as we put on a wig, ill-timed^ 
wearily and scornfully. His best piece, Cadenus and Vanessa,^ is a 
poor, threadbare allegory. To praise Vanessa, he supposes that the 
nymphs and shepherds pleaded before Venus, the first against men, the 
second against women ; and that Venus, wishing to end the debates, 
made in Vanessa a model of perfection. What can such a conception 
furnish but flat apostrophes and pedantic comparisons ? Sv> " 

' Letter to a very young Lady on her Marriage, ix. 420. 
* Cadenus and Vanessa, xiv. 441. 



136 'I'i^^ OLaSSIC xVGE. [BOOK 111 

Boniewhere gives a recipe for an epic poem, is here the first to make 
use of it. And even his rude prosaic freaks tear tliis Greek frippery 
at every turn. He puts a legal procedure into lieaven ; he makes 
Venus use all kinds of technical terms. He introduces witnessts, 

* questions on the fact, bill with costs dismiss'd.' They talk so loud 
that the goddess fears to lose her influence, to be driven from Olympian 

to be 

* Shut out from heaven and earth, 
Fly to the sea, my place of birth : 
There live with daggled mermaids pent, 
And keep on fish perpetual Lent.' 

When elsewhere he relates the touching history of Baucis and Philemon^^ 
he degrades it by a travesty. He does not love the ancient nobleuesi 
and beauty ; the two gods become in his hands begging friars, Phile- 
mon and Baucis Kentish peasants. For a recompense, their hous« 
becomes a church, and Philemon a parson : 

* His talk was now of tithes and dues ; 

He smok'd his pipe and read the news. . • • 

Against dissenters would repine, 

And stood iip firm for "right divine.*** 

Wit luxuriates, incisive, in little compact verses, vigorously coined, of 
extreme conciseness, facility, precision ; but compared to La Fontaine, 
it is wine turned vinegar. Even when he comes to the charming 
Vanessa, his vein is still the same: to praise l^^childhood, he puts her 
Bame first on the list, as a little model girl, just like a schoolmaster: 

* And all their conduct would be tried 
By her, as an unerring guide : 
Offending daughters oft would hear 
Vanessa's praise rung in their ear : 
Miss Betty, when she does a fault, 
Lets fall lier knife, or spills the salt, 
Will thus be by her mother chid : 

** 'Tis what Vanessa never did ! " ' * 

A strange way of admiring Vanessa, and of proving his admiration for 
her. He calls her a nymph, and treats her like a school-girl ! Cadeniii 

* now could praise, esteem, approve, but understood not what was love ! ' 
Nothing could be truer, and Stella felt it, like others. The verses 
which he writes every year on her birthday, are a pedagogue's censures 
and praises ; if he gives her any good marks, it is with restrictions. 
Once he inflicts on her a little sermon on want of patience ; again, by 
way of compliment, he concocts this delicate warning : 

' Stella, this day is thirty-four 
(We shan't dispute a year or more). 
However, Stella, be not troubled. 
Although thy size and years are doubled 

• Baucis and Philemon, xiv 83. ' Cadenus and Vanessa, xiv. 448. 



CHAP, v.] swift; 137 

Since first I saw thee iit sixteen, 
The brightest vii-gin on the green ; 
So little is thy form declin'd. 
Made up so largely in thv mind,' 

Aiid he insists with exquisite taste : 

* 0, would it please the gods to split 
Thy beauty, size, and years and wit ! 
No age could furnish out a pair 
Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair.* ^ 

Decidedly this roan is an artisan, strong of arm, terrible at his work 
and in a fray, but narrow of soul, treating a woman as if she were a 
beam. Rhyme and rhythm are only business-like tools, which have 
served him to press and launch his thought ; he has put nothing but 
prose into them ; poetry was too fine to be grasped by those coarse 
hands. 

But in prosaic subjects, what truth and force I How this masculine 
nakedness crushes the artificial poetry of Addison and Pope ! There 
are no epithets ; he leaves his thought as he conceived it, valuing it for 
and by itself, needing neither ornaments, nor preparation, nor exten- 
sion ; above the tricks of the profession, scholastic conventionalisms, the 
vanity of the rhymester, the difficulties of the art ; master of his subject 
and of himself. This simplicity and naturalness astonish us in verse. 
Here, as elsewhere, his originality is entire, and his genius creative ; he 
surpasses his classical and timid age ; he tyrannises over form, breaks 
it, dare utter anything, spares himself no strong word. Acknowledge 
the greatness of this invention and audacity ; he alone is a superior, 
who finds everything and copies nothing. What a biting comicality in 
the Grand Question Debated! He has to represent the entrance of a 
captain into a castle, his airs, his insolence, his folly, and the admiration 
caused by these qualities 1 The lady serves him first ; the servants stare 
»t him : 

* The parsons for envy are ready to hurst ; 
The servants amazVl are scarce ever able 
To keep off their eyes, as they wait at the table ; 
And Molly and I have thrust in our nose 
To peep at the captain in all his fine clothes. 
Dear madam, be sure he's a fine spoken man, 
Do but hear on the clergy how glib his tongue ran ; 
** And madam," says he, "if such dinners you give, 
You'll ne'er want for parsons as long as you IJTe. 
I ne'er knew a parson without a good nose ; 
But the devil's as welcome wherever he goes ; 
G — d — me ! they bid us reform and repent, 
But, z — s ! by their looks they never keep Lemt : 

' Verses on Stella's Birthday, March 13, 1718-19, xis-. 460. 



13g THE CLASSIC AGE. L^OOK lU 

Mister curate, for all your grave looks, I'm afraid 

You cast a sheep's eye on her ladyship's maid : 

I wish she would lend you her pretty white hand 

In mending your cassock, and smoothing your band * 

(For the dean was so shabby, and look'd like a ninny, 

That the captain suppos'd he was curate to Jinny). 

•* Whenever you see a cassock and gown, 

A hundred to one but it covers a clown. 

Observe how a parson comes into a room, 

G — d — me, he hobbles as bad as my groom ; 

A scholard, when just from his college broke looae, 

Can hardly tell how to cry bo to a goose ; 

Your Novcds, and Bluturks, and Omurs,^ and stuff, 

By G — , they don't signify this pinch of snuff ; 

To give a young gentleman right education, 

The army's the only good school in the nation." ** 

Thia has been seen^ and herein lies the beauty of Swift's verses : they 
are personal ; they are not developed themes, but impressions felt and 
observations collected. Read The Journal of a Modem Lad?/, Th« 
Furniture of a Lady's Mind^ and other pieces by the dozen : they are 
dialogues transcribed or opinions put on paper after quitting a drawing- 
room. The Progress of Marriage represents a dean of fifty-two married 
to a young worldly coquette ; do you not see in this title alone all the 
fears of the bachelor of St. Patrick's ? What diary is more familiar and 
more pungent than his verses on his own death ? 

' ** He hardly breathes." ** The Dean is dead." 
Before the passing bell begun. 
The news through half the town has run ; 
** may we all for death prepare ! 
"Wliat has he left ? and who's his heir ? " 
•* I know no more than what the news is ; 
'Tis all bequeath'd to public uses." 
** To public uses ! there's a whim I 
"What had the public done for him? 
Mere envy, avarice, and pride : 
He gave it all — but first he died. 
And had the Dean in all the nation 
No worthy friend, no poor relation f 
So ready to do strangers good. 
Forgetting his own flesh and blood ! " . • » 
Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay 
A week, and Arbuthnot a day. . . . 
My female friends, whose tender hearts 
Have better learn 'd to act their parts. 
Receive the news in doleful dumps : 
The Dean is dead (pray what is tnimps I) 
Then, Lord, have mercy on his soul I 
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.) 

• Orids, Plutarchs, Homers. * The Grand Qiestion Debated, xv. 153, 



t)aAJ\ V.J swiF'i 139 

Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall. 
(I wish I knew what king to call.) 
Madam, your husband whi attend 
The funeral of so good a friend ■* 
No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight, 
And he's engaged to-morrow night ; 
My Lady Club will take it ill, 
If he should fail her at quadrille. 
He lov'd the Dean — (I lead a heart). 
But dearest friends, they say, must part. 
His time was come : he ran his race ; 
We hope he's in a better place.' ' 

Such is *.he inventory of human friendships. All poetry exalts th« 
mind, but this depresses it; instead of concealing reality, it unveils it; 
instead of creating illusions, it removes them. When he wishes to give 
a description of the morning^ he shows us the street-sweepers, the * watch- 
ful bailiffs,' and imitates the different street cries. When he wishes to 
paint the rain,* he describes ' filth of all hues and odours,' the * swelling 
kennels,' the * dead cats,' * turnip-tops,' * stinking sprats,' which * come 
timibling down the flood.' His long verses whirl all this filth in their 
eddies. We smile to see poetry degraded to this use ; we seem to be 
at a masquerade ; it is a queen travestied into a rough country girl. 
We stop, we look on, with the sort of pleasure we feel in drinking a 
bitter draught. Truth is always good to know, and in the splendid 
piece which artists show us, we need a manager to tell us the number 
of the hired applauders and of the supernumeraries. 

It would be well if he only drew up such a list I Numbers look 
ugly, but they only affect the mind ; other things, the oil of the lamps, 
the odours of the side scenes, all that we cannot name, remains to be 
told. I cannot do more than hint at the length to which Swift carries 
us ; but this I must do, for these extremes are the supreme effort of 
his despair and his genius : we must touch upon them in order to 
measure and know him. He drags poetry not only through the mud, 
but into the filth ; he rolls in it like a raging madman, he enthrones 
himself in it, and bespatters all passers-by. Compared with his, all 
foul words are decent and agreeable. In Aretin and Brantome, in La 
Fontaine and Voltaire, there is a suspicion of pleasure. With the first 
unchecked sensuality, with the others malicious gaiety, are excuses ; 
we are scandalised, not disgusted ; we do not like to see in a man a 
bull's fury or an ape's buffoonery ; but the bull is so eager and strong, 
llie ape so spirited and smart, that we end by looking on or being 
amused. Then, again, however coarse the pictures may be, they speak 
of the accompaniments of love ; Swift touches only upon the results of 
digestion, and that only with disgust and revenge ; he pours them out 



• On the Death of Dr. Swift, xiv. 331. ^ Swift's Wo.ka, xiv. 9a. 

3 A De'icription of a City Shoicer, xiv 94. 



iiO THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

with Korior and sneering at the wretches whom he cicsciibes. lie mus; 
not in this be compared to Rabelais: that good giant, that drunken 
doctor, rolls himself joyously about on his dunghill, thinking no evil ; 
the dunghill is warm, convenient, a fine place to philosophise and sleep 
off one's wine. Kaised to this enormity, and enjoyed with this heedless- 
ness, the bodily functions become poetical. When the casks are emptie(i 
down his throat, and the viands are gorged, we sympathise with so mucL 
bodily comfort; in the heavings of this colossal belly and the laiightei 
of this homeric mouth, we see, as through a mist, the relics of baccluinal 
religions, the fecundity, the monstrous joy of nature; these are the 
splendours and disorders of its first births. The cruel positive mind, 
on the contrary, clings only to vileness ; it will only see what is behind 
things ; armed with sorrow and boldness, it spares no ignoble detail, 
no obscene Avord. Swift enters the dressing-room,^ relates the disen- 
chantments of love,^ dishonours it by a medley of drugs and physic,' 
describes the cosmetics and a great many more things.* He takes his 
evening walk by solitary walls,* and in these pitiable pryings has his 
microscope ever in his hand. Judge what he sees and suffers ; this is 
his ideal beauty and his jesting conversation, and you may fancy that he 
has for philosophy, as for poetry and politics, execration and disgust. 

V. 

He wrote the Tale of a Tub at Sir AV. Temple's, amidst all kind (A 
reading, as an abstract of truth and science. Hence this tale is the 
satire of all science and all truth. 

Of rehgion first. He seems here to defend the Church of England ; 
but what church and what creed are not involved in his attack ? To 
enliven his subject, he profanes and reduces questions of dogma to a 
question of clothes. A father had three sons, Peter, Martin, and Jack ; 
he left each of them a coat at his death,® warning them to wear it clean 
and brush it often. The three brothers obeyed for some time, and 
travelled sensibly, slaying * a reasonable quantity of giants and dragons." 
Unfortunately, having come up to a town, they ado])ted its manners, 
fell in love Avith several fashionable ladies, the Duchess d'Argeut, 
Madame de Grands I'itres, and the Countess d'Orgueil,* and to gaiu 
their favours, began to live as gallants, taking snuff, swearing, rhyming, 
and contracting debts, keeping horses, fighting duels, whoring, killing 
bailiffs. A sect was established who 

* Held the universe to be a large suit of clothes, which inverts everything : 
that the earth is invested by the air ; the air is invested hy the stars, and the stars 

^ The Lady's Dressing-room. ' Sirephon and Cfdoe. 

' A Love Poem from a Physician, * The Progress of Beauty. 

* The Problem, and T]ie Examination of Certain Abuses. 

* Christian tmth. ^ Persecutions and contests of tlie primitive chnrch. 

* Covetousnes?. anibiHnn,and pride ; the three vices that the ancient fatliers 
liiveicjhed against. 



miAP. v.] SWIFT. 141 

are invested by the primnm mobile. . . . \Vliat is that which some call laud, bit 
a fine coat faced with green ? or the sea, but a waistcoat of water-tabby ' . . . You 
will find how curious journeyman Nature has been, to trim up the vegetable beaux : 
observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet 
of white sattin is worn by the birch. ... Is not religion a cloak ; honesty a pair 
of shoes worn out in the dirt ; self-love a surtout ; vanity a shirt ; and conscience 
a pair of breeches ; which, though a cover for lewdness as well as nastiness, is 
easily slipt down for the service of both ? ... If certain ermines and fura be place»i 
ill a certain position, we style them a judge ; and so an apt conjunction of lawn 
and black sattin, we entitle a bishop. ' ^ 

Others held also * that the soul was the outward, and the body the 
inward clothing. . . . This last they proved by Scripture, because in 
them we live, and move, and have our being.' Thus our three brothers, 
having only very simple clothes, were embarrassed. For instance, the 
fashion at this time Avas for shoulder- knots, and their father's will 
expressly forbade them to ' add to or diminish from their coats one 
thread :* 

* In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's Avill, 
read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. . . . After much thought, 
one of the brothers, who happened to be more book-learned than the other two, 
said, he had found an expedient. " It is true," said he, ** there is nothing in thia 
will, totidem verbis, making mention of Shoulder-Knot ; but I dare conjecture, we 
may find them inclusive, or toildem syllalis" This distinction was immediately 
approved by all ; and so they fell again to examine ; but their evil star had so 
directed the matter, that the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writ- 
ings. Upon which disappointment, he, who found the former evasion, took heart 
and said : '* Brothers, there are yet hopes, for though we cannot find them totidem 
verbis, nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage Ave shall make them out tertio modo, or 
totidem Uiteris." This discovery was also highly commended ; upon which they 
fell once more to the scrutiny, and picked out s, h, o, u, l, d, e, r ; when the same 
planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K was not to be 
found. Here was a weighty difficulty ; but the distinguishing brother ... now 
his hand was in, proved by a very good argument, that K was a modern illegiti- 
mate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor anywhere to be found in ancient 
manuscripts. . . . Upon this all farther difficulty vanished ; shoulder-knots were 
made clearly out to he jure paterno, and our three gentlemen swaggered with aa 
large and flaunting ones as the best. ' ' 

Other interpretations admitted gold lace, and a codicil authorised flame- 
coioui ed satin linings : 

* Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the corporation of fringe- 
makers, acted his part in a new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and accord- 
ing to the laudable custom gave rise to that fashion. Upon Avhich the brothers 
consulting their father's will, to their great astonishment found these Avords : 
** Item, I charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver-fringe 
npon or about their said coats," etc. . . . However, after some pause, the brother 
•o often mentioned for his erudition, wlio was well skilled in criticisms, had found 
in a certain author, which he said should be nameless, that the same word, Avhich 

> A Tale of a Tub, xi. sec. 2. 79 ' Ibid- 83. 



142 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOR 111. 

in the will is called fringe, does also signify a broomsticlc : and doubtless ought 
to have the same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of the brotheri 
disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly conceiA-ed, 
in propriety of speech, be reasonably applied to a broomstick ; but it was replied 
upon him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and allegorical sen.?o. 
However, he objected again, why their father should forbid them to wear a broom- 
stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and impertinent ; upon 
which, he was taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently of a mystery, which 
doubtless was very useful and significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried 
into, or nicely reasoned upon.' ^ 

In the end the scholastic brother grew weary of searching farther 
* evasions,' locked up the old will in a strong box, authorised by tradi- 
tion the fashions which became him, and having contrived to be left 
a legacy, styled himself My Lord Peter. His brothers, treated like 
servants, were discarded from his house ; they reopened the will of 
their father, and began to understand it. Martin the Anglican, to 
reduce his clothes to the primitive simplicity, brought off a large hand- 
ful of points, stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe, rid his coat of 
a huge quantity of gold-lace, but kept a few embroideries, which could 
not * be got away without damaging the cloth.' Jack the Puritan tore 
off all in his enthusiasm, and was found in tatters, moreover envious 
of Martin, and half mad. He then joined the ^^olists, or inspired 
admirers of the wind, who pretend that the spirit, or breath, or wind, 
is heavenly, and contains all knowledge : 

* First, it is generally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men up ; and 
gecondly they proved it by the following syllogism : words are but wind ; and 
learning is nothing but words ; ergo learning is nothing but wind. . . . This, when 
blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid 
under a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and 
others of equal weight, the wise delists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest 
act of a rational creature. ... At certain seasons of the year, you might behold 
the priests among them in vast number . . . linked together in a circular chain, 
with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour's breech, by which they 
blew each other to the shape and size of a tun ; and for that reason with great 
propriety of speech, did usually call their bodies their vessels. ' * 

After this explanation of theology, religious quarrels, and mystical 
inspirations, what is left, even of the Anglican Church ? She is a 
pensible, useful, political cloak, but what else ? Like a brush used with 
too strong a hand, the buffoonery has carried away the cloth as well 
as the stain. Swift has put out a fire, I allow ; but, like Gulliver at 
Lilliput, the people saved by him must hold their nose, to admire the 
right application of the liquid, and the energy of the engine that savei 
them. 

Religion drowned, he turns against science ; for the digressions 
with which he interrupts his story to confute and mock the modern 

» J Tale of a Tub, 88. « Ibid, sec. 9. 146. 



CHAP. V.\ . SWIFT. 1 4.,-^ 

fages are attached to his tale by the slenderest ties. The book opens 
with introductions, prefaces, dedications, and other appendices generally 
employed to swell books — violent caricatures heaped up against the 
vanity and prolixity of authors. He professes himself one of them, 
and announces their discoveries. Admirable discoveries 1 The first of 
their commentaries will be oq 

* Tom Thumb, whose author was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatist 
covitains the whole scheme of the Metempsychosis, deducing the progress of the 
soul through all her stages. WhUtington and his Cat is the work of that myste- 
rious rahbi Jehuda Hainiasi, containing a defence of the Gemara of the Jerusalem 
iMisna, and its just preference to that of Babylon, contrary to the vulgar opinion.'* 

He himself announces that he is going to publish * A Panegyrical E?say 
upon the Number Three ; a General History of Ears ; a Modest Defence 
of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages ; an Essay on the Art of 
Canting, philosophically, physically, and musically considered;' and he 
engages his readers to try by their solicitations to get from him these 
treatises, which will change the appearance of the world. Then, turn- 
ing against the philosophers and the critics, sifters of texts, he proves 
to them, according to their own fashion, that the ancients mentioned 
them. Can we find anywhere a more biting parody on forced inter- 
pretations : 

* The types are so apposite and the applications so necessary and natural, that 
it la not easy to conceive how any reader of a modern age or taste could overlook 
them. . . . For first ; Pausanias is of an opinion, that tlie perfection of writing 
correct was entirely owing to the institution of critics ; and, that he can possibly 
mean no other than the true critic is, I think, manifest from the following descrip- 
tion. He says, they were a race of men, who delighted to nibble at the super- 
fluities and excrescences of books ; which the learned at length ODserving, took 
warning, of their own accord, to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the 
sapless, and the overgrown branches from their works. But now, all this he cun- 
ningly shades under the following allegory : that the Nauplians in Argos learned 
the art of pruning their vines, by observing that when an ass had browsed upon 
one of them, it thrived the better, and bore fairer fruits. Herodotus, holding the 
rery same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer, and almost in terminis. He has been 
ao bold as to tax the true critics of ignorance and malice ; telling us openly, for I 
tliink nothing can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya, there were assea 
nith horns.'* 

Then follow a multitude of pitiless sarcasms. Swift has the genius of 
insult ; he is an inventor of irony, as Shakspeare of poetry ; and aa 
beseems an extreme force, he goes to extremes in his thought and 
art. He lashes reason after science, and leaves nothing of the whole 
human mind. With a medical seriousness he establishes that vapours 
are exhaled from the whole body, whicli, ' getting possession of the 
brain/ leave it healthy if they are not abundant, but excite it if the^ 

» A Tale of a Tub, Introduction, 72. 

' Ibid. sec. 3 ; A Digression conceriivtig Critics, 97. 



144 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

are ; tliat in the first case they make peaceful individuals, in the second 
great politicians, founders of religions, and deep philosophers, that is, 
fools, so that folly is the source of all human genius and all the institu- 
tions of the universe. This is why it is very wrong to keep men shut 
up in Bedlam, and a commission appointed to examine them would 
find in this academy imprisoned geniuses * which might produce ad- 
mirable instruments for the several offices in a state ecclesiastical, civU^ 
and military.' 

* Is any student tearing his straw in piece-meal, swearing and biasplieming-, 
biting his grate, foaming at the mouth? ... let the right worshipful commis- 
sioners of inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flanders 
among the rest. . . . You will find a third gravely taking the dimensions of his 
kennel ; a person of foresight and insight, though kept quite in the dark. . . . He 
walks duly in one pace . . . talks much of hard times and taxes and the whore 
of Babylon ; bars up the wooden window of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, 
dreams of fire. . . . Now what a figure would all those acquirements amount to if 
the owner were sent into the city among his brethren ! Now is it not amazing to 
think the society of "Warwick-lane should have no more concern for the recovery 
of so useful a member ? . . . I shall not descend so minutely, as to insist upon the 
vast number of beaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recover 
by such a reformation. . . . Even I myself, the author of these momentous trutlis, 
am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed, and exceedingly disposed to 
run away with his reason, which I have observed, from long exx)erience, to be a 
very light rider, and easily shaken off ; upon which account my friends will never 
trust me alone, without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this, or the 
lilce manner, for the universal benefit of mankind. ' * 

Wretched he who knows himself and mocks himself. What madman's 
laughter, and what a sob in this hoarse gaiety I What remains for him 
but to slaughter the remainder of human invention? Who does not 
see here the despair from which sprang the academy of Lagado? Is 
there not here a foretaste of madness in this intense meditation o/ 
absurdity? His mathematician, who, to teach geometry, makes his 
pupils swallow wafers on which he writes his theorems ; his moralist, 
who, to reconcile political parties, proposes to saw off the occiput and 
brain of each ' opposite party-man,' and ' to let the occiputs thus cut 
off be interchanged ;' his economist again, who tries ' to reduce human 
excrement to its original food.' Swift is akin to these, and is the most 
wretched of all, because he nourishes his mind, like them, on filth and 
folly, and he has more knowledge and disgust than they. 

It is sad to exhibit human folly, it is sadder to exhibit human per- 
versity : the heart is more a part of ourselves than reason : we sufFei 
less in seeing extravagance and folly than wickedness and baseness, 
and I find Swift more agreeable in his Tale of a Tub than in Gulliver. 

All his talent and all his passions are assembled in this book ; the 
positive mind has impressed upon it its form and force. There ii 



A Tale of a Tub ; A Digression concerning Madness, sec. 11, 161 



CHAP V;j SWIFT. 145 

nothing agreeable in tlie fiction or the style ; it is the journal of an 
ordinary man, a surgeon, then a captain, who describes coolly anci 
sensibly the events and objects which he has seen ; no feeling for the 
beautiful, no appearance of admiration or passion, no accent. Banka 
and Cook relate thus. Swift only seeks the natural, and he attains it. 
His art consists in taking an absurd supposition, and deducing seriously 
the effects to which it leads. It is the logical and technical mind of a 
mechanician, who, imagining the decrease or increase in a wheelwork, 
perceives the result of the changes, and writes down the record. His 
whole pleasure is in seeing these results clearly, and by a solid reason- 
ing. He marks the dimensions, and so forth, like a good engineer and 
& statistician, omitting no trivial and positive detail, explaining cookery, 
stabling, politics : in this he has no equal but De Foe. The loadstone 
machine which sustains the flying island, the entrance of Gulliver in 
Lilliput, and the inventory of his property, his arrival and maintenance 
among the Yahoos, carry us with them; no mind knew better the 
ordinary laws of nature and human hfe ; no mind shut itself up mor-i 
strictly in this knowledge ; none was ever more exact or more limited. 

But what a vehemence in this dryness ! How ridiculous our interest* 
and passions seem, degraded to the littleness of Lilliput, or compared 
to the vastness of Brobdignag! What is beauty, when the hand- 
somest body, seen with piercing eyes, seems horrible? What is oui 
power, when an insect, king of an ant-hill, can be called, like our 
princes, ' sublime majesty, delight and terror of the universe?' What 
is our homage worth, when a pigmy * is taller, by almost the breadth 
of a nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe 
into his beholders?' Three-fourths of our sentiment are follies, and 
the weakness of our organs is the only cause of our veneration or 
love. 

Society repels us still more than man. At Laputa, at Lilliput, 
amongst the horses and giants. Swift rages against it, and is never tired 
of abusing and reviling it. In his eyes, ' ignorance, idleness, and 
vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; laws are 
best explained, interj)reted, and applied by those whose interest and 
abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.' ^ A noble 
is a wretch, corrupted body and soul, 'combining in himself all the 
diseaso^ and vices transmitted by ten generations of rakes and rascals. 
A lawyer is a hired liar, wont by twenty years of roguery to perTert 
the truth if he is an advocate, and to sell it if he is a judge. A minister 
of state is a go-between, who, having disposed of his wife,' or brawled 
for the public good, is m.aster of all offices ; and who, in order better 
to rob the money of the nation, buys members of the House of Commoni 
with the same money. A prince is a practiser of all the vices, unable 
to employ or love an honest man, persuaded that * the royal throne 

1 Swift's Works, xii. QuUivefs TrmeU, Part 2, ch. 6, p. 171. 
VOL II. K 



14:6 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IH 

couhi not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confi- 
dent, restive temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual 
clog to public business.'^ At Lilliput the king chooses as his ministers 
those who dance best upon the tight-rope. At Luggnygg he compels 
all those, who are presented to him. to crawl on their l-elii^ aud lick 
the dust. 

*"WTien tte king has a mind to put any of his nobles to death in a gentle^ in* 
dulgent manner, he commands the floor to be strewe<l with a certain brown pcwdet 
of a deadly composition, which, being licked up, infallibly kills him in twenty-*our 
hours. But in justice to this prince's great clemency, and the care he has of hit 
subjects' lives (wherein it were much to be wished that the monarchs of Eiu-ope 
would imitate him), it must be mentioned for his honour, that strict orders are 
given to have the infected parts of the floor well washed after every such execution. 
... I myself heard him give directions that one of his pages should be whipped, 
whose turn it was to give notice about washing the floor after an execution, but 
maliciously had omitted it ; by which neglect, a young lord of great hopes coming 
to an audience, was unfortunately poisoned, although the prince at that time had 
no design against his life. But this good prince was so gracious as to forgive the 
poor page his whipping, upon promise that he would do so no more, without special 
orders. ' ' 

All these fictions of giants, pigmies, flying islands, are means for 
depriving human nature of the veils with which habit and imagination 
cover it, to display it in its truth and its ugliness. There is still one 
cloak to remove, the most deceitful and familiar. Swift must take away 
that appearance of reason in which we deck ourselves. He must sup- 
press the sciences, arts, combinations of societies, inventions of indus- 
tries, whose brightness dazzles us. He must discover the Yahoo in 
man. What a spectacle I 

* At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind 
sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed. . . . Their heads 
and breasts were covered with a thick hair, some frizzled, and others lank ; they 
had beards like goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backs, and the forepart 
of their legs and feet ; but the rest of their bodies was bare, so that I might se« 
their skins, which were of a brown buff colour. . . . They climbed high trees aa 
nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, termi* 
nating in sharp points and hooked. . . . The females . . . had long lank hail* on their 
head, but none on their faces, nor anything more than a sort of down on th« rest 
of their bodies. . . . Upon the whole I never beheld in all my travels so disagree- 
able an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so great an antipathy.'^ 

According to Swift, such are our brothers. He finds in them all our 
instincts. They hate each other, tear each other with their talons, with 
hideous contortions and yells : such is the source of our quarrels. If 
they find a dead cow, although they are but five, and there is enough 
for fifty^ they strangle and wound each other : such is a pictiure of our 

' Ovllwer's Travels, Part 3, ch. 8, p. 258. 

2 lUd. Part 3. ch. 9, p. 264. ^ Ibid. Part 4 ch. 1, p. 286. 



CHAP, v.] SWIFT 141 

^reed and our wars. They dig up precious stones and hide them in 
their kennels, and watch them ' with great caution,' pining and howling 
when robbed : such is the origin of our love of gold. They devout 
indifferently ' herbs, berries, roots, the corrupted flesh of animals,* pre- 
ferring * what they could get by rapine or stealth,' gorging themselvef 
till ihey vomit or burst : such is the portrait of our gluttony and injus- 
tice. They have a kind of juicy and unwholesome root, which they 
* would sut',k with great delight,' till they ' howl, and grin, and chatter/ 
embracing or scratching each other, then reeling, hiccupiag, wallowing 
in the mud : such is a picture of our drunkenness. 

* In most herds there was a sort of ruling yalioc, who was always more deformed 
In body, and mischievous in disposition, than any tf the rest : that this leader had 
usually a favourite as like himself as lie could get, whose employment was to lick 
his master's feet, . . . and drive the female yahoos to his kennel ; for which he 
was now and then rewarded with a piece of ass's flesh. . • . He usually continuei 
in office till a worse can he found. ' * 

Such is an abstract of our government. And yet he gives prefei- 
ence to the Yahoos over men, saying that our wretched reason has 
aggravated and multiplied these vices, and concluding with the king 
of Brobdignag that our species is 'the most pernicious race of little 
©dious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of 

the earth.' ' 

Five years after this treatise on man, he wrote in favour of unhappy 

Ireland a pamphlet which is like the last effort of his despair and his 

geniub. ' I give it almost whole; it dcvserves it. I know nothing like 

it in any literature : 

' It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel 
in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin -doors crowded with 
beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and 
importuning every passenger for an alms. ... I think it is agreed by all parties 
that this prodigious number of children ... is, in the present deplorable state of 
the kingdom, a very great additional gi'ievance ; and therefore, whoever could find 
out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, easy members 
of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue 
set ap for a preserver of tlie nation. ... I shall now, therefore, humbly propose 
my own thoughts, -which I hope wdll not be liable to the least objection.'* 

When we know Swift, such a beginning frightens us : 

* I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in Lon- 
don, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, 
nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ; and I 
make no doubt that it will equally seiTe in a fricassee or a ragout. 

1 Gulliver's Travels, Part 4, eh. 7, p. 337. ^ j^^i^^ part 2, eh. 6, p 172, 

' A Modest PropoicU for presenting the children of the poor people in Ireland 

from becoming a burden on their pa/rents or country, and for making them 

beneficial to the Public, 
* Ibid. vii. 454. 



14? THE CLASSIC AGK [BOOK ill 

* I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, thftt of the hundred and 
twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for 
breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males ; . . . tliat the remaining hundred 
thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune 
through the kingdom ; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in 
the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child Avill 
make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, 
the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little 
^pper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.* 

* I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve 
pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight 
pounds. 

* I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list 
I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fiftlis of the farmers), to be about two 
shillings per annum, rags included ; and I believe no gentleman wouM repine to 
give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as 1 have said, will 
make fou'- lishes of excellent nutritive meat. 

* Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require), may flay 
the carcass ; the skin of which, artificial l)-- dressed, will make admirable gloves for 
ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. 

* As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the 
most convenient parts of it ; and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting ; 
although I rather recommend buying the childi'en alive, than di'essing them hot 
from the knife, as we do roasting pigs. . . . 

' I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made, are obvious and 
many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have already observed, 
it would gi'eatly lessen the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly overrun., 
being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies. 
. . . Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of a hundred thousand children, from two 
years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per 
annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per 
annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlem'^n of 
fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will 
circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manu- 
facture. . . . Sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wiss 
nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It 
would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they 
were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the 
public, to their annual profit or expense. . . . Many other advantages might be 
enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand carcases in our exportation 
of barrelled beef; the propagation of swine's flesh, and the improvement in the art 
of making good bacon. . . . But this, and many others, I omit, being studious oi 
brevity. 

* Some persons of desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast num- 
ber of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed ; and I have been desired to 
employ my thoughts, what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous 
an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter ; because it ia 
very well known, that they are every day dying and rotting, by cold and famine, 
and filth and vermin, as fast as can be leasonably expected,. And as to the younj^ 
labourers, they are now in almost ai hopeful a cond-tion; they cannot get 
■work, and cd npequently pine away foi vant of nourishment, to a degree, that 



CHaP V ] SWIFT. 149 

If at any time they a;e accidentally hired to common labour, tliey have not 
Btrenglh to perform it ; and thus the country and themselves are happily de- 
livtjred from the evils to come. 

* I profess, in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal 
interest in endeavouring to promota this necessary work, having no other motive 
than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, 
relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by 
which I can propose to get a single penny ; the youngest being nine years old, and 
my wife past child-bearing.' * 

Much has been said of unhappy great men, Pascal, for instance. I think 
that his cries and his anguish are faint compared to this calm treatise. 

Such was this great and unhappy genius, the greatest of the classical 
ftge, the most unhappy in history, English throughout, whom the ex- 
cess of his English qualities inspired and consumed, having this in- 
tensity of desires, which is the main feature of the race, the enormity c! 
pride which the habit of liberty, command, and success has impressed 
upcm the nation, the solidity of the positive mind which the pursuit of 
business has established in the country ; precluded from power and 
action by his unchecked passions and his intractable pride ; excluded 
from poetry and philosophy by the clear-sightedness and narrowness of 
his common sense ; deprived of the consolations offered by contem- 
plative life, and the occupation furnished by practical life ; too superior 
to embrace heartily a religious sect or a political party, too narrow- 
minded to rest in the lofty doctrines which conciliate all beliefs, or in 
the wide sympathies which envelop all parties ; condemned by his nature 
and surroundings to fight without loving a cause, to write without being 
attached to the art, to think without attaining a dogma, a condottiere 
against parties, a misanthrope against man, a sceptic against beauty and 
truth. But these very surroundings, and this very nature, which ex- 
pelled him from happiness, love, power, and science, raised him, in this 
age of French imitation and classical moderation, to a wonderful height, 
where, by the originality and power of his inventions, he is the equal 
of Byron, Milton, and Shakspeare, and shows pre-eminently the spirit 
of his nation. Sensibility, a positive mind, and pride, forged for him a 
unique style, of terrible vehemence, withering calmness, practical effec- 
tiveness, tempered with scorn, truth, and hatred, a weapon of vengeance 
and war which made his enemies cry out and die under its point and its 
poison. A pamphleteer against opposition and government, he tore oi 
cruslied his adversaries with his irony or his sentences, with the tone ol 
a judge, a sovereign, and a hangman. A man of the world and a poet, 
he invented a cruel pleasantry, funereal laughter, a convulsive gaiety ol 
bitter contrasts ; and whilst dragging the mythological harness, as if it 
were a compulsory rag, he created a personal poetry by painting the 
crude details of trivial life, by the energy of a painful grotesqueness, bj 

' A Modest Proposal etc. 457. 



IftO 'J'HE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

the merciless revelation of the filth we conceal. A philosopher 
against all philosophy, he created a realistic poem, a grave parody, 
deduced like geometry, absurd as a dream, credible as a law report^ 
attractive as a tale, degrading as a dishclout set like a crown on the 
head of a divinity. These were his miseries and his force : we quit 
snch a spectacle with a sad heart, but full of admiration ; and we 
say that a palace is beautiful even when it is on fire. Artists wii 
^d: especially when it is on fire. 



CRAP. Vi.i 



THE NOVELISTS. 15^1 



CHAPTER VI. 



The Novelists. 



r Characteristic of the English novel-How it differa from others. 

De Foe— His lite- Energy, devotion, his part in politics— bpmt—Uitter^ 



n 



ence of old and modern realists - Works - Career - Aim - i?o6i/i50J. 
Criu^oe-noyf this character is English - Inner enthusiasm -Obstinate 
will— Patience in work-Methodical common seuse-Religious emotion* 

— Final ijiety. .. 

III. Circumstances which gave rise to the novels of the eighteenth centnry-Al 

these novels are moral fictions and studies of character-Connexion ol 
the essay and the novel-Two principal notions in morality-How they 
produce two kinds of novels. _ ^ 

IV. Richardson-Condition and character-Connexion of his perspicacity and 

his ritrour- Talent, minuteness, combinations — Pamela — Her mood 
^Principles-The English wife-CZa7-i5sa Harlowe-The Harlowe family 
-Despotic and unsociable characteristics in England- Clarissa- Her 
energy, coolness, logic-Her pedantry and scruples-«?ir Charles Grand,. 
.on-Incongmities of automatic and edifying heroes-Richardson as « 
preacher— Prolixity, prudery, emphasis. 
V Fieldin--Mood, character, and me-Joseph Andrews-ms conceptio. 
of nature- Tom /ones -Character of the squire -Fielding's heroes- 
^?77e/;a— Faults in her conception. 
VI Smollett-i?ocZerici' Ea^idom— Peregrine Pk^Ze- Comparison of Smollett 
and Lesage-Conception of life-Harshness of his heroes-Coarsenesa 
of his pictures-Standing out of his char^ctevs-Humj^hrey Clinher. 
Yll. Sterne-Excessive study of human particularities - Sterne's character- 
Eccentricity-Sensibility-Obscenity-Why he depicts the diseases and 

degeneracies of humanity. 
\rilT Goldsmith-Purification of the novel— Picture of citizen life, upright hap- 
piness, Protestant virtue- T/i6 Vicar of Wahefield-^I)!^ English clergy- 



man. 



IX, Samuel Johnson-His anthority-Person-Manners-Life-Doctnne.^ 
Opinion of Voltaire and Eousseau-Style-Works-Hogarth-Moral and 
realistic painting-Contrast of English temperament and moraUty-Hov? 
morality has disciplined temperament 
I. 

AMIDST these finished and perfect writings a new "kind makes \U 
appearance, appropriate to the public tendencies and circum- 
ftances, the anti-romantic novel, the work and the reading of positive 
minds obseivers «ud moralists, destined not to exalt and amuse th« 



152 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ID 

imagination, like the novels of Spain and the middle ages, not to re- 
produce or embellish conversation, like the novels of France and the 
seventeenth century, but to depict real life, to describe characters, to 
suggest plans of conduct, and judge motives of action. It was a strange 
appai'ition, and like the voice of a people buried underground, when, 
amidst the splendid corruption of high life, this severe emanation of the 
middle class welled up, and when the obscenities of Mrs. Aphra Behn, 
Btill the diversion of ladies of fashion, were found on the same tabl-e 
with De Foe's Robinson Crusoe-, 

IL 

De Foe, a dissenter, a pamphleteer, a journalist, a novel-writer, 

successively a hosier, a tile-maker, an accountant, was one of those 
indefatigable labourers and obstinate combatants, who, ill-treated, 
calumniated, imprisoned, succeeded by their uprightness, commoD 
sense, and energy, in gaining England over to their side. At twenty- 
three, having taken arms for Monmouth, he was fortunate in not being 
hung or transported. Seven years later he was ruined, and obliged to 
hide. In 1702, for a pamphlet misunderstood, he was condemned to 
pay a fine, was set in the pillory, had his ears cut off, was imprisoned 
two years in Newgate, and only the charity of Godolphin prevented 
his wife and six children from dying of hunger. Being released and 
gent as a commissioner to Scotland, to treat about the union of the two 
countries, he had a narrow escape of being stoned. Another pamphlet, 
again misconceived, sent him to prison, compelled him to pay a fine of 
eight hundred pounds, and only just in time he received the queen's 
pardon. He was caricatured, robbed, and slandered. He was obliged 
to protest against the plagiarists who borrowed and altered his works 
for their benefit ; against the neglect of the Whigs, who did not find 
him tractable enough ; against the animosity of the Tories, who saw in 
him the chief champion of the Whigs. In the midst of his self-defence 
he was struck with apoplexy, and continued to defend himself from his 
bed. Yet he lived, but with great difiiculty ; poor and burdened with 
a family, he turned, at fifty-five, to fiction, and wrote successively Moli 
Flanders, Ca2:)tain Singleton^ Duncan Campbell, Colonel Jack, the Hisiori* 
of the Great Plague in London, etc. This vein exhausted, he diverged 
and tried another — the Complete English Iradesman, a Tour through 
Great Britain. Death comes on ; poverty remains. In vain had he 
written in prose, in verse, on all subjects, political and religious, acci- 
dental or moral, satires and novels, histories and poems, travels and 
pamphlets, commercial essays and statistical information, in all two 
hundred and ten works, not of verbiage, but of arguments, documents, 
and facts, crowded and piled one upon another with such prodigality, 
that the memory, thought, and application of one man seem too small 
for such a labour ; he died penniless, in debt. However we regard hi55 
life, we "see only prolonged efforts and persecutions. Joy seems to be 



CHAP. VI.] THE n6vELISTS. 153 

wanting ; the idea of the beautiful never enters. When he comes 
to fiction, it is like a Presbyterian and a plebeian, with low subjects 
and moral aims, to treat of the adventures and reform the conduct 
of thieves and prostitutes, workmen and sailors. His whole delight 
was to think that he had a service to perform, and that he was per- 
foi ming It ; 

' He that opposes his own judgment against the current of the times ought to 
be backed with unanswerable truth ; and he that has truth on his side, is a fool aa 
well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it, because of the multitude of other men'g 
opinions. 'Tis hard for a man to say, ail the world is mistaken, but himself, But 
if it be so, who can help it ? ' 

De Foe is like one of those brave, obscure, and useful soldiers who, 
with empty belly and burdened shoulders, go through their duties with 
their feet in the mud, pocket blows, receive day by day the fire of the 
enemy, and sometimes that of their friends into the bargain, and die 
sergeants, happy if it has been their lot to get hold of the legion of 
honour. 

He had the kind of mind suitable to such a hard service, solid, 
exact, entirely destitute of refinement, enthusiasm, pleasantness.' His 
imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed 
and, as it were, jammed down with facts. He tells them as they 
come to him, without arrangement or style, like a conversation, with- 
out dreaming of producing an efTect or composing a phrase, employing 
technical terms and vulgar forms, repeating himself at need, using 
the same thing two or three times, not seeming to suspect that there 
are methods of amusing, touching, engrossing, or pleasing, with no 
desire but to pour out on paper the fulness of the information with 
which he is charged. Even in fiction his information is as precise 
as in history. He gives dates, year, month, and day ; notes the 
wind, north-east, south-west, north-west; he writes a log-book, an 
invoice, attorneys' and shopkeepers' bills, the number of moidores, 
interest, specie payments, payments in kind, cost and sale prices, the 
shar^ of the king, of religious houses, partners, brokers, net totals, 
statistics, the geography and hydrography ot the island, so that the 
reide. is tempted to take an atlas and draw for himself a little map of 
fc]\e place, to enter into all the details of the history as clearly and fully 
w the author. It seems as though he had performed all Crusoe's 
Ifcbours, so exactly does he describe them, with numbers, quantities, 
dimensions, like a carpenter, potter, or an old tar. Never was such a 
sense of the real before or since. Our realists of to-day, painters, 
anatomists, decidedly men of business, are very far from this natural- 
ness ; art and calculation crop out amidst their too minute descriptions. 
De Eoe creates iliusicn ; for it is not the eye which deceives us, but th« 

■ ' See his dull poems, amongst others Jure Dimno, a poem in twelve booki 
In defence of every man's birthright by nature. 



154 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIV 

mind, and that literally : his account of the great plague has more than 
once passed for true ; and Lord Chatham took his Memoirs of a Cava- 
Iter for authentic. This was his aim. In the preface to the old edition 
of Rohinson Crusoe it is said : 

• The story is told ... to the instruction of others hy this example, and to 
justify and honour the wisdom of Providence. The editor beheves the thing to bs 
a just history of facts ; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.' 

All his talents lie in this, and thus even his .imperfections aid him ; his 
lack of art becomes a profound art ; his negligence, repetitions, prolixity, 
contribute to the illusion : we cannot imagine that such and such a 
detail, so minute, so dull, is invented ; an inventor would have sup- 
pressed it ; it is too tedious to have been put in on purpose : art chooses, 
embellishes, interests ; art, therefore, cannot have piled up this heap of 
dull and vulgar accidents ; it is the truth. 

Read, for instance, A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. 
Veal, the next Day after her Death, to one Mrs Bargrave, at Canterbury, 
the 8th of September 1705 ; which Apparition recommends the perusal of 
Drelincourfs Book of Consolation against the Fear of Deaths The 
ancient threepenny little books, read by old needlewomen, are not more 
monotonous. There is such an array of circumstantial and guaranteed 
details, such a file of witnesses quoted, referred to, registered, compared, 
such a perfect appearance of tradesman-like honesty, coarse, vulgar 
common sense, that one would take the author for an honest retired 
hosier, with too little brains to invent a story ; no writer careful of his 
reputation would have composed such nonsense. In fact, it was not his 
reputation that De Foe cared for ; he had other motives in his head ; we 
literary men of the present time cannot guess them, being literary men 
only. In short, he wanted to sell a pious book of Drelincourt, which 
would not sell of itself, and in addition, to confirm people in their belief 
by advocating the appearance of ghosts. It was the grand proof then 
brought to bear on sceptics. Grave Dr. Johnson himself tried to see a 
ghost, and no event of that time was more appropriate to the belief of 
the middle class. Here, as elsewhere, De Foe, like Swift, is a man of 
action ; effect, not noise touches him ; he composed Rohinson Crusoe to 
warn the impious, as Swift wrote the life of the last man hung to inspire 
thieves with terror. In this positive and religious age, amidst these 
political and puritan citizens, practice is of such importance as to reduce 
art to the condition of its tool. 

Never was art the tool of a more moral or more English work. 
Crusoe is quite one of his race, and might instruct it in the present day. 
He has that force of will, inner enthusiasm, dull ferment of a violent 
examination which formerly produced the sea-kings, and now produces 
emigrants and squatters. The misfortunes of his two brothers, th<a 

' Compare Edgar PoeV Case of M. Waldemar. The AmericaD is a suffej 
ing artist : De Foe a sensible citizen. 



CKAP VT] THE NOVELISTS. l-^S 

tears of his relatives, tlie advice of his friends, the remonstrances of his 
reason, the remorse of his conscience, are all unable to restrain him * 
there was * a something fatal in his nature ; ' he had conceived the idea, 
he must go to sea. To no purpose is he seized with repentance during 
the first storm ; he drowns in punch these * fits' of conscience. To no 
purpose is he warned by shipwreck and a narrow escape from death ; 
he is hardened, and grows obstinate. To no purpose captivity among 
the Moors and the possession of a fruitful plantation invite repose ; the 
indomitable instinct returns ; he was born to be his own destroyer, and 
embarks again. The ship goes down ; he is cast alone on a desert island ; 
then his native energy found its vent and its employment; like his 
dtscendants, the pioneers of Australia and America, he must re-create 
and re-master one by one the inventions and acquisitions of human 
industry ; one by one he does so. Nothing represses his effort ; neither 
possession nor weariness : 

* I had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid np, I believe, 
for one man ; but I was not satisfied still ; for, while the ship sat upright in that 
posture, I thought I ought to get everything out of her that I could. ... I got 
most of the pieces of cable ashore, and some of the iron, though with infinite 
labour ; for I was fain to dip for it into the water ; a work which fatigued me 
very much. ... I believe, verily, had the calm weather held, I should have 
brought away the whole ship, piece by piece.' ^ 

In his eyes, work is natural. When, in order * to barricade himself, 
he goes to cut the piles in the woods, and drives them into the earth, 
which cost a great deal of time and labour,' he says : 

' A very laborious and tedious work. But what need I have been concerned at 
the tediousness of any thing I had to do, seeing I had time enough to do it in ? . . . 
My time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way aa 
another.'* 

Application and fatigue of head and arms give occupation to his super- 
fluous activity and force ; the mill must find grist to grind, without 
w^iich, turning round empty, it would consume itself. He works, 
therefore, all day and night, at once carpenter, oarsman, porter, luinter, 
tiller of the ground, potter, tailor, milkman, basketmaker, grinder, baker, 
invincible in difficulties, disappointments, expenditure of time and toil. 
ifaving but a hatchet and an adze, it took him forty-two days to make 
a board. He occupied two months in making his first two jars ; five 
months in making his first boat ; then, ' by dint of hard labour,' he 
levelled the ground from his timber-yard to the sea, tried to bring the 
sea up to his boat, and began to dig a canal ; then, reckoning that he 
would require ten or twelve years to finish the task, he builds another 
boat at another place, with another canal half a mile long, four feet 
deep, six wide. He spends two years over it : 

' De Foe's Works, 20 vols. 1819-^1. The Life and Adventures of Mobintan 
Vrusoe, i. ch. iv. 65. 
■ IMcl 76. 



J.56 THE CLASSIC AGE. ^Bf OR IH 

' I bore witt this. ... I went through that by dint of hard labtDur. . . . Manj 
Weary stroke it had cost. . . . This will testify that I was not idle. ... As 1 
had learned not to despair of any thing. I never grudged my labour.' 

These strong expressions of indomitable patience are ever reicurring. 
TJiis hard race is framed for labour, as its sheep are for slaughter and 
its hoises for the chase. Even now you may hear their mighty hatchet 
xnd pickaxe strokes in the claims of Melbourne and in the log-hoases o{ 
the Salt Lake. The reason of their success is the same there as here; 
ihey do everything with calculation and method ; they rationalise their 
energy, which is like a torrent they make a canal for. Crusoe sets to work 
only after deliberate calculation and reflection. When he seeks a spot 
for his tent, he enumerates the four conditions of the place he requires. 
When he wishes to escape despair, he draws up impartially, ' like debtor 
and creditor,' the list of his advantages and disadvantages, putting them 
in two columns, active and passive, item for item, so that the balance is 
in his favour. His courage is only the servant of his common sense : 

* By stating and squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational 
judgment of things, every man may be in time master of every mechanic art. I 
had never handled a tool in my life, and yet in time, by labour, application, and 
contrivance, I found at last that 1 wanted nothing but I could have made it, espe- 
cially if I had had tools. ' ^ 

There is a grave and deep pleasure in this painful success, and in this 
personal acquisition. The squatter, like Crusoe, takes pleasure in 
things, not only because they are useful, but because they are his work. 
He feels himself a man, whilst finding all about him the sign of his 
labour and thought ; he is pleased : 

* I had everything so ready at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to roe to 
gee all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries 
BO great. ' ' 

He returns to his home willingly, because he is there a master and 
creator of all the comforts he has around him ; he takes his meals there 
gravely and ' like a king.' 

Such are the pleasures of home. A guest enters there to fortify 
these natural inclinations by the ascendency of duty. Religion appears, 
fts it must, in emotions and visions : for this is not a calm soul ; imagi« 
nation breaks out into it at the least shock, and carries it to the threshold 
of madness. On the day when he saw the ' print of a naked man's foot 
on the shore,' he stood * like one thunderstruck,' and fled ' like a hare to 
cover;' his ideas are in a whirl, he is no longer master of them ; though 
he is hidden and barricaded, he thinks himself discovered ; he intends ' to 
throw down the enclosures, turn all the tame cattle wild into the woods, 
dig up the corn-fields.' He has all kind of fancies ; he asks himself il 
it is not the devil who has left this footmark ; and reasons upon it: 

' JRoUnson Crusoe, ch. iv. 79. * Ibid. 80. 



CHAP. VI.J THE NOVELISTS. 151 

*I considered that the devil might have found out ahimdanw of other wajs to 
ha've terrified me ; . . . that, as I lived quite on the otlier side of the island, he 
would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thou- 
sand vo one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which th« 
first iurge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely. All this seemed 
inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all notions we usually entertain of tha 
Buhtlety of the devil. ' ^ 

In Ibis impassioned and uncultivated mind, which for eight years had 
continued without a thought, and as it were stupid, engrossed in manual 
labour and bodily wants, belief took root, fostered by anxiety and soli- 
tude. Amidst the risks of all-powerful nature, in this great uncertain 
upheaving, a Frenchman, a man bred like us, would cross his arms 
gloomily like a Stoic, or would wait like an epicure for the return of 
physical cheerfulness. ' As for Crusoe, at the sight of the ears of barley 
which have suddenly made their appearance, he weeps, and thinks at 
first ' that God had miraculously caused this grain to grow.' Another 
day he has a terrible vision : in a fever he repents of his sins ; he opens 
the Bible, and finds these words, which * were very apt to his case :* 
* Call upon me in the day of trouble ; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt 
glorify me.'^ Prayer then rises to his lips, true prayer, the converse 
of the heart with a God who answers, and to Avhom we listen. He also 
read the words : * I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.' * 

* Immediately it occurred that these words were to me. Why else should they 
be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my 
condition, as one forsaken of God and man ? ' * 

Thenceforth spiritual life begins for him. To reach its very foundation, 
the squatter needs only his Bible ; with it he carries out his faith, his 
theology, his worship ; every evening he finds in it some application to 
his present condition : he is not alone ; God speaks to him, and provides 
for his energy matter for a second labour to sustain and complete the 
first. For he now undertakes against his heart the combat which he has 
maintained against nature ; he wnnts to conquer, transform, ameliorate, 
pacify the one as he has done with the other. Crusoe fasts, observes 
the Sabbath, three times a day he reads the Scripture, and says : 

* I gave humble and hearty thanks . . . that he (God) could full}' make up 
t© me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society by hiiE 
presence, and the communication of his grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, 
and encouraging me to depend upon his providence, and hope for his eternal pre- 
sence hereafter.'^ 

In this disposition of mind there is nothing a man cannot endure or do ; 
heart and hand come to the assistance of the arms ; religion consecrates 
labour, piety feeds patience ; and man, supported on one side by his 
instincts, on the other by his beliefs, finds himself able to clear the landj 
to people, to organise and civilise continents. 

' MoUmon Crusoe, ch. xi. 184. 2 jj^^^ ^37 j>q j^ 15^ 3 Heb. xiii. 5. 
4 Md. ch. viii. 134. * Jhid ch. viii. 133. 



158 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

III. 

It was by cTiance that De Foe, like Cervantles, lighted on a no^^ 

of character : as a rule, like Cervantes, he only wrote novels of adven« 
tiire; he knew life better than the soul, and the general course of the 
world better than the particularities of the individual. But the impulse 
was given, nevertheless, and now the rest followed. Chivalrous nianuers 
had been blotted out, carrying with them the poetical and picturesque 
drama. Monarchical manners had been blotted out, carrying witli thorn 
the witty and licentious drama. Citizen manners had been established, 
bringing with them domestic and practical reading. Like society, 
literature changed its course. Books were needed to read by thfl 
fireside, in the country, in the family : invention and genius turn td 
this kind of writing. The sap of human thought, abandoning the old 
dried-ijp branches, flowed into the unseen boughs, which it suddenly 
made to grow and turn green, and the fruits which it produced bear 
witness at once to the surrounding temperature and the native stock. 
Two features are common and proper to them. All these novels are 
character novels. The men of this country, more reflective than others, 
more inclined to the melancholy pleasure of concentrated attention and 
inner examination, find around them human medals more vigorously 
struck, less worn by friction with the world, whose uninjured face ia 
more visible than that of others. All these novels are works of obser- 
vation, and spring from a moral design. The men of this time, having 
fallen away from lofty imagination, and being immersed in active life, 
desire to cull from books a solid instruction, exact documents, effectual 
emotions, feelings of practical admiration, and motives of action 

We have but to look around ; the same inclination begins on all sides 
the same task. The novel springs up everywhere, and shows the same 
spirit under all forms. At this time^ appear the Taller^ Spectator, 
Guardian, and all those agreeable and serious essays which, like the 
novel, look for readers at home, to supply them with documents and 
j)rovide them with counsels ; which, like the novel, describe manners, 
paint characters, and try to correct the public ; which, in fine, like the 
novel, turn spontaneously to fiction and portraiture. Addison, like ft 
delicate amateur of moral curiosities, complacently follows the amiaUfi 
oddities of Sir Roger de Coverley, smiles, and with discreet hand guides 
the excellent knight through all the awkward predicaments which may 
bring out his rural prejudices and his innate generosity; whilst by his 
side the unhappy Swift, degrading man to the instincts of the beast oi 
prey and beast of burden, tortures humanity by forcing it to recognise 
itself under the execrable portrait of the Yahoo. Although they differ, 
both authors are working at the same task. They only employ iniagin:\tion 
m order to study characters, and to suggest plans of conduct. They bring 

» 1709, 1711/1713. 



UHAP VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 159 

down philosophy to observation and application. They only dream ol 
reforming or chastising vice. They are only moralists and psycholo- 
gists. They both confine themselves to the consideration of vice and 
virtue ; one with calm benevolence, the other with savage indignation. 
The same point of view produces the graceful portraits of Addison and 
fche frightful pictures of Swift. Their successors do the like, and all 
diversities of mood and talent do not hinder their works from acknow- 
ledging a single source, and concurring in a single effect. 

Two principal ideas can rule, and have ruled, morality in England. 
Now it is conscience which is accepted as a sovereign ; now it is instinct 
vrhich is taken for guide. Now they have recourse to grace; now 
they rely on nature. Now they wholly enslave everything to rule; 
now they give everything up to liberty. The two opinions have suc- 
cessively reigned in England; and the human frame, at once too 
vigorous and too unyielding, successively justifies their ruin and their 
success. Some, alarmed by the fire of an over-fed temperament, and 
by the energy of unsocial passions, have regarded nature as a dangerous 
beast, and placed conscience with all its auxiliaries, religion, law, edu- 
cation, proprieties, as so many armed sentinels to repress its least 
outbreaks. Others, repelled by the harshness of an incessant constraint, 
and by the minuteness of a morose discipline, have overturned guards 
and barriers, and let loose captive nature to enjoy the free air and sun, 
deprived of which it was being choked. Both by their excesses have 
deserved their defeats and raised up their adversaries. From Shak- 
speare to the Puritans, from Milton to Wycherley, from Congreve to 
De Foe, from Wilberforce to Lord Byron, unruliness has provoked 
constraint and tyranny revolt. This great contest of rule and nature 
is developed again in the writings of Fielding and Eichardson. 

IV. 

* Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, in a series of familiar letters from a 
beautiful young damsel to her parents, published in order to cultivate 
the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of b( th 
sexes ; a narrative which has its foundation in truth, and at the same 
time that it agreeably entertains by a variety of curious and affectin«g 
incidents, is entirely divested of all those images which, in too many 
pieces calculated for amusement only, tend to inflame the minds th^y 
should instruct.'^ We can make no mistake, the title is clear. Tho 
preachers rejoiced to see assistance coming to them from the very spot 
where there was danger ; and Dr. Sherlock, from his pulpit, recom- 
mended the book. Men inquired about the author. He was a printer 
and bookseller, a joiner's son, who, at the age of fifty, and in his leisure 
moments, wrote in his shop parlour : a laborious man, who, by work and 
good conduct, had raised himself to a competency and sound informa* 



i Mi'x The translator has consulted the tenth edition, 1775, 4 voIp 



160 THE CI ASSIC AGE. 

tion ; delicate, moreover gentle, nervous, ot'ren ill, with a taste for th^ 
society of Avomen, accustomed to correspond lor and Avith them, of 
reserved and retired habits, whose only fault was a timid vanity. He 
was severe in principles, and had acquired perspicacity by his rigour. 
In fact, conscience is a lamp; a moralist is a psychologist; Christian 
casuistry is a sort of natural history of the soul. He who through 
anxiety of conscience busies himself in drawing out the goo:l or evil 
motives of his manifest actions, who sees vices and virtues at their 
birth, who follows the insensible progress of culpable thoughts, and the 
secret confirmation of good resolves, who can mark the force, nature, 
and moment of temptations and resistances, holds ia his hand almost 
ail the moving strings of humanity, and has only to make them vibrate 
regularly to draw from them the most powerful harmonies. In this 
consists the art of Richardson ; he combines whilst he observes ; his 
meditation develops the ideas of the moralist. No one in this age has 
equalled him in these detailed and comprehensive conceptions, which, 
grouping to a single end the passions of thirty characters, twine and 
colour the innumerable threads of the whole canvas, to bring out a 
figure, an action, or a lesson. 

This first novel is a flower — one of those flowers which only bloom 
in a virgin imagination, at the dawn of original invention, whose charm 
and freshness surpass all that the maturity of art and genius can after- 
wards cultivate or arrange. Pamela is a child of fifteen, brouglit up 
by an old lady, half servant and half favourite, who, after the death of 
her mistress, finds herself exposed to the growing seductions and per- 
secutions of the young master of the house. She is a genuine child, 
frank and artless as Goethe's Margaret, and of the same family. After 
twenty pages, Ave involuntarily see this fresh rosy face, always blushing., 
and her laughing eyes, so ready Avith tears. At the smallest kindness she 
is confused ; she knows not what to say ; she changes colour, casts doAvn 
her eyes, as she makes a curtsey ; the poor innocent heart is troubled 
or melts. -^ No trace of the bold vivacity, the nervous coolness, Avhich 
are the elements of a French girl. She is * a lambkin,' loved, lovinjr, 
without pride, vanity, bitterness; timid, ahvays humble. When :.er 
master tries forcibly to kiss her, she is astonished ; she will not believe 
tliat the Avorld is so Avicked. ' This gentleman has degraded himself 
tci offer freedoms to his poor servant.' ^ She is afraid of being too free 
with him; reproaches hei'self, Avhen she Avrites to her relatives, with saying 
too often he and him instead of his honour ; ' but it is his fault if I do, 
for why did he lose all his dignity with me?'^ No outrage exhausts 

^ * To be sure I did think notliing but curt'sy and cry, and was all in confu 
Bion at Ills goodness. 

'I was so confounded at these words, you might have beat me doAvn with % 
featlier. ... So, like a fool, I was ready to cry, and went away curt'sying, an« 
blushing, I am sure up to the ears.' 

a Vol. i. Letter x. « Ibi^, 



nRAP. Vl.\ THE NOVELISTS. 16] 

her submissiveness : he has embraced her, and tosk hold of her arm 
so rudely that it was * black and blue;' he has done woise, he has 
behaved like a ruffian and a knave. To cap all, he slanders her cir- 
cumstantial^' Before the servants ; lie iiiitiKo»'l>?y'r.'>^3.t^diy, and pro- 
vokes her to speak ; she does not speak, will not fail in her duty to 
her master. ' It is for you, sir, to say what you please, and for me 
only to say, God bless your honour!'^ She falls on her knees, and 
fehanks him for sending her away. But in so much submission what 
resistance I All is against her ; he is her master ; he is a justice of 
the peace, secure against all intervention — a sort of divinity tc her, 
with all the superiority and authority of a feudal prince. Moreover, 
he has the brutality of the times ; he rates her, speaks to her like a 
slave, and yet thinks himself very kind. He shuts her up alone for 
several months, with * a wicked creature,' his housekeeper, who beats 
and threatens her. He attacks her by fear, weariness, surprise, money, 
gentleness. At last, what is more terrible, her own heart is against 
her: she loves him secretly; her virtues injure her; she dare not lie, 
when she most needs it;^ and piety keeps her from suicide, when that 
seems her only resource. One by one the issues close around her, so 
that she loses hope, and the readers of her adventures think her lost 
and ruined. But this native innocence has been strengthened by 
Puritanic faith. She sees temptations in her weaknesses ; she knows 
that 'Lucifer always is ready to promote his own work and workmen ;'* 
she is penetrated by the great Christian idea, which makes all souls 
equal before the common salvation and the final judgment. She says : 
* My soul is of equal importance to the soul of a princess, though my 
quality is inferior to that of the meanest slave.'* Wounded, stricken, 
abandoned, betrayed, still the knowledge and thought of a happy or 
an unhappy eternity are two defences which no assault can carry. She 
knows it well ; she has no other means of explaining vice than to sup- 
pose them absent. She considers that wicked Mrs. Jewkes is an atheist. 
Belief in God, the heart's belief — not the wording of the catechism, 
but the inner feeling, the habit of picturing justice as ever living and 
«ver present — this is the fresh blood which the Reformation caused to 
'jnter the veins of the old world, and which alone could give it a new 
life and a new youth. 

She is, as it were, animated by it ; in the most perilous as in the 
sweeteit moments, this grand sentiment returns to her, so much is it 
entwined with all the rest, so much has it multiplied its tendrils and 
buried its roots in the innermost folds of her heart. Her young mastel 
thinks of marrying her now, and wishes to be sure that she loves him. 
She dares not say so, being afraid to give him a hold upon her. Shi 



' Pamela, 1. Letter xxvii. ' ' I dare not tell a wilful lie.' 

Pamela, i. Letter xxv. ■* ' Ibid. Letter to Mr. Williams, i. 20t 

VOL. II. L 



162 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Jit 

18 greatly troubled by his kindness, and yet she mast answer. Religion 
comes to veil love in a sublime half-confession : 

*I fear not, sir, the grace of God supporting me, thnf nny acts sf kindnesi 
would make me fcrgetj-Tfiral r(JlVi't6 my virtue ; but . . . my nature" is too frank 
and open to make me wish to be ungrateful ; and if I should be taught a lesson 
I never yet learnt, with what regret should I descencf to the grave, to think thai 
I could not hate my undoer : and that, at the last great day, I must stand np a* 
an accuser of the poor unhappy soul, that I could wish it in my power to save ! ' 

He is softened and vanquished, descends from that vast height where 
aristocratic customs had placed him, and thenceforth, day by day, the 
letters of the happy child record the preparations for their marriage. 
Amidst this triumph and happiness she continues humble, devoted,, 
and tender ; her heart is full, and gratitude fills it from every source ' 
* This foolish girl must be, after twelve o'clock this day, as much his 
wife as if he were to marry a duchess.'^ She * had the boldness to 
kiss his hand.' ^ * My heart is so wholly yours, that I am afraid of 
nothing but that I may be forwarder than 3'ou wish.' * Shall the 
marriage take place Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday ? She dare 
not say Yes ; she blushes and trembles : there is a delightful charm in 
this timid modesty, these restrained effusions. For a wedding present 
she obtains the pardon of the wicked creatures who have ill-treated 
her : ' I clasped my arms about his neck, and was not ashamed to kiss 
him once, and twice, and three times, once for each forgiven person.' * 
Then they talk over their plans : she shall remain at the lodge ; she 
will not frequent grand parties ; she is not fond of cards ; she will keep 
the * family accounts,' and distribute her husband's charities ; she will 
help the housekeeper in * the making jellies, comfits, sweetmeats, mar- 
malades, cordials, and to pot, and candy, and preserve,' ^ to get up the 
linen ; she will look after the breakfast and dinner, especially w^hen 
there are guests ; she knows how to carve ; she will wait for her hus- 
band, who perhaps will be so good as now and then to give her ais 
hour or two of his * agreeable conversation,' ' and will be indulgent to 
the impertinent overflowings of my grateful heart.' ' In his abseuce 
she will read — ' that will help to polish my mind, and make me wortliiei 
of your company and conversation;'® and she will pray to God, sht 
says, in order 'that I may be enabled to discharge ray duty to^* her 
husband. Eichardson has sketched here the portrait of the English 
wife — a good housekeeper and sedentary, studious and obedient, loving 
and pious — and Fielding will finish it in his Amelia. 

This was a contest : here is one still greater. Virtue, like force 
of every kind, is valued according to its power of resistance ; and we 
have only to subject it to more violent tests, to give it its great 3st 



' Pa/niela, i. 290. 


2 Ibid. ii. 167 


3 lUd. ii. 78. 


4 Md. ii. 148. 


* Ihid. ii. 194. 


« lUd. ii. 63. 


^ Ibid. 


» Ibid, ii. m. 


. « lUd. 









CHAP. VL THE NOVELISTS. 153 

prominence. Let us look in the passions of her native Ii»nd for foes 
capable of assailing virtue, calling it forthj^and rendering it obstinate. 
The evil and the good of the English character is a too strong will.* 
When tenderness and lofty reason fail, the native energy is turned to 
steitiness, obstinacy, inflexible tyranny, and the heart becomes a den 
of malevolent passions, eager to rave and tear each other. Against a 
family, having such passions, Clarissa Harlowe has to struggle. Her 
father never would be *controuled, nor yer persuaded."^ He never 
' did give up one point he thought he had a right to carry.'^ He 
has broken down the will of his wife, and degraded her to the part 
of a dumb servant ; he wishes to break down the Avill of his daughter, 
and give her for a husband a coarse and heartless fool. He is the 
head of the family, master of all his people, despotic and ambitious 
as a Roman patrician, and he wishes to found a house. He is stern 
in these two harsh resolves, and thunders against the rebellious 
daughter. Above the outbursts of his voice we hear the loud wrath 
of his son, a sort of hot-blooded, over-fed bull-dog, excited by his 
greed, his youth, his fiery temper, and his premature authority ; the 
shrill outcry of the eldest daughter, a coarse, plain-looking girl, with 
* a plump, high-fed face,' exactingly jealous, prone to hate, who, being 
neglected by Lovelace, revenges herself on her beautiful sister ; the 
churlish growling of the two uncles, narrow-minded old bachelors, 
vulgar, pig-headed, through their notions of male authority; the 
grievous importunities of the mother, the aunt, the old nurse, poor 
timid slaves, reduced one by one to become instruments of persecu- 
tion. The whole family have bound themselves to favour Mr. Solmes' 
proposal to marry Clarissa. They do not reason, tliey simply express 
their will. By dint of repetitioii, only one idea has fixed itself in 
their brain, and they become furious when any one endeavours to 
free them from it. 'Who at the long run must submit?' asks her 
mother; 'all of us to you, or you to all of us?'* Clarissa offers 
tvery submission ; she consents to give up her property. But her 
family answered : ' They had a right to her obedience upon their own 
terms ; her proposal was an artifice, only to gain time ; nothing but 
marrying Mr. Solmes should do ; . . . they should not be at rest 
till it was done.' ^ It must be done, they have promised it ; it is a 
point of honour with them. A girl, a young, inexperienced, insignifi- 
cant girl, to resist men, old men, of position and consideration, nay, 
her whole, family — monstrous! So they persist, like brutes as they 
are, blindly putting on the screw with all their stupid hands together, 
not seeing that at every turn they bring the child nearer to madness, 
dishonour, or death. She begs them, implores them, one by one, with 

* See in Pamela the characters of Squire B. and Lady Davers 

* Glamsa Harlowe, 4th ed. 1751 , 7 vols i. 92. ^ jMd. i. 105. 
« Ibid. i. Letter xx. 12o, * Ibid. i. Letter xxxix. 25S. 



164 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IJI 

every argumeTiC anct prayer ; racks herself to discover concessions, goe< 
on her knees, faints, makes them weep. It is all useless. TUe in- 
domitable, crushing will oppresses her with its daily increasing mass. 
There is no example of such a varied moral torture, so incessant, so 
obstinate. They persist in it, as if it were a task, and are vex^d to 
find that she makes her task so long. They refuse to see her, fori id 
her to write, are^, afraid of her tears. Her sister Arabella, with the 
venomous bitterness of an offended, ugly woman, tries to make her 
insults more slinging : 

* The vntty, the 2'>fudent, nay the dutiful and pi-ous (so she sneeringly pro* 
nounced the word) Clarisse Haiiowe, should be so strangely fond of a profligate 
man, that her parents were forced to lock her up, in order to hinder her from 
running into his arms. "Let me ask you, my dear, said she, how you now keep 
your acci^unt of the disposition of your time ? How many hours in the twenty- 
four do you devote to your needle ? How many to your prayers ? Hoav many to 
letter- writing ? And how many to love ? I doubt, I doubt, my little dear, th« 
latter article is like Aaron's rod, and swallows up the rest. , . , You must there- 
fore bend or break, that was all, child.* . . . 

* '* What, not speak yet ? Come, my sullen, silent dear, speak one word to me. 
You must say tiuo very soon to Mr. Solmes, I can tell you that. . . . Well, well 
(insultingly wiping my averted face with her handkerchief) • • • Then you think 
you may be brought to speak the two words." ' * 

She continues thus : 

* This, Clary, is a pretty pattern enough. But this is quite charming !— And 
tJiis, were I you, should be my wedding nightgown. — But, Clary, won't you have 
a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a country church, you know. 
Crimson velvet, I suppose. Such a fine complexion as yours, how would it be set 
off by it ! — And do you sigh, love ? Black velvet, so fair as you are, with thoM 
charming eyes, gleaming, through a wintry cloud, hke an April sun. Does not 
Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes ? ' ^ 

Then, wlien Arabella is reminded that, three months ago, she did not 
find Lovelace so worthy of scorn, she nearly chokes with passion ; she 
wants to beat her sister, cannot speak, and says to her aunt, ' w^ith 
great violence : ' ' Let us go, madam ; let us leave the creature to swell 
till she bursts with her own poison.'* It reminds us of a pack of 
hounds in full cry after a deer, which is caught, and wounded ; whilsl 
the pack grow more eager and more ferocious, because they have 
tasted his blood. 

At the last moment, when she thinks to escape them, a new chase 
begins, more dangerous than the other. Lovelace has all the evil 
passions of Harlowe, and in addition a genius which sharpens and 
aggravates them. What a character I How English! how different 
from the Don Juan of Mozart or of Moliere ! Before everything th« 
cruel fair one, the desire to bend others, a combative spirit, a craving 

* Clarissa Harlowe, 1. Letter xlii. 278. ' IMd. i. Letter xliii. 295. 
» Md i. Letter si v. 308. * Ib^l. 309. 



CHAP. VI.l THE NOVELISTS. 165 

foi triumph ; only after these come the senses. He spares an innocent 
girl because he knows she is easy to conquer, and the grandmother 
* has besought him to be merciful to her.' * The Deheliare sitperho& 
should be my motto,' ^ he writes to his friend Belford ; and in xnothei 
letter he says : ' I always considered opposition and resistance as a 
challenge to do my worst.' ^ At bottom, pride, infinite, insatiable, 
senseless^ is the mainspring, the only motive of all his actions. He 
acknowledges * that he only wanted Caesar's outsetting to make a figure 
among his cotemporaries,' ^ and that he only stoops to private con- 
quests out of mere whim. He declares that he would not marry the 
first princess on earth, if he but thought she balanced a minute in hei 
choice of him or of an emperor. He is held to be gay, brilliant, con- 
versational ; but this petulance of animal vigour is only external : he is 
cruel, jests savngely, in cool blood, like a hangman, about the harm 
which he has done or means to do. Mark in what manner he re- 
assures a poor servant Avho is troubled at having given up Clarissa to 
him. * The affair of Miss Betterton was a youthful frolick. ... I went 
into mourning for her, though abroad at the time. A distinction I 
have ever paid to those worthy creatures who died in childbed by 
me. . . . Why this squeamish ness, then, honest Joseph ? ' * At that 
time, and in this land, the roysterers of those days threw the human 
body in the sewers. One gentleman, a friend of Lovelace, * tricked a 
farmer's daughter, a pretty girl, up to town, . . . drank her light- 
hearted, . . . then to the play, . . . then to the bagnio, ruined her ; 
kept her on a fortnight or three weeks ; then left her to the mercy of 
the people of the bagnio (never paying for anything), who stript her 
of all her cloaths, and because she would not take on, threw her inLo 
prison, where she died in want and in despair.' * The rakes in France 
were only rascals,^ here they were villains ; wickedness with them 
poisoned love. Lovelace hates Clarissa even more than he loves her. 
He has a book in which he sets down, he says, * all the family faults 
and the infinite trouble she herself has given me. When my heart is 
soft, and all her own, I can but turn to my memoranda, and harden 
myself at once,' ' He is angry because she dares to defend herself, 
says that he'll teach her to vie with him in inventions, to make plots 
against and for her conqueror. It is a struggle between them, without 
truce or halting. Lovelace says of himself: 'What an industrious 
spirit have 1 1 Nobody can say that I eat the bread of idleness ; . . . 
certainly, with this active soul, I should have made a very great figure 
in whatever station I had filled.' ® He assaults and besieges her, spendi 

^ Clarissa Earlowe, i. Letter xxxiv. 223. ' Ibid. ii. Letter xliii. 315. 

* Ibid. i. Letter xii. 65. ^ Md. iii. Letter xviii. 89. 
' Ibid, vii. Letter xxxviii. 122. 

* See the Memoires of the Marshal de Richelieu. 

' Clarissa Haiiowe, ii. Letter xxxix. 294. ^ Ibid. iv. xxxiii. 233. 



166 THE CLASSIC AGE. TBOOK III 

whole nights outside her house, gives the Harlowes servants of his own, 
invents stories, introduces imaginary personages, forges letters. Thera 
is no expense, fatigue, plot, disloyalty which he will not undertake. 
All weapons are the same to him. He digs and plans even -when 
away, ten, twenty, fifty saps, which all meet in the same mine. He has 
a remedy for everything; he is ready for everything; divines, daica 
everything, against all duty, humanity, common sense, in spite cf the 
prayers of his friends, the entreaties of Clarissa, his own remorse. 
Excessive will, here as with the Harlowes, becomes a steel cog-whea!, 
which twists out of shape and breaks to pieces what it ought to bend, 
80 that at last, by blind impetuosity, it is broken by its own impetus, 
over the ruins it has made. 

Against such assaults what resources has Clarissa? A will as 
determined as his own. She also is armed for war, and admits that 
she has as much of her father's spirit as of her mother's gentleness. 
Though gentle, though readily driven into Christian humility, she 
*had hoped to be an example to young persons' of her sex; she 
possesses the firmness of a man, and above all a masculine reflection.* 
What self-scrutiny 1 what vigilance! what minute and indefatigable 
observation of her conduct, and of that of others I* No action, or 
word, involuntary or other gesture of Lovelace is unobserved by her, 
uninterpreted, unjudged, with the perspicacity and clearness of mind 
of a diplomatist and a moralist I You must read these long conversa- 
tions, in which no word is used without calculation, genuine duels daily 
renewed, with death, nay, with dishonour before her. She knows it, 
is not disturbed, remains ever mistress of herself, never exposes herself, 
is not stunned, defends every inch of ground, feeling that all the world 
is on his side, no one for her, that she loses ground, and will lose more, 
that she will fall, that she is falling. And yet she bends not. What 
a change since Shakspeare ! Whence comes this new and origina. 
idea of woman ? Who has encased these yielding and tender inno- 
cents with such heroism and calculation? Secularised Puritanism. 
Clarissa * never looked upon any duty, much less a voluntary vowed 
one, with indifference.' She has passed her whole life in looking at 
these duties. She has placed certain principles before her, has reasoned 
upon them, applied them to the various circumptances of life, has 
fortified herself on every point with maxims, distinctions, and argu- 
ments. She has set round her, like bristling and multiplied ramparts, 

* See (vol. vii. Letter xlix.) among other things her last Will. 

* She makes out statistics and a classification of Lovelace's merits and faults^ 
with subdivisions and numbers. Take an example of tkis positive and practical 
English, logic : ' That such a husband might unsettle me in all my own principles, 
and hasard my future hopes. That he has a very immoral character to women. 
That knowing this, it is a high degree of impurity to think of joining in wedlock 
witli such a man.' She keeps all her writings, her memorandums, summariei 
or analyses of her own letters. 



CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 167 

A numberless army of inflexible precepts. W© can only reach her by 
turning over her whole mind and her whole past. This is her force, 
and also her weakness ; for she is so carefully defended by her forti- 
fications, that she is a prisoner ; her principles are a snare to her, and 
her virtue destroys her. She wishes to preserve too much decorum. 
She refuses to apply to a magistrate, for it would make public the 
fjiraily quarrels. She does not resist her father openly; that would ba 
Egaiiist filial humility. She does not repel Solmes violently, and like 
a hoLind, as he is ; it would be contrary to feminine delicacy. She will 
not leave home with Miss Howe; that might injure the character of her 
friend. She reproves Lovelace when he swears ; ^ a good Christian 
ought to protest against scandal. She is argumentative and pedantic, 
a politician and a preacher; she wearies us, she acts not like a woman. 
When a room is on fire, a young girl flies barefooted, and does not do 
what Miss Clarissa does — ask for her slippers. I am very sorry for it, 
but I say it with bated breath, Clarissa had a little mind ; her virtue 
is like the piety of devotees, literal and over-nice. She does not carry 
you away, she has always her catechism in her hand ; she does not 
discover her duties, but follows instructions ; she has not the audacity 
of great resolutions, she possesses more conscience and firmness than 
enthusiasm and genius.^ This is the disadvantage of morality pushed 
to an extreme, no matter what the school or the aim is. By dint of 
regulating man, we narrow him. 

Poor Richardson, unsuspiciously, has been at pains to set the thing 
fort^^ in broad light, and has created Sir Charles Grandison * a man of 
tiTie honour.' I cannot say whether this model has converted many. 
There is nothing so insipid as an edifying hero. This Sir Charles is as 
correct as an automaton ; he passes his life in weighing his duties, and 
'with an air of gallantry.'® When he goes to visit a sick person, he 
has scruples about going on a Sunday, but reassures his conscience by 
saying, *I am afraid I must borrow of the Sunday some hours on my 
journey ; but visiting the sick is an act of mercy.' * Would you believe 
that such a man could fall in love ? Such is the case, however, but in 
a manner of his own. Thus he writes to his betrothed : 

' And now, loveliest and dearest of women, allow me 1;^ expect the honour cf a 
lin-a, to let me know how much of the tedious month from last Thursday ycu wiU 
be t good to abate. . . . My utmost gratitude wiU ever be engaged by the con- 

* ' Swearing is a most unmanly vice, and cursing a^^ poor and low a one, sinca 
it proclaims the profligate's want of power and his wickedness at the same time ; 
for could such a one punish as he speaks, he would be a fiend.' — Vol. ii Lettei 
xxxviii. 282. 

* The contrary is the case with the heroines of George Sand's novels. 

8 See Sir Charles Grandison, 7 vols. 1811, iii. Letter xvi. 142 : ' He received 
the letters, standing up, bowing ; and kissed the papers with an air of gal 
lantry, that I thought greatly became him.' 

^ 2bid. vi. Letter xxxi. 236. 



165 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

descension, whenever yon shall distinguish the day of the year, distinguished as i\ 
will be to the end of my life that shall give me the greatest blessing of it and con- 
firm me. For ever yours, Charles Grandisoa. ' ^ 

A wax figure could not be more proper. All is in the same taste 
There are eight wedding-coaches, each with four horses ; Sir Charles 
is attentive to old people ; at table, the gentlemen, each with a napkin 
under his arm, wait upon the ladies ; the bride is ever on the point of 
fainting ; he throws himself at her feet in every kind of way : 

* What, my love ! In compliment to the best of parents, resume your usnal 
presence of mind. I, else, who shall glory before a thousand witnesses in receiving 
the honour of your hand, shall be ready to regret that I acquiesced so cheerfully 
with the wishes of those parental friends for a public celebration.' * 

Salutations begin, compliments fly about ; a swarm of proprieties flutter* 
around, like a troop of little love-cherubs, and their devout wings serve 
to sanctify the blessed tendernesses of the happy couple. Tears abound; 
Harriet bemoans the fate of Sir Hargrave Poilexfen, whilst Sir Charles, 

* In a soothing, tender, and respectful manner, put his arm round me, and taking 
my own handkerchief, unresisted, wiped away the tears as they fell on my cheek. 
Sweet humanity ! Charming sensibility ! Check not the kindly gush. Dewdiopa 
of heaven ! (wiping away my tears, and kissing the handkerchief), dew-di'ops of 
heaven, from a mind like that heaven mild and gracious ! ' * 

It is too much ; we are surfeited, we tell ourselves that thes'e phrases 
should be accompanied by a mandoline. The most patient of mortals 
feels himself sick at heart when he has swallowed a thousand pages of 
this sentimental twaddle, and all the milk and water of love. To crown 
all, Sir Charles, seeing Harriet embrace her rival, sketches the plan of 
a little temple, dedicated to friendship, to be built on the very spot; it 
is the triumph of mythological bad taste. At the end, bouquets shower 
down as at the opera ; all the characters sing in unison a chorus in 
praise of Sir Charles, and his wife says : 

* But could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who was the most duti- 
ful of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers ; the most faithful of friends : 
who is good upon principle in every relation of life ? ' * 

• 
He is great, he is generous, delicate, pious, irreproachable ; he has never 
done a mean action, nor made a wrong gesture. His conscience and 
his wig are unsullied. Amen I Let us canonise him, and stuff him 
with straw. 

Nor, my dear Richardson, have you, great as you are, exactly all 
the wit which is necessary in order to have enough. By seeking to 
serve morality, you prejudice it. Do you know the effect of ""these 
edifying advertisements which you stick on at the beginning or end oi 

• Sii' diaries Grandison, vi. Letter xxxiii. 252. "^ Ibid. vi. Letter lii. 358. 

* Ibid. vi. Letter xxxi. 233, •* Ibid. vii. Letter Ixi. 336, 



CHAP. Vl.i THE NOVELISTS. 168 

your books ? We arc repelled, lose emotion, see the black-gowned 
preacher come snuffling out of the worldly dress which he had assumed 
for an hour; we are annoyed by the deceit. Insinuate morality, but 
do not inflict it. Remember there is a substratum of rebellion in the 
human heart, and that if we too openly set ourselves to wall it up 
through discipline, it escapes and looks for free air outside. You print 
Rt the end of Pamela the catalogue of the virtues of which she is an 
example ; the reader yawns, forgets his pleasure, ceases to believe, and 
asks himself if the heavenly heroine was not an ecclesiastical puppet, 
trotted out to give him a lesson. You relate at the end of Clarissa 
Harlowe the punishment of all the wicked, great and small, sparing 
none ; the reader laughs, says that things happen otherwise in this 
world, and bids you put in here, like Arnolphe,^ a description ' of the 
cauldrons in which the souls of those who have led evil lives are to 
boil in the infernal regions.' We are not such fools as you take us for. 
There is no need that you should shout to make us afraid ; that you 
should write out the lesson by itself, and in capitals, in order to distin- 
guish it. We love art, and you have a scant amount of it ; we want to 
be pleased, and you don't care to please us. You copy all the letters, 
detail the conversations, tell everything, prune nothing ; your novels 
fill many volumes ; spare us, use the scissors ; be a literary man, not a 
registrar of archives. Do not pour out your library of documents on 
the high-road. Art is different from nature ; the latter draws out, the 
first condenses. Twenty letters of twenty pages do not display a cha- 
racter ; but one sharp word does. You are rendered heavy by your 
conscience, which drags you along step by step and low on the ground ; 
you are afraid of your genius; you rein it in ; you dare not use loud 
cries and frank words for violent moments. You flounder into em- 
phatic and well-wntten phrases ; ^ you will not show nature as it is, as 
Shakspeare shows it, wdien, stung by passion as by a hot iron, it cries 
out, rears, and plunges over your barriers. You cannot love it, and 
your punishment ii that you cannot see it.** 

* A selfish and misanthropical cynic in Molike's Ecole des Femmes. — Tr. 

* Clarissa and Pamela employ too many. 

* In Novels and Novelists, by W. Foisyth, 1871, it is said, eh. vii. : 'To me 1 
confess, Clarissa Harlowe is an unpleasant, not to say odious book. ... If any 
book deserved the charge of sickly sentimentality, it is this ; and that it should liave 
once been so widily popular, and thought admirably adapted to instruct young 
women in lessons of virtue and religion, shows a strange and perverted state of the 
public taste, not to say public morals.' Mrs. Oiiphant, in her Historical Sketches 
of the Reign of George Second, 1869, says of the same novel (ii. x. 264) : 'Richard- 
son was a respectable tradesman, ... a good printer, ... a comfortable soul^ 
, . . never owing a guinea nor transgressing a rule ot morality ; and yet so much 
n peel, ttiAt fie ixas addoa ac least ono ctiai-acler {Clarissa Har!o"W€) to the im^ 
heriiance of tne world, of which ShaKspeare need not have I'ntn sslmnied— 
the lijoai celostid] tL:n^-. the highest e1?ort of liis tfOusratUu '-—T-ft 



170 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III. 



V. 

Fielding protests on behalf of nature ; and certaiiilj, to see his 
actions and his persons, we might think him made expressly for that 
a robust, strongly built man, above six feet high, sanguine, with an ex- 
cess of good humour and animal spirits, loyal, generous, affectionate, and 
brave, but inf.prudent, extravagant, a drinker, a roysterer, ruined as it 
were by heirloom, having seen the ups and downs of life, bespattered, 
but always jolly. Lady Wortley Montague says of him : * His happy 
constitution made him forget everything when he was before a venison 
party, or over a flask of champagne.' ^ Nature sways him ; he is some- 
what coarse but generous. He does not restrain himself, he indulges, ha 
follows nature's bent, not too choice in his course, not confining himself to 
banks, muddy, but abundantly and in a broad channel. From the outset 
an abundance of health and physical impetuosity plunges him into gross 
jovial excess, and the immoderate sap of youth bubbles up in him until 
he marries and becomes ripe in years. He is gay, and seeks gaiety ; he 
is careless, and has not even literary vanity. One day Garrick begged 
him to cut down an awkward scene, and told him * that a repulse would 
flurry him so much, he should not be able to do justice to the part.' 
* If the scene is not a good one, let them find that out.' Just as was 
foreseen, the house made a violent uproar, and the performer tried to 
quell it by retiring to the green-room, where the author was supporting 
his spirits with a bottle of champagne. ' What is the matter, Garrick ? 
are they hissing me now ? ' * Yes, just the same passage that I wanted 
you to retrench.' * Oh,' replied the author, ' I did not give them credit 
for it; they have found it out, have they?'^ In this easy manner 
he took all mischance. He went ahead without feeling the bruises 
much, like a confident man, whose heart expands and whose skin is thick. 
When he inherited some money he feasted, gave dinners to his neigh- 
bours, kept a pack of hounds and a lot of magnificent lackeys in yellow 
livery. In three years he had spent it all ; but courage remained, he 
finished his law studies, wrote two folios on the rights of the crown, 
became a magistrate, destroyed bands of robbers, and earned in the 
mojit insipid of labours * the dirtiest money upon earth.' Disgust, weari- 
ness did not affect him ; he was too solidly made to have the nerves of 
a woman. Force, activity, invention, tenderness, all overflowed in him. 
He had a mother's fondness for his children, adored his wife, became 
almost mad when he lost her, found no other consolation than to weep 
with his maid-servant, and ended by marrying that good and honest 
girl, that he might give a mother to his children ; the last trait in the 
portrait of this valiant plebeian heart, quick in telling all, possessing 

■ Lady Montague's Letters, ed. Lord Wharncliffe, 2d ed. 3 vols. 1 837 ; Lei 
ier to the Countess of Bute, iii. 120. 
"^ Roscoe's Life of Fielding, p. xxv. 



CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 171 

no dislikes, but all the best parts of man, except delicacy. We read 
his books as we drink a pure, wholesome, and rougli wine, which cheeri 
Vid fortifies us, and which wants nothing but bouquet. 

Such a man was sure to dislike Richardson. He who loves expau' 
five and liberal nature, drives from him like foes the solemnity,- sadness, 
and pruderies of the Puritans. To begin with, he caricatures Richaid- 
8on. His first hero, Joseph, is the brother of Pamela, and resists the 
proposals of his mistress, as Pamela does those of her master. The 
temptation, touching in the case of a girl, becomes comical in that of a 
young man, and the tragic turns into the grotesque. Fielding laughs 
heartily, like Rabelais, like Scarron. He imitates the emphatic style ; 
ruffles the petticoats and bobs the wigs ; upsets with his rude jests all 
the seriousness of conventionality. If you are refined, or simply well 
dressed, don't go along with him. He will take you to prisons, inns, 
dunghills, the mud of the roadside ; he will make you flounder among 
rollicking, scandalous, vulgar adventures, and crude pictures. He has 
plenty of words at command, and his sense of smell is not delicate. 
Mr. Joseph Andrews, after leaving Lady Booby, is felled to the ground, 
left naked in a ditch, for dead; a stage-coach came by; a lady objects 
to receive a naked man inside ; and the gentlemen, ' though there were 
several greatcoats about the coach,* could not spare them ; the coach- 
man, who had two greatcoats spread under him, refused to lend either, 
lest they should be made bloody.^ This is but the outset, judge of the 
rest. Joseph and his friend, the good Parson Adams, give and receive 
a vast number of cuffs ; blows resound ; cans of pigs' blood are thrown 
at their heads ; dogs tear their clothes to pieces ; they lose their horse. 
Joseph is so good-looking, that he is assailed by the maid-servant, 
* obliged to take her in his arms and to shut her out of the room ;'* 
they have never any money ; they are threatened with being sent to 
prison. Yet they go on in a merry fashion, as their brothers in 
Fielding's other novels. Captain Booth and Tom Jones. These hailstorms 
of blows, these tavern brawls, this noise of broken warming-pans and 
basins flung at heads, this medley of incidents and downpouring o/ 
mishaps, combine to make the most joyous music. All these honest 
folk fight well, walk well, eat well, drink still better. It is a pleasure 
to observe these potent stomachs ; roast-beef goes down into them as 
to its natural place. Do not say that these good arms practise too 
much on their neighbours' skins : the neighbours' hides are healthy, and 
always heal quickly. Decidedly life is a good thing, and we will go along 
with Fielding, smiling by the way, with a broken head and a bellyful. 

Shall we merely laugh ? There are many things to be seen on ^ur 
journey: the sentiment of nature is a talent, like the understanding oi 
certain rules ; and Fielding, turning his back on Richardson, opens up a 
domain as wide as that of his rivah What we call nature is this brood 

* The Adventures of Joseph Andreios, bk. i. ch. xii. * lUd. i. ch xviii. 



172 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IIJ 

of secret passions, often malicious, generally vulgar, always blind, whicb 
tremble and fret within us, ill-covered by the cloak of decency and 
reason under which we try to disguise them ; we think we lead them, 
and they lead us ; we think our actions our own, they are theirs. They 
are so many, so strong, so interwoven, so ready to rise, break forth, be 
carried away, that their movements elude all our reasoning and cuf 
gras|; This is Fielding's domain ; his art and pleasure, like Molieie's, 
are in lifting a corner of the cloak ; his characters parade with a rational 
air, and suddenly, through a vista, the reader perceives the inner 
turmoil of vanities, follies, lusts, and secret rancours Avhich make them 
move. Thus, when Tom Jones' arm is broken, philosopher Square comes 
to console him by an application of stoical maxims ; but to prove to 
him that pain is an indifferent matter, he bites his tongue, and lets slip 
an oath or two ; whereupon Parson Thwackum, his opponent and rival, 
assures him that his mishap is a warning of Providence, and both are 
nearly coming to blows.^ Another time, the prison chaplain having 
aired his eloquence, and entreated the condemned man to repent, 
accepts from him a bowl of punch, because Scripture says nothing 
against this liquor; and after drinking, repeats his last sermon against 
the pagan philosophers. Thus unveiled, natural impulse has a grotesque 
vappearance ; the people advance gravely, cane in hand, but in our eyes 
they are all naked. Understand, they are every whit naked; and some 
of their attitudes are very lively. Ladies will do well not to enter here. 
This powerful genius, frank and joyous, loves boisterous fairs like 
Eubens ; the red faces, beaming with good hiunour, sensuality, and 
energy, move about his pages, flutter hither and thither, and jostle each 
other, and their overflowing instincts break forth in violent actions. Out 
of such he creates his chief characters. He has none more lifelike than 
these, more broadly sketched in bold and dashing outline, with a more 
wholesome colour. If sober people like Allworthy remain in a corner 
cf his vast canvas, characters full of natural impulse, like Western, stand 
out with a relief and brightness, never seen since Falstaff. Western is 
a country squire, a good fellow in the main, but a drunkard, always in 
iKe saddle, full of oaths, ready with coarse language, blows, a sort of 
dull carter, hardened and excited by the brutality of the race, th(! 
wildness of a country life, by violent exercises, by abuse of coarse food 
and strong drink, full of English and rustic pride and prejudice, having 
never been disciplined by the constraint of the world, because he lives: 
in the country ; nor by that of education, since he can hardly road ; 
nor of reflection, since he cannot put two ideas together ; nor of autho- 
rity, because he is rich and a justice of the peace, and given up, like 
a noisy and creaking weathercock, to every gust of passion, When 
contradicted, he grows red, foams at the mouth, wishes to thrash some 
one. * Doff thy clothes.' They are even obliged to stop him by main 



History of a Foundling, bk. v. ch. ii. 



CHAP VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 173 

force. He hastens to go to Allwortlty to comp.ain of Tom Jones, who 
has dared to fall in love with his daughter : 

* Ii's well for un I could not get at un : I'd a licked un : I'd a spoiled M» 
caterwauling ; I'd a taught the son of a whore to meddle with meat for his master. 
He shan't ever have a morsel of meat of mine, or a varden to huy it. If she wiQ 
ha un, one smock shall be her portion. I'd sooner give my estate to the sinkiug 
ivndf that it may be sent to Hanover, to corrupt our nation with.'* 

Ail worthy says he is very sorry for it : 

* Pox o' your sorrow. It will do me abundance of good, when I have lost my 
oaiy child, my poor Sophy, that was the joy of my heart, and all the hope and 
comfort of my age. But I am resolved I will turn her out o' doors ; she shall beg, 
and starve, and rot in the streets. Not one hapenny, not a hapenny shall she ever 
hae o' mine. The son of a bitch was always good at finding a hare sitting and be 
rotted to'n ; I little thought what puss he was looking after. But it shall be the 
worst he ever vound in his life. She shall be no better than carrion ; tlie skin o'er 
it is all he shall ha, and zu you may tell un.' * 

His daughter tries to reason with him ; he storms. Then she speaks of 
tenderness and obedience; he leaps about the room for joy, and tears 
come to his eyes. Then she recommences her prayers ; he grinds his 
teeth, clenches his fists, stamps his feet : 

* I am determined upon this match, and ha him you shall, damn me, if shat 
nnt. Damn me, if shat unt, though dost hang thyself the next morning. ' • 

He can find no reason ; he can only tell her to be a good girl. He 
contradicts himself, defeats his own plans ; is like a blind bull, which 
butts to right and left, doubles on his path, touches no one, and paws 
the ground. At the least sound he rushes head foremost, offensively, 
knowing not why. His ideas are only starts or transports of flesh and 
blood. Never has the animal so completely covered and absorbed the 
man. It makes him grotesque ; he is so natural and so brute-like : he 
allows himself to be led, and speaks like a child. He says: 

* I don't know how 'tis, but, Allworthy, you make me do always just as you 
please ; and yet I have as good an estate as you, and am in the commission of the 
peace just as yourself. ' * 

Nothing holds or lasts with him ; he is impulsive in everything ; he 
lives but for the moment. Rancour, interest, no passions of long con- 
tinuance affect him. He embraces people whom he just before wanted 
to knock down. Everything with him disappears in the fire of the 
passion of the hour, which comes over his brain, as it were, in sudden 
waves, which drown the rest. Now that he is reconciled to Tom, he 
cannot rest until Tom marries his daughter : 

* To her, boy, to her, go to her. That's it, little honeys, that's it. Well, 
what, is it all over ? Hath she appointed the day, boy ? What, shall it be to* 
morrow or next day ? I shan't be put off a minute longer than next day, I an 

' History of a Foundling, bk. vi. ch. x. ^ jjj^^ 

* Ibid. \vi. ch. ii. •» Ibid, xviii. ch, ix. 



174 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II\ 

•^solved. ... I tell thee it is all flimflam. Zoodilcers ! she'd have the wedding 
to-niglit with all her heart. Would'st not, Sophy ? . . . Where the devil is Ali- 
worthy? . . . Harkee, Alh\orthy, I'll bet thee five ponnds to a crown, we have a 
boy to-morrow nine months. But prithee, tell me what wut ha ? "Wut ha Bur- 
gundy, Champaign e, or what ? For please Jupiter^ we'll make a night on't. ' - 

And when he becomes a grandfather, he spends his time in the nursei^, 
* where he declares the tattling of his little granddaughter, who is 
above a year and a half old, is sweeter music than the finest cry cf 
d(^gs in England.'* This is pure nature, and no one has displayed 
it more free, more impetuous, ignoring all rule, more abandoned to 
physical passions, than Fielding. 

It is not because he loves it like the great impartial artists, Shak- 
epeare and Goethe ; on the contrary, he is eminently a moralist ; and 
it is one of the great marks of the age, that reformatory designs are as 
decided with him as with others. He gives his fictions a practical aim, 
and commends them by saying that the serious and tragic tone sours, 
whilst the comic style disposes men to be ' more full of good humour 
and benevolence.' ^ Moreover, he satirises vice ; he looks upon the 
passions not as simple forces, but as objects of approbation or blame. 
At every step he suggests moral conclusions ; he wants us to take sides ; 
he discusses, excuses, or condemns. He writes an entire novel in an 
ironical style,* to attack and destroy rascality and treason. He is more 
than a painter, he is a judge, and the two parts agree in him. For a 
psychology produces a morality : where there is an idea of man, there 
is an ideal of man ; and Fielding, who has seen in man nature as 
opposed to law, praises in man nature as opposed to law ; so that, ac- 
cording to him, virtue is but an instinct. Generosity in his eyes is, 
like all sources of action, a primitive inclination ; like all sources of 
action, it flows on, receiving no good from catechisms and phrases ; 
like all sources of action, it flows at times too copious and quick. Take 
it as it is, and do not try to oppress it under a discipline, or to replace 
it by an argument. Mr. Kichardson, your heroes, so correct, con- 
strained, so carefully made up with their impedimenta of maxims, are 
cathedral vergers, of use but to drone in a procession. Square off 
Thwackum, your tirades on philosophical or Christian virtue are mere 
words, only fit to be heard after dinner. Virtue is in the mood and 
the blood ; a gossipy education and cloistral severity do not assist it. 
Give me a man, not a show-mannikin or a mere machine, to spout 
phrases. My hero is the man who is born generous, as a dog is born 
affectionate, and a horse brave. I want a living heart, full of warmth 
and force, not a dry pedant, bent on squaring all his actions. This 
ardent character will perhaps carry the hero too far ; I pardon his esca- 
pades. He will get drunk unawares ; lie will pick up a girl on his way i 

' History of a Foundling, xviii. eh, xii. 

* Last chapter of the History of a Foundling. ^ Preface to Jo8ep h A ndrewy 

* Jonathan Wild. 



CHAP. Vl.j THE NOVELISTS. 17ft 

he win hit o it with a zest • he will not refuse a duel ; he will suifer a find 
iady tu appreciate him, and will accept her purse ; he will be imprudent, 
will injure his reputation, like Tom Jones; he will be a bad manager, 
and will get into debt, like Booth. Pardon him for having muscles, 
nerves, senses, and that overflow of anger or ardour which urges for- 
ward animals of a noble breed. But he will let himself be beaten till 
he bleeds, before he betrays a poor gamekeeper. He will pardon hia 
CTiortal enemy readily, from sheer kindness, and will send him money 
fccretly. He will be loyal to his mistress, and will be faithful to her, 
§pita of all offers, in the worst destitution, and without the least hope 
of winning her. He will be liberal with his purse, his trouble, his 
sufferings, his blood ; he will not boast of it ; he will have neither 
pride, vanity, affectation, nor dissimulation ; bravery and kindness will 
abound in his heart, as good water in a good spring. He may be 
stupid, like Captain Booth, a gambler, even extravagant, unable to 
manage his affairs, liable one day through temptation to be unfaithful 
to his wife ; but he will be so sincere in his repentance, his error will 
be so involuntary, he will be so carefully, genuinely tender, that she 
will love him exceedingly,^ and in good truth he will deserve it. He 
will be a nurse to her when she is ill, behave as a mother to her ; he 
will himself see to her lying-in ; he will feel towards her the adoration 
of a lover, always, before all the world, even before Miss Matthews, 
who sedaced him. He says : ' If I had the world, I was ready to 
lay it at my Amelia's feet ; and so, Heaven knows, I would ten thou- 
sand worlds,' ^ He weeps like a child on thinking of her ; he listens 
to her like a Uttle child. ' I believe I am able to recollect much the 
greatest part (of what she uttered); for the impression is never to 
be effaced from my memory.' ^ He dressed himself ' with all the ex- 
pedition imnginable, singing, whistling, hurrying, attempting by every 
method to banish thought,'* and galloped away because he cannot 
endure her tears. In this soldier's body, under this brawler's thick 
breastplate, there is a true woman's heart, which melts, which a trifle 
disturbs, when she whom he loves is in question ; timid in its tenderness, 
inexhaustible in devotion, in trust, in self-denial, in the communication 
of its feelings. When a man possesses this, overlook the rest ; with all 
his excesses and his follies, he is better than your well-dressed devotees. 
To this we reply : You do well to defend nature, but let it be on 
condition that you supjjress nothing. One thing is wanted in your 

' Amelia is the perfect English wife, an excellent cook, so devoted as to pardon 
hei husband his accidental infidelities, alwa^'^s looking forward to the accoucheur. 
She says even (bk. iv. «ih. vi.), 'Dear Billy, thou:5h ray imderstanding be much 
inferior to yours,' etc. She is excessively modest, always blushing and tender. 
Bagillard having written her some love-letters, she throws them away, and says 
(bk. ill. eh. ix.) : * I would not have such a letter in my possession for the uni 
Yeree ; I thought my eyes contaminated with reading it/ 

• Amelia, 6k. ii. eh. viii. ^ j^.^^Z. bk, iii. eh. i. * Ihid. bk iii, ch. ii 



176 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Btrongly-built folks — refinement ; the delicate dreams, enthusiastic ele- 
vation, and trembling delicacy, exist in nature equally with coarse 
vigour, noisy hilarity, and frank kindness. Poetry is true, like prose ; 
and if there are eaters and boxers, there are also knights and artists 
Cervantes, whom you imitate, and Shakspeare, whom you recall, had 
this refinement, and they have painted it ; in this abundant harvest-, 
with which you fill your arms, you have forgott-en the flowers. Wo 
tire at last of your fisticuffs and tavern bills. Yo.i flounder too readUy 
in cowhouses, among the ecclesiastical pigs of Parson Trulliber. We 
would fain see you have more regard for the modesty of your heroines ; 
wayside accidents raise their tuckers too often ; and Fanny, Sophia, 
Mrs. Heartfree, may continue pure, yet we cannot help remembering 
the assaults which have lifted their petticoats. You are so rude your- 
self, that you are insensible to what is atrocious. You persuade Tom 
Jones falsely, yet for an instant, that Mrs. Waters, whom he has made 
his mistress, is his mother, and you leave the reader long buried in the 
shame of this supposition. And then you are obliged to become un- 
natural in order to depict love ; you can give but constrained letters ; 
the transports of your Tom Jones are only the author's phrases. For 
want of ideas he declaims odes. You are only aware of the impetuosity 
of the senses, the upwelling of the blood, the effusion of tenderness, 
but not of the nervous exaltation and poetic rapture. Man, such as 
you conceive him, is a good buffalo ; and perhaps he is the hero re- 
quired by a people which is itself called John Bull. 

VI. 

At all events this hero is powerful and formidable ; and if at this 
period you collect in your mind the scattered features of the faces which 
the novel-writers have made pass before us, you will feel yourself trans- 
ported into a half-barbarous state, and to a race whose energy must 
terrify or revolt all your gentleness. Now open a more literal copyist 
of life : they are doubtless all such, and declare — Fielding amongst 
them — that if they imagine a feature, it is because they have seen it ; 
but Smollett has this advantage, that, being mediocre, he chalks out 
the figures insipidly, prosaically, without transforming them by the 
illumination of genius : the joviality of Fielding and the rigour of 
Richardson are not there to lit up or ennoble the pictures. Observe 
carefully Smollett's manners ; listen to the confessions of this imitatoi 
of Lesage, who reproaches that author with being gay, and jesting with 
the mishaps of his hero. He says : 

* The disgraces of Gil Bias are, for the most part, such as rather excite mirth 
than compassion : he himself laughs at them, and his transitions from distress to 
happiness, or at least ease, are so sudden that neither the reader has time to pity 
him, nor himself to be acquainted mth aflSiction. This conduct . . . prevents 
that generous indignation which ought to animate the reader against the sordid 
Bnd vicious disposition of the world. I have attempted to represent modest merii 



CHAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 171 

struggling with every diflBculty to which a friendless ^rphan is exposed from his 
own want of experience as well as from the selfishness, envy, malice, and base 
indifference of mankind ' ^ 

It is no longer merely showers of blows, but also of knife and sword 
thrusts, as well as pistol shots. In such a world, when a girl goes out 
she runs the risk of coming back a woman ; and when a man goes out, 
he runs the risk of not coming back at all. The women bury their 
nails in the faces of the men ; the well-bred gentlemen, like Peregrine 
Pickle, whip gentlemen soundly. Having deceived a husband, who 
refuses to demand satisfaction. Peregrine calls his two servants, ' and 
ordered them to duck him in the canal.' * ]\lisrepresented by a curate, 
whom he has horsewhipped, he gets an innkeeper ' to rain a shower of 
blows upon his (the priest's) carcass,' who also * laid hold of one of his 
ears with his teeth, and bit it unmercifully.'* I could quote from 
memory a score more of outrages begun or completed. Savage insults, 
broken jaws, men on the ground beaten with sticks, the churlish sour- 
ness of conversations, the coarse brutality of jests, give an idea of a pack 
of bull-dogs eager to fight each other, who, when they begin to get 
lively, still amuse themselves by tearing away pieces of flesh. A French- 
man can hardly endure the story of Roderick Random^ or rather that of 
Smollett, when he is in a man-of-war. He is pressed, that is to say, 
carried off by force, knocked down, attacked with ' cudgels and drawn 
cutlasses,' * pinioned like a malefactor,' and rolled on board, covered 
with blood, before the sailors, who laugh at his wounds ; and one of 
them, * seeing my hair clotted together with blood, as it were, into dis- 
tinct cords, took notice that my bows were manned with the red ropes, 
instead of my side.' * ' He desired one of his fellow-captives, who was 
unfettered, to take a handkerchief out of his pocket, and tie it round 
his head to stop the bleeding ; he pulled out his handkerchief, 'tis true, 
but sold it before my face to a bum-boat woman for a quart of gin.' 
Captain Oakum declares he will have no more sick in his ship, ordered 
them to be brought on the quarter-deck, commanded that some should 
receive a round dozen ; some spitting blood, others fainting from 
weakness, whilst not a few became delirious ; many died, and of the 
sixty-one sick, only a dozen remained alive.* To get into this dark, 
suffocating hospital, swarming with vermin, it is necessary to creep 
under the close hammocks, and forcibly separate them with the shoulders, 
before you can reach the patients. Read the story of Miss V^^'illiams, a 
wealthy young girl, of good family, reduced to the trade of a prostitute, 
robbed, hungry, sick, shivering, strolling about the streets in the Jong 
winter nights, amongst ' a number of naked wretches red'aced to rags 
and filth, huddled together like swine, in the corner of a dark alley,' 
who depend * upon the addresses of the lowest class, and are fain to 

Preface to Roderick Eandom. ^ Peregrine Pickle, ch. Ix. 

' Ibid. ch. xxix. '' Ibid. ch. xxiv. * Ibid, ch, xxvii. 

VOL II. M 



l^S rHE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

allay tlte rage of htinger and cold with gin ; degenerate into a brutal 
insensibility, rot and die upon a dunghill.'* She was thrown into 
Bridewell, where, she says, * in the midst of a hellish crew I was sub- 
jected to the tyranny of a barbarian, who imposed upon me tasks that 
I could not possibly perform, and then punished my incapacity with th^ 
utmost rigour and inhumanity. I was often whipped into a swoon, and 
lashed out of it, during which miserable intervals I was robbed by my 
fellow-prisoners of everything about me, even to my cap, shoes, and 
stockings : I was not only destitute of necessaries, but even of food, so 
that my wretchedness was extreme.' One night she tried to hang her- 
self. Two of her fellow-prisoners, who watched her, prevented her. 
* In the morning my attempt was published among the prisoners, and 
punished with thirty stripes, the pain of which, co-operating with my 
disc'ippointment and disgrace, bereft me of my senses, and threw me 
into an ecstasy of madness, during which I tore the flesh from my bones 
with my teeth, and dashed my head against the pavement.' ^ In vain 
you turn your eyes on the hero of the novel, Roderick Random, to 
repose a little after such a spectacle. He is sensual and coarse, like 
Fielding's heroes, but not good and jovial as these. The generous wine 
of Fielding, in Smollett's hands, becomes brandy of the dram-shop. 
His heroes are selfish ; they revenge themselves barbarously. Roderick 
oppresses the faithful Strap, and ends by marrying him to a prostitute. 
Peregrine Pickle attacks by a most brutal and cowardly plot the honour 
of a young girl, whom he wants to marry, and who is the sister of his 
best friend. We get to hate his rancorous, concentrated, obstinate 
character, which is at once that of an absolute king accustomed to please 
himself at the expense of others' happiness, and that of a boor with only 
the varnish of education. We should be uneasy at living near him ; he 
is good for nothing but to shock or tyrannise over others. We avoid 
him as we would a dangerous beast ; the sudden rush of animal passion 
and the force of his firm will are so overpowering in him, that when he 
fails he becomes outrageous. He draws his sword against an innkeeper ; 
he must bleed him, grows mad. Everything, even to his generosities, 
is spoiled by pride ; all, even to his gaieties, is clouded by harshness. 
Peregrine's amusements are barbarous, and those of Smollett are after 
the same style. He exaggerates caricature ; he thinks to amuse us by 
showing us mouths gaping to the ears, and noses half-a-foot long ; he 
magnifies a national prejudice or a professional trick until it absorbs 
the whole character ; he jumbles together the most repulsive oddities,-— 
ft Lieutenant Lismahago half roasted by Red Indians ; old jack-tars who 
pass their life in shouting and travestying all sorts of ideas into their 
nautical jargon ; old maids as ugly as monkeys, as withered as skeletons, 
and as sour as vinegar ; maniacs steeped in pedantry, hypochondria, 
misanthropy, and silence. Far from sketching them slightly, as Le Sage 

' Peregrine Pickle, ch. xxiii. " Ibid. 



OH A p. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 179 

does in Gil Bids, he brings into prominent relief each disagreeable fea- 
ture, overloads it with details, without considering whether they are too 
numerous, without reflecting that they are excessive, without feeUng 
that they are odious, without perceiving that they are disgusting. The 
pubhc whom he addresses is on a level with his energy and his coarse- 
ness ; and in crder to move such nerves, a writer cannot strike too hard.* 
But, at the same time, to civilise this barbarity and to control this 
violence, a faculty appears, common to all, authors and public : serious 
reflection attached to the observation of character. Their eyes are 
turned toward the inner man. They note exactly the individual pecu- 
liarities, and mark them with such a precise imprint that their personage 
becomes a type, which cannot be forgotten. They are psychologists. 
The title of a comedy of old Ben Jonson's, Evert/ Man in his Humour^ 
indicates how this taste is ancient and national amongst them. Smollett 
writes a whole novel, Humphrey Clinker^ on this idea. No action ; the 
book is a collection of letters written during a tour in Scotland and 
England. Each of the travellers, after his bent of mind, judges variously 
of the same objects. A generous, grumbling old gentleman, who amuses 
himself by thinking himself ill, a crabbed old maid in search of a husband; 
a lady's maid, ingenuous and vain, who bravely mutilates her spelling ; 
a series of originals, who one after another bring their oddities on the 
scene, — such are the characters : the pleasure of the reader consists in 
recognising their humour in their style, in foreseeing their follies, in 
perceiving the thre^ which pulls each of their motions, in verifying the 
agreement of their ideas and their actions. Push this study of human 
peculiarities to excess, and you will come upon the origin of Sterne's talent. 

Vll. 

Figure to yourself a man who goes on a journey, wearing on 
his eyes a pair of marvellously magnifying spectacles. A hair on 
his hand, a speck on a tablecloth, a fold of a moving garment, will 
interest him : at this rate he will not go very far ; he will go six 
steps in a day, and will not quit his room. So Sterne writes four 

^ In Novels and Novelists, by W. Forsyth, the author says, ch. v. 159 : * What 
iB the character of most of these books (novels) which were to correct follies aud 
regulate morality ? Of a gi-eat many of them, and especially those of Fielding 
and Smollett, the prevailing features are grossuess and licentiousness. Lcr« 
degenerates into a mere animal passion. . . . The language of the characters 
abounds in oaths and gi-oss expressions. . . . The heroines allow themselves to 
take part m conversations whicli no modest woman would have heard mthout a 
blush. And yet these novels were the delight of a bygone generation, and wer« 
greedily devoured by women as well as men. Are we therefore to conclude that 
om" great-gi'eat-grandmothers . . . were less chaste and moral than their female 
posterity ? I answer, certainly not ; but we must infer that they were inferior to 
them in delicacy and refinement. They were accustomed to hear a spade called • 
gpade, and words which would shock the more fastidious ear in the reign tf I 
Queen Victoria were then in counuoii and daily use' — Tn. 



180 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Ti'Inmes to record the birth of his hero. He perceives the infinitely 
little, and describes the imperceptible. A man parts his hair on on* 
side : this, according to Sterne, depends on his whole character, which 
is of a piece with that of his father, his mother, his uncle, and his whole 
ancestry ; it depends on the structure of his brain, which depends oa 
the circumstances of his conception and his birth, and these on the 
fancies of his parents, the humour of the moment, the talk of the pre- 
ceding hour, the contrarieties of the last curate, a cut thumb, twenty 
knots made on a bag ; I know not how many things besides. Tiie six 
or eight volumes of Tristram Shandy are employed in summing them 
up ; for the smallest and dullest incident, a sneeze, a badly-shavec 
beard, drags after it an inextricable network of inter-involved causes^, 
which from above, below, right and left, by invisible prolongations and 
ramifications, are buried in the depths of a character and in the remote 
vistas of events. Instead of extracting, like the novel-writers, the prin- 
cipal root, Sterne, with marvellous devices and success, devotes himself 
to drawing out the tangled skein of numberless threads, which are 
sinuously immersed and dispersed, so as to suck in from all sides the 
■ap and the life. Slender, intertwined, buried as they are, he finds 
them ; he extricates them without breaking, brings them to the light; 
and there, where we fancied was but a stalk, we see with wonder the 
underground mass and vegetation of the multiplied fibres and fibrils, 
by which the visible plant grows and is supported. 

This is truly a strange talent, made up of blindness and insight, 
which resembles those diseases of the retina in which the over-excited 
nerve becomes at once dull and penetrating, incapable of seeing what 
the most ordinary eyes perceive, capable of observing what the most 
piercing sight misses. In f^ict, Sterne is a sickly and eccentric humoristj 
an ecclesiastic and a libertine, a fiddler and a philosopher, * who whim- 
pered over a dead donkey, but left his mother to starve,' selfish ia 
act, selfish in word, who in everything is the reverse of himself and 
of others. His book is like a great storehouse of articles of virtu, 
where the curiosities of all ages, kinds, and countries lie jumbled in a 
heap ; texts of excommunication, medical consultations, passages of un- 
known or imaginary authors, scraps of scholastic erudition, strings of 
absurd histories, dissertations, addresses to the reader. His pen leads 
him ; he has neither sequence nor plan ; nay, when he lights upon 
anything orderly, he purposely contorts it ; with a kick he sends the pile 
of folios next to him over the history he has commenced, and dances on 
the top of them. He delights in disappointing us, in sending us astray 
by interruption! and outrages.^ Gravity displeases him, he treats it as 

* There is a distinct trace of a spirit similar to that which, is here sketched 
In a select few of the English writers. Pultock's Peter WUkins the FlyiTi^ 
Man. Amory's Life of John Bundc, and Southey's Doctor are instances oi 
this. Rabelais is probably their prototype. — Tr. 



CHAP VI.] THE NOVELISTS. 18j 

« i)ypocrite; to his liking folly is better, and he paints himself in 

Yorick. In a well-constituted mind ideas march cne after another, 
with uniform motion or acceleration ; in this uncouth brain they jump 
about like a rout of masks at a carnival, in troops, each dragging his 
neighbour by the feet, head, coat, amidst the most promiscuous and 
unforeseen hubbub. All his little lopped phrases are somersaults ; we 
pant as we read. The tone is never for two minutes the same ; laughter 
comes, then the beginning of emotion, then scandal, then wonder, then 
t-enderness, then laughter again. The mischievous joker pulls and en- 
tangles the threads of all our feelings, and makes us go hither, thither, 
irregularly, like puppets. Amongst these various threads there are 
twe which he pulls more willingly than the rest. Like all men who 
have nerves, he is subject to tenderness ; not that he is really kindly 
and tender ; on the contrary, his life is that of an egotist ; but on cer- 
tain days he must needs weep, and he makes us weep with him. He is 
moved on behalf of a captive bird, of a poor ass, which, accustomed to 
blows, ' looked up pensive,' and seemed to say, ' Don't thrash me with 
it (the halter) ; but if you will, you may.'^ He will write a couple of 
pages on the attitude of this donkey, and Priam at the feet of Achilles 
was not more touching. Thus in a silence, in an oath, in the most 
trifling domestic action, he hits upon exquisite refinements and little 
heroisms, a sort of charming flowers, invisible to everybody else, which 
grow in the dust of the driest road. One day Uncle Toby, the poor 
gick captain, catches, after ' infinite attempts,' a big buzzing fly, who 
has cruelly tormented him all dinner-time; he gets up, crosses the 
room on his suffering leg, and opening the window, cries : ' Go, poor 
devil, get thee gone : why should I hurt thee ? This world surely is 
wide enough to hold both thee and me.'^ This womanish sensibility 
is too fine to be described ; we should have to give a whole story — that 
of Lefevre, for instance — that the perfume might be inhaled ; this per- 
fume evaporates as soon as we touch it, and is like the weak fleeting 
odour of the plants, brought for one moment into a sick-chamber. 
What still more increases this sad sweetness, is the contrast of the free 
and easy waggeries which, like a hedge of nettles, encircles them on 
all sides. Sterne, like all men whose mechanism is over-excited, has 
irregular appetites. He loves the nude, not from a feeling of the 
beautiful, and in the manner of painters, not from sensuality and frank- 
nes? like Fielding, not from a search after pleasure, like Dorat, Boufflers, 
and all those refined pleasure-seekers, who at the same time were rhym- 
ing and enjoying themselves in France. If he goes into dirty places, 
it is because they are forbidden and not frequented. What he seeks 
there is singularity and scandal. The allurement of this forbidden fruit 
is not the fruit, but the prohibition; for he bites by preference where 

' Sterue's Works, 7 vols., 1783, 3 ; The Life and Opinions of Triatran 
Shandy, vii cli. xxxii, ^ Ibid. 1, ii. ch. xii. 



182 THE CLASSIC AGK [BOOK lU 

the fruit is withered or worm-eaten. That an e}.icurean delights in 
detailing the pretty sins of a pretty woman is nothing wonderful ; but 
that a novelist takes pleasure in watching the bedroom of a musty, 
fusty old couple, in observing the consequences of the fall of a burning 
chestnut in a pair of breeches,^ in detailing the questions of Mrs. Wad- 
man on the consequences of wounds in the groin, ^ can only be explained 
by the aberration of a perverted fancy, which finds its amusement in 
repugnant ideas, as spoiled palates are pleased by the pungent flavour 
of mouldy cheese.* Thus, to read Sterne we should wait for days when 
we are in a peculiar kind of humour, days of spleen, rain, or when 
through nervous irritation we are disgusted with rationality. In fjict, 
his characters are as unreasonable as himself. He sees in man nothing 
but fancy, and what he calls the hobby-horse — Uncle Toby's taste for 
fortifications, Mr. Shandy's fancy for oratorical tirades and philosophical 
systems. This hobby-horse, according to him, is like a wart, so small 
at first that we hardly perceive it, and only when it is in a strong light ; 
but it gradually increases, becomes covered with hairs, grows red, and 
buds out all around : its possessor, who is pleased with and admires it, 
nourishes it, until at last it is changed into a vast wen, and the whole 
face disappears under the invasion of the parasite excrescence. No one 
has equalled Sterne in the history of these human hypertrophies; he 
puts down the seed, feeds it gradually, makes the propagating threads 
creep round about, shows the little veins and microscopic arteries which 
inosculate within, counts the palpitations of the blood which passes 
through them, explains their changes of colour and increase of bulk. 
The psychological observer attains here one of his extreme develop- 
ments. A far advanced art is necessary to describe, beyond the con- 
fines of regularity and health, the exception or the degeneration ; and 
the English novel is completed here by adding to the representation of 
form the picture of deformations. 

vni. 

The moment approaches when purified manners will, by purifying 
the novel, impress npon it its final character. Of the two great ten- 
dencies manifested by it, native brutality and intense reflection, one at 
las conquers the other : literature, grown severe, expels from fiction 
the coarseness of Smollett and the indecencies of Sterne ; and the novel, 
in every respect moral, before falling into the almost prudish hands of 

* Tristram Shandy, 2, iv. ch. xxvii. * jm^^ 3^ i^, ch. xx. 

3 Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, Moore, have a tone of their own, whicX 
comes from their blood, or from their proximate or distant parentage — the Irish 
tone. So Hume, EoLertson, Smallett, W. Scott, Burns, Beattie, Reid, D. Stewart, 
stc., have the Scotch tone. In the Irish or Celtic tone we find an excess of chivalry, 
sensuality, expansion ; in short, a mind less equally balanced, more sympathetic and 
less practical. The Scotchman on the other hand, is an Englishman, eith«! 
=^lio-btly refined or narrowed, because he has suffered more and fasted more. 
ft 



iTftAP. 71.1 THE NOVELISTS. 185 

Miss Burney, passes into the noble hands of Goldsmitli. His Vicar o^' 
Wakefield is ' a prose idyl,* somewhat spoilt by phrases too well written, 
but at bottom as homely as a Flemish picture. Observe in Terburg 
or Mieris' paintings a woman at market or a burgomaster emptying his 
long glass of beer : the faces are vulgar, the ingenuousness is comical, 
the cookery occupies the place of honour ; yet these good folk are sc 
peaceful, s«^ contented with their small but secure happiness, that we 
envy them. The impression left by Goldsmith's book is pretty much 
the same. The excellent Dr. Primrose is a country clergyman, ths 
whole of whose adventures have for a long time consisted in ' migra- 
tions from the blue bed to the brown.' He has cousins, * even to the 
fortieth remove,' who came to eat his dinner and sometimes to borrow 
a pair of boots. His wife, who has all the education of the time, is a 
perfect cook, can almost read, excels in pickling and preserving, and at 
dinner gives the history of every dish. His daughters aspire to elegance, 
and even ' make a wash for the face over the fire.' His son Moses gets 
cheated at the fair, and sells the pony for a gross of green spectacles. 
Primrose himself writes treatises, which no one buys, against second 
marriages of the clergy ; writes beforehand in his Avife's epitaph, though 
she was still living, that she was the only wife of Dr. Primrose, and by 
way of encouragement, places this piece of eloquence in an elegant 
frame over the chimney-piece. But the household continues the even 
tenor of its way ; the daughters and the mother slightly domineer 
over the father of the family ; he lets them, like a good fellow ; and now 
and again delivers himself at most of an innocent jpst, busies himself 
in his new farm, with his two horses, wall-eyed Blackberry and the 
other without a tail : 

* Nothing could exceed the neatness of my enclosures, the elms a»d hedge-rows 
ftppearing with inexpressible beauty. . . . Our little habitation was situated at 
the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behmd, and a 
prattling river before ; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. . . . (It) con- 
sisted but of one story, and was covered with tliatch, which gave it an air cf greaT 
■nugness ; the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed. . . . Though the samt 
room sensed us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it the wai-mer. Besides, 
as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and copper.^, being 
iveii scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably 
relieved, and did not want richer furniture. ' ^ 

They make hay all together, sit under the honeysuckle to drink a 
bottle of gooseberry wine; the girls sing, the two little ones read ; and 
the parents ' would stroll down the sloping field, that was emcellished 
with blue bells and centaury:' 

* But let us have one bottle more, Deboiah, my life, and Moses, give ns a good 
aong. What thanks do we not owe to Heaven for thus bestowing tranquillity, 
health, and competence!. I think myself happier now than the greatest mo« 
arcli upon earth. He has no such fire-side, nor such pleasant face^ abou*. it,' 



The Viear of Wakefield, eh. iv, ' Ibid. ch. xvii. 



184 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Such Is moral happiness. Their misfortune is no less moral. The 
poor vicar has lost his fortune, and, removing to a small living, turns 
farmer. The squire of the neighbourhood seduces and carries off his 
eldest daughter ; his house takes fire ; his arm was burnt in a terrible 
manner in saving his two little children. He is put in prison, amongsli 
wretches and rogues, who swear and blaspheme, in a vile atmosphere, 
sleeping on straw, feeling that his illness increases, foreseeing that hit 
family Avill soon be without bread, learning that his daughter is dying. 
Yet hi5 does not give way : he remains a priest and head of a family, 
prescribes to each of them his duty ; encourages, consoles, orders, 
preaches to the prisoners, endures their coarse jests, reforms them; 
establishes in the prison useful work, and * institutes fines for punish- 
ment and rewards for industry.' It is not hardness of heart nor a 
morose temperament which gives him strength ; he has the most 
paternal soul, the most sociable, humane, open to gentle emotions and 
familiar tenderness. He says : 

• I have no resentment now ; and though he (the squire) has taken from me 
what I held dearer than all his treasuies, though he has wrung my heart (for I am 
sick almost to fainting, very sick, my fellow-prisoner), yet that shall never inspire 
me with vengeance. ... If this (my) submission can do him any pleasure, let 
him know, that if I have done him any injmy, I am sorry for it. ... I should 
detest my own heart, if I saw either pride or resentment lurking there. On the 
contrary, as my oppressor has been once ray parishioner, I hope one day to present 
hira up an unpolluted soul at the eternal tribunal. ' ^ 

Nothing is effectual : the wretch haughtily repulses the noble applica- 
tion of the vicar, and in addition causes his second daughter to be 
carried off, and the eldest son thrown into prison under a false accu- 
sation of mvirder. At this moment all the affections of the father are 
wounded, all his consolations lost, all his hopes ruined. *His heart 
weeps to behold ' all this misery, he was going to curse the cause of 
it all; but soon, returning to his profession and his duty, he thinks 
how he will prepare to fit his son and himself for eternity, and by way 
of being useful to as many people as he can, he wishes at the same 
time to exhort his fellow- prisoners. He 'made an effort to rise on the 
straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline against the 
wall; my son and his mother supported me on either side.'^ In this 
condition he speaks, and his sermon, contrasting with his condition, is 
the more moving. It is a dissertation in the English style, made up 
of close reasoning, seeking only to establish that, from the nature of 
pleasure and pain, the wretched must be repaid the balance of their 
sufferings in the life hereafter. We see the sources of this virtue, 
born of Christianity and natural kindness, but long nourished by inner 
reflection. Meditation, which usually produces only phrases, results 
with Dr. Primrose in actions. Verily reason has here taken the helm^ 

• The Vicar of WaUfield, ch. -xxviii. ' Ihid. cb. Txviii. 



OUAP. VI.] THE NOVELISTS. ly^j 

and it has taken it without oppressing other feelings ; a rare and excel- 
lent spectacle, which, uniting and harmonising in one character the best 
features of tlie manners and morals of the time and country, creates 
an admiration and love for pious and orderly, domestic and disciplined, 
laborious and rural life. Protestant and English virtue has not a more 
approved and amiable exemplar. Religious, affectionate, rational, the 
Vicar unites dispositions which seemed irreconcilable ; a clergyman, a 
farmer, a head of a family, he enhances those characters which appeared 
fit only for comic or homely parts. 

IX. 

In the centre of this group stands a strange character, the most 
esteemed of his time, a sort of literary dictator. Richardson was his 
friend, and gave him essays for his paper; Goldsmith, with an engag- 
ing vanity, admires him, whilst he suffers himself to be continually 
outshone by him ; Miss Burney imitates his style, and reveres him as 
a father. Gibbon the historian, Reynolds the painter, Garrick the 
actor, Burke the orator, Sir William Jones the Orientalist, come to his 
club to converse with him. Lord Chesterfield, who had lost his favour, 
vainly tried to regain it, by proposing to assign to him, on every word 
in the language, the authority of a dictator.^ Boswell dogs his steps, 
sets down his opinions, and at night fills quartos with them. His 
criticism becomes law ; men crowd to hear him talk ; he is the arbiter 
of style. Let us transport in imagination this ruler of mind. Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, into France, among the pretty drawing-roo^jis, full of 
elegant philosophers and epicurean manners ; the violence of the con- 
trast will mark better than all argument, the bent and predilections of 
the English mind. 

There appears then a man whose * person was large, robust, ap- 
proaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency./* 
Avith a gloomy and unpolished air, 'his countenance disfigured by the 
king's evil,' and blinking with one of his eyes, *in a full suit of plain 
brown clothes,' and with not overclean linen, suffering from morbid 
melancholy since his birth, and moreover a hypochondriac.' In com- 
pany he would sometimes retire to a window or corner of a room, and 
^'mutter a Latin verse or a prayer.* At other times, in a recess, he 
would roll his head, sway his body backward and forward, stretch out 
and then convulsively draw back his leg. His biographer relates that 
i( ' was his constant anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage, 
e . . so as that either his right or his left foot should constantly make 
the first actual movement; , . . when he had neglected or gone wrong 

1 See, in Bos well's Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, 1858, ch. xi. p. 85, Chester 
field's complimentary paper on Johnson's Dictionary, printed in the World. 

2 Ibid ch. XXX. 269. Md. ch. iii. 14 and ]5 
* Ihid. ch. xviii. 165, n. 4. 



186 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back aga'ji, put 
him^olf in the proper posture to begin the ceremony, and having gone 
througli it, walk briskly on and join his companion.' ^ People sat down 
to table. Suddenly, in a moment of abstraction, he stoops, and clencli- 
ing hold of the foot of a lady, drew off her shoe.^ Hardly was tli* 
dinner served when he darted on the food ; * his looks seemed riveted 
U> his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say 
one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others; 
(hc^ indulged with such intenseness, that, while in the act of eating, 
the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration 
was visible.' * If by chance the hare was high, or the pie had been 
made with rancid butter, he no longer ate, but devoured. When at 
last his appetite was satisfied, and he consented to speak, he disputed, 
shouted, made a sparring-mat^ih of his conversation, snatched a triumph 
no matter how, laid down his opinion dogmatically, and maltreated 
those whom he was refuting. *Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig.'* 

* My dear lady (to Mrs Thrale), talk no more of this ; nonsense can be 
defended but by nonsense.'* * One thing I know, which you don't seem 
to know, that you are very uncivil.'* * In the intervals of articulating 
he made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating, 
. . , sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue 
play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen. 

• . . Generally, when he had concluded a period, in the course of a 
dispute, . . . he used to blow out his breath like a whale,' ^ and swallow 
several c^ps of tea. 

Then in a low voice, cautiously, men would ask Garrick and Bos- 
well the history and habits of this strange being. He had lived like 
a cynic and an eccentric, having passed his youth reading miscel- 
laneously, especially Latin, folios, even those least known, such as 
Macrobius ; he had found on a shelf in his father's shop the Latin 
works of Petrarch, whilst he was looking for apples, and had read 
them ;® 'he published proposals for printing by subscription the Latin 
poems of Politian.'* At twenty-five he had married for love a woman 
of about fifty, ' very fat, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red, pro- 
duced by thick painting, flaring and fantastic in her dress,* ^'^ and who 
had children as old as himself. Having come to London to earn 
his bread, some, seeing his convulsive grimaces, took him for an idiot ; 
others, seeing his robust frame, advised him to buy a porter's knot.^^ 
For thirty years he worked like a hack for the publishers, whom he 
used to thrash when they became impertinent ; ^^ always shabby, having 

' Life of Johnson, oh. xvii' 166. ' Ibid. ch. xlviii. 439, n. 3. 

8 Ibid. ch. xvii. 159. ■* Ibid. ch. xxvi. 236. 

6 Ibid. ch. xxii. 201. « Ibid. ch. Ixviii. 628. 

' Ibid. ch. xviii. 166 » Ibid. ch. ii. 12. 

» lUd. ch. iv. 22. •" Ibid, ch iv. 26 

''■ Ibid. ch. V. 28, note 2 '^ jj^i^^ ^j ^^^ 4^ 



OHAP. Vl.] THE NOVELISTS. 181 

once fasted two days ;* content when he could dine on * a cut of meat 
for sixpen(3e, and bread for a penny ;'2 having written JRasselas in 
eigtt nights, to pay for his mother's funeral. Now pensioned^ by the 
king, freed from his daily labours, he gave way to his natural indolence, 
lying in bed often till mid-day and after. He is visited at that hour. 
We mount the stairs of a gloomy house on the north side of Fleet 
Street, the busy quarter of London^ in a narrow and obscure court ; 
and as we enter, we hear the scoldings of four old women and an old 
quack doctor, poor penniless creatures, bad in health and in disposi- 
tion, whom he has rescued, whom he supports, who vex or insult him. 
We ask for the doctor, a negro opens the door ; we gather round the 
master's bed ; there are always many distinguished people at his levee, 
including even ladies. Thus surrounded, ' he declaims, then went to 
dinner at a tavern, where he commonly stays late,' * talks all the even- 
ing, goes out to enjoy in the streets the London mud and fog, picka 
up a friend to talk again, and is busy pronouncing oracles and main- 
taining his opinions till four in the morning. 

Whereupon we ask if it is the freedom of his opinions which is 
fascinating. His friends answer, that there is no more indomitable 
partisan of order. He is called the Hercules of Toryism. From in- 
fancy he detested the Whigs, and he never spoke of them but as public 
malefactors. He insults them even in his Dictionary/. He exalts Charles 
the Second and James the Second as two of the best kings who have 
ever reigned.* He justifies the arbitrary taxes which Government 
presumes to levy on the Americans.^ He declares that * Whiggism is a 
negation of all principle;" that * the first Whig was the devil ;'* that 
* the Crown has not power enough ;' * that * mankind are happier in 
a state of inequality and subordination.' '** Frenchmen of the present 
time, the admirers of the Contrat Social, soon feel, on reading or heaiv 
ing all this, that they are no longer in France. And what must they 
feel when, a few moments later, the Doctor says : 

* I think him (Rousseau) one of the worst of men ; a rascal who ought to be 
Jiunted out of society, as he has been. ... I would sooner sign a sentence for his 
transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these 
many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations. ' ^^ . . . 

It seems that in England people do not like philosophical innoyatosi. 



' Life of Johnson, oh. xvii. 159. ' Ibid. ch. v. 28 

» He had formerly put in his Dictionary the following definition of tlis 
vrcrd pension : * Pension — an allowance made to any one without an equiv* 
lent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state-hire 
ling foi treason to his country.' This drew of coarse afterwards all the sar 
caams of his adversaries upon himself. 

< Boswell's Life, ch. xxiv, 216. "* lUd. ch. xlix 444. 

6 Ihid. ch. xlviii. 435. ' Ihid. ch. xvi. 148. 

8 Ihid. ch. Ixvi. 606, ' Ihid. ch, xxvi. 236, 

" Ibid. ch. xxvii\ 252. '* Ihid- ch, xis. 175. 



iS8 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BCOK IC 

Let us see if Voltaire will be spared : * It is difficult to settle the pro- 
portion of iniquity between them (Rousseau and Voltaire).' ^ In good 
sooth, this is clear. But can we not look for truth outside an Estab- 
lished Church? No; *no honest man could be a Deist; for no min 
could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity.* * 
Here is a peremptory Christian ; there are scarcely any in France sc 
decisive. Moreover, he is an Anglican with a passion for the hierarchy, 
an admirer of established order, hostile to the Dissenters. You will 
see him bow to an archbishop with peculiar veneration.* You will 
hear him reprove one of his friends ' for saying grace without mentioa 
of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.' * If you speak to him of a 
Quakers' meeting; and of a woman preaching, he will tell you that * a 
woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs ; it is not 
done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.' * He is a 
Conservative, and does not fear being considered antiquated. He went 
at one o'clock in the morning into the Church of St. John, Clerkenwell, 
to interrogate a tormented spirit, which had promised to ' give a token 
of her presence there by a knock upon her coffin.' * If you look at 
Boswcll's Life of him, you will find there fervent prayers, examinations 
of conscience, and rules of conduct. Amidst prejudices and follies he 
has a deep conviction, active faith, severe morality. He is a Christian 
from his heart and conscience, reason and practice. The thouglit of 
God, the fear of the last judgment, engross and reform him. He said 
one day to Garrick : ' I'll come no more behind your scenes, David, 
for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my 
amorous propensities.' He reproaches himself with his indolence, im- 
plores God's pardon, is humble, has scruples. All this is very strange. 
We ask men what can please them in this grumbling bear, with the 
manners of a beadle and the incUnations of a constable ? They answer, 
that in London people are less exacting than in Paris, as to manners 
and politeness; that in England they allow energy to be rude and 
virtue odd ; that they put up with a combative conversation ; that 
public opinion is all on the side of the constitution and Christianity ; 
and that society was right to take for its master a man who, by its 
style and precepts, best suited its bent. 

We now send for his books, and after an hour we observe, that 
whatever the work be, tragedy or dictionary, biography or essay, he 
always keeps the same tone. * Dr. Johnson,' Goldsmith said one day 
to him, * if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like 
whales.' ' In fact, his phraseology rolls always in solemn and majestid 
periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously, accom* 

» Boswell's Life, eh. six. 176. '' Ibid eh. xix. 174. 

» Ibid. ch. Ixxv. 723. * Ibid. ch. xxiv. 218- 

« Ibid. ch. xvii. 157, • Ibid. ch. sv. 13.8, note 3. 
Ibid, ch, xxviii. 256. 



iniAP. Vl] THE NOVELISTS. Jgg 

panicd by its epithet ; great, pompous words peal like an organ; every 
proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length ; 
thought is developed with the compassed regularity and official splen- 
dour of a procession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him, as 
classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more consummate, or nature 
more forced. No one has confined ideas in more strait compartments 
none has given stronger relief to dissertation and proof ; none has im- 
posed more despotically on story and dialogue the forms of argumenta- 
tion and violent declamation ; none has more generally mutilated the 
flowing liberty of conversation and life by antitheses and technical 
words. It is the completion and the excess, the triumph and the 
tyranny, of oratorical style.^ We understand now that an oratorical 
age would recognise him as a master, and attribute to him in eloquence 
the primacy which it attributed to Pope in verse. ^ 

We wish to know what ideas have made him popular. Here the 
astonishment of a Frenchman redoubles. We vainly turn over the 
pages of his Dictionary, his eight volumes of essays, liis ten volumes of 
biographies, his numberless articles, his conversation so carefully col- 
lected ; we yawn. His truths are too true ; we already knew his 
precepts by heart. We learn from him that life is short, and we ought 
to improve the few moments accorded to us;* that a mother ought 
not to bring up her son as a dandy ; that a man ought to repent of his 
crimes, and yet avoid superstition ; that in everything we ought to be 
active, and not hurried. We thank him for these sage counsels, but 
we mutter to ourselves that we could have done very well without 
them. We should like to know who could have been the lovers of 
ennui who have bought up thirteen thousand copies. We then remember 
that sermons are liked in England, and that these Essays are sermons. 
We discover that men of reflection do not need bold or striking ideas, 
but palpable and profitable truths. They demand to be furnished with 
a useful provision of authentic documents on man and his existence, 
and demand nothing more. No matter if the idea is vulgar ; meat and 
bread are vulgar too, and are no less good. They wish to be taught 
the kinds and degrees of happiness and unhappiness, the varieties and 
results of characters and conditions, the advantages and inconvenience* 



* H 310 is a celebrated phrase, which will give some idea of his style (Boswell's 
Journal, cli. xliii. 381) : * We were now treading that illustrious island, which 
was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving 
barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To 
abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, 
and would be foolish if it were possible. . . . Far from me and from my friends 
be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any 
f,'round which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man ia 
little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of 
Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Tona. 

•' llambkr, 108, 109, 110. HI. 



190 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

of town ana country, knowledge and ignorance, wealtli and poverty 
because they are moralists and utilitarians ; because they look in a 
book for the knowledge to turn them from folly, and motives to con- 
firm them in uprightness; because they cultivate in themselves sense, 
that is to say, practical reason. A little fiction, a few portraits, the 
least amount of amusement, will suffice to adorn it. This substantial 
food only needs a very simple seasoning. It is not the novelty of the 
dishes, nor dainty cookery, but solidity and wholesomeness, which they 
seek. For this reason the Essai/s are a national food. It is because 
they are insipid and dull for us that they suit the taste of an English- 
man. We understand now why they take for a favourite the respectable, 
the unbearable Samuel Johnson, 

I would fain bring together all these features, see these figures; 
only colours and forms complete an idea ; to know, we must see. Let 
us go to the print-room. Hogarth, the national painter, the friend oi 
Fielding, the contemporary of Johnson, the exact imitator of manners, 
will show us the externals, as these authors have shown us the internals^ 

We enter these great archives of art. Painting is a noble thing 1 
It embellishes all, even vice. On the four walls, imder transparent 
and brilliant glass, the torsos rise, flesh palpitates, the blood's warm 
dew circulates under the veined skin, speaking likenesses stand out in 
the light ; it seems that the ugly, the vulgar, the odious, have dis- 
appeared from the world. I no more criticise characters ; I have done 
with moral rules. I am no longer tempted to approve or to hate. A 
man here is but a smudge of colour, at most a handful of muscles ; 
I know no longer if he be a murderer. 

Life, the happy, complete, overflowing display, the expansion of 
natural and corporal powers; this from all sides floods and rejoices our 
eyes. Our limbs instinctively move by contagious imitation of move- 
ments and forms. Before these lions of Rubens, whose deep growls 
rise like thunder to the mouth of the cave, before these colossal con- 
torting torsos, these snouts which grope about skulls, the animal in us 
quivers through sympathy, and it seems as if we were about to emit 
from our chests a roar to equal their own. 

What though art has degenerated, even amongst Frenchmen, epi- 
grammatists, the bepowdered abb^s of the eighteenth century, it is art 
stilL Beauty is gone, gracefulness remains. These pretty arch face?, 
these slender waspish waists, these delicate arms buried in a nest of 
lace, these careless wanderings amongst thickets and warbling foun- 
tains, these gallant dreams in a lofty chamber festooned with garlands, 
all this refined and coquettish society is still charming. The artist, 
then as always, gathers the flower of things, recks not of the rest. 

But Hogarth, what did he mean ? who ever saw such a painter ? Il 
he a painter ? Others make us wish to see what they represent ; h* 
makes us wish not to see it. 

Nothing can be mare agreeable to paint than a drunken debauch 



CHAP, VL] THE ^•0 DELISTS 191 

by night; the jolly, careless faces; the rich light, drowned in shadows 
V'liich flicker over rumpled garments and Aveighed-dowh bodies. With 
Hogarth, on the other hand, what figures ! Wickedness, stupidity, all 
the vile poison of the vilest human passions, drops and distils from them. 
One is shaking on his legs as he stands, sick, whilst a hiccup half opens 
his belching lips : another howls hoarsely, like a wretched cur ; another, 
with bald and broken head, patched up in places, falls forward on his 
chest, with the smile of a sick idiot. We turn over the leaves of 
Hogarth's works, and the train of odious or beastly faces appears to be 
inexhaustible; features distorted or deformed, foreheads lumpy or 
puffed out with perspiring flesh, hideous grins distended by ferocious 
laughter : one has had his nose bitten off ; the next, one-eyed, square- 
headed, spotted over with bleeding warts, whose red face looks redder 
under the white wig, smokes silently, full of rancour and spleen; 
another, an old man with a crutch, scarlet and puffed, his chin fall- 
ing on his breast, gazes with the fixed and starting eyes of a crab. 
Hogarth shows the beast in man, and worse, the mad and murderous, 
the feeble or enraged beast. Look at this murderer standing over the 
body of his butchered mistress, with squinting eyes, distorted mouth, 
grinding his teeth at the thought of the blood which stains and 
denounces him; or this ruined gambler, w^ho has torn off his wig and 
kerchief, and is crying on his knees, with closed teeth, and fist raised 
against heaven. Look again at this madhouse : the dirty idiot, with 
muddy face, filthy hair, stained claws, who thinks he is playing on the 
violin, and has a sheet of music for a cap ; the religious madman, who 
writhes convulsively on his straw, with clasped hands, feeling the claws 
of the devil in his bowels ; the naked and haggard raving lunatic whom 
they are chaining up, and who is tearing out his flesh with his nails. 
Detestable Yahoos that you are, who presume to usurp the blessed 
light, in what brain can you have arisen, and why did a painter sullj^ 
his eyes with the sight of you? 

Tt is because his eyes were English, and the senses are barbarous. 
Let us leave our repugnance behind us, and look at things as Eng- 
lishmen do, not from without, but from within. The whole current 
of public thought tends here toward observation of the soul, an(^ 
painting is dragged along with literature in the same course. Forget 
then the forms, they are but lines ; the body is here only to translate 
the mind.* This twisted nose, these pimples on a vinous cheek, these 
stupefied gestures of a drowsy brute, these wrinkled features, these 
degraded forms, only make the character, the trade, the whim, the 
habit stand out clear. The artist shows us no longer limbs and heads, 
but debauchery, drunkenness, brutality, hatred, despair, all the diseasofl 



* When a character is strongly mni-kcd in the living face, it may be considered 
as an index to the mind, to express which with any degree of justness in painting 
requires the utmost cft'orts of a great master. — Analysis of Beauty. 



193 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Ml 

and deformities of these too harsh and hard w'Us, the mad menag- 
erie of all the passions. Not that he lets them loose ; this rude, dog* 
matic, and Christian citizen handles more vigorously than any of 
his brethren the heavy club of moraJlty. He is a beef-eating po' 
liceman charged with instructing and correcting drunken pugilists- 
From such a man to such men ceremony is superfluous. At thi 
bottom of every cage where he imprisons a vice, he writes ivQ name? 
and adds the condemnation pronounced by Scripture ; he displays 
that vice in its ugliness, buries it in its filth, drags it to its punish- 
ment, so that there is no conscience so perverted as not to recognize 
it, none so hardened as not to be horrified at it. 

Look well, these are lessons which have force. This one is 
against gin ; on a step, in the open street, lies a drunken woman, 
half naked, with hanging breasts, scrofulous legs ; she smiles idiot 
ically, and her child, which she lets fall on the pavement, breaks its 
skull. Beneath, a pale skeleton, with closed eyes, sinks down with 
her glass in her hand. Round about, dissipation and frenzy drive 
the tattered spectres one against another. A wretch who has hung 
himself sways to and fro in a garret. Gravediggers are putting a 
naked woman into a coffin. A starveling is gnawing side by side 
with a dog, a bone destitute of meat. By his side a young woman 
is making her suckling swallow gin. A madman pitchforks his 
child, and raises it aloft ; he dances and laughs, and the mother 
sees it. 

Another picture and lesson, this time against cruelty. A young 
murderer has been hung, and is being dissected. He is there, on a 
table, and the lecturer calmly points out with his wand the placei 
where the students are to work. At this sign the dissectors cut the 
flesh and pull. One is at the feet ; the second man of science, a 
sardonic old butcher, seizes a knife with a hand that looks as if it 
would do its duty, and thrusts the other hand into the entrails, 
which, lower down, are being taken out to be put in a bucket. The 
last medical student takes out the eye, and the distorted mouth 
seems to howl under his hand. Meanwhile a dog seizes the heart, 
which is draggling on the ground ; thigh-bones and skull boil by 
way of concert, in a copper ; and the doctors around cooly exchange 
surgical jokes on the subject which, piecemeal, is passing away 
under their scalpels. 

Frenchmen will say that such lessons are good for barbarians, 
and that they only half-like these official or lay preachers, De Foe, 
Hogarth, Smollett, Richardson, Johnson, and the rest. I reply that 
moralists are useful, and that these have changed a state of barbar- 
ism into one of civilization. 



CHAP VlLl THE POETS |9S 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Poets. 

I Rnle and realm of the classical spirit — Its charscters, works^ scope, and limits 

— How it is centred in Pope. 
\l. Pope — Education — Precocity — Beginnings — Pastoral poems — Essay on Criti> 

cism — Personal appearance — Mode of life — Character — Mediocrity of hii 
passions and ideas — Largeness of his vanity and talent — Independent fortune 
and assiduous labour. 

UI. Epistle of Moisa to Ahelard — What the passions become in artificial poetry 
— The Rape of the Lock — Society and the language of society in France 
and England — Wherein Pope's badinage is painful and displeasing — The 
Dunciad — Obscenity and vulgarities — Wherein the English imagination 
and drawing-room wit are irreconcilable. 

IT. Descriptive talent — Oratorical talent — Didactic poems — Why these poems are 
the final work of the classical spirit — The Essay on Man — His deism and 
optimism — Value of his conceptions — How they are connected with the 
dominant style — How they are deformed in Pope's hands — Methods and 
perfection of his style — Excellence of his portraits — Why they are supericw 
— Translation of the Iliad — Change of taste during the past century. 
V, Incommensurability of the English mind and the classical decorum — Prior — 
Gay — Ancient pastoral impossible in northern climates — Moral conception 
natural in England — Thomson. 

VI. Discredit of the drawing-room — Entrance of the man of sensations — Why the 
return to nature is more precocious in England than in France — Sterne — 
Ptichardson — Mackenzie — Macpherson — Gray, Akenside, Beattie, Collins, 
Young, Shenstone — Persistence of the classical form — Domination of the 
period — Johnson — The historical school — Robertson, Gibbon, Hume — Their 
talent and their limits — Beginning of the modern age, 

I. 

WHEN we take in in one view the vast literary region in England, 
extending from the restoration of the Stuarts to the French 
Revolution, we perceive that all the productions, independently of the 
English character, bear a classical impress, and that this impress, special to 
this region, is met with neither in the preceding nor in the succeeding time. 
This dominant form of thought is imposed on all writers from Waller to 
Johnson, from Hobbes and Temple to Robertson and Hume : there is an 
art to Avhich they all aspire ; the work of a hundred years, practice and 
theory, inventions and imitations, examples and criticism, are employed 
is attaining it. They comprehend only one kind of beauty ; they estab- 
vol*. U. N 



194 THE CLASSIC AGE JBUOK lii 

!ish only the precepts wliich may produce it; tliey re-write, translate, 
and disfio-nre on its pattern the great works of other nges ; they carry 
it into all the different kinds of literature, and succeed or fail in them 
ficc'>rding as it is adapted to them or not. The sway of this style is so 
nb?oliite, that it is imposed on the greatest, and condemns them to im- 
potence when they would apply it beyond its domain. The possession 
of this style is so universal, that it is met with in the weakest, and raises 
them to the height of talent, when they apply it in its domain.* Tkis 
it is which brings to perfection prose, discourse, essay, dissertation, 
narration, and all the productions which form part of conversation and 
eloquence. This it is which destroyed the old drama, debased the new, 
impoverished and diverted poetry, produced a correct, agreeable, sen- 
sible, colourless, and concise history. This spirit, common to Englanc! 
and France, impressed its form on the infinite diversity of literary works, 
so that in its universal manifest ascendency we cannot but recognise 
the presence of one of those internal forces which bend and govern the 
course of human genius. 

In no branch Avas it displayed more manifestly than in poetry, and 
at no time did it appear more clearly than under Queen Anne. The 
poets have just attained to the art which they had discerned. For sixty 
years they were approaching it ; now they possess it, handle it ; already 
they employ and exaggerate it. The style is at the same time finished 
and artificial. Open the first that comes to hand, Parnell or Philips, 
Addison or Prior, Gay or Tickell, you find a certain turn of mind, 
versification, language. Pass to a second, the same form reappears ; 
you would say that they were imitations one of another. Go on to 
a third ; the same diction, the same apostrophes, the same fashion o:* 
arranging an epithet and rounding a period. Turn over the whole 
lot ; with little individual differences, they seem to be all cast in the 
same mould ; one is more epicurean, another more moral, another 
more biting ; but the noble language, the oratorical pomp, the classical 
correctness, reign throughout ; the substantive is accompanied by its 
adjective, its knight of honour ; antithesis balances the symmetrical 
aiohitecture ; the verb, as in Lucan or Statins, is displayed, flanked 
on tach side by a noun decorated by an epithet ; one would say thai 
the yerse had been fabricated by a machine, so uniform is the make ; 
we foij^et what it means ; we are tempted to count the feet on oui 
fingers ; we know beforehand what poetical ornaments are to embellish 
it. There is a theatrical dressing, contrasts, allusions, mythological 
elegances, Greek or Latin quotations. There is a scholastic solidity, 
sententious maxims, philosophic commonplaces, moral developments, 
oratorical exactness. You might imagine yourself to be before a 
family of plants; if the size, colour, accessories, names differ, th« 

> P. L. Courier (1772-1825/ says, 'a lady's maid, under T^^^sxty., <vrot« 
better than the greatest of modern writers.' 



CHAP. VIl.j THE POETS. Ij^g 

fundamental type does not vary ; the stamens are of the same num- 
ber, similarly inserted, around similar pistils, above leaves arranged 
on the same plan ; he who knows one knows all ; there is a common 
organism and structure which involves the uniformity of the rest. 
if you review the whole family, you will doubtless find there some 
characteristic plant which displays the type in a clear light, whilst 
itext to it and by degrees it alters, degenerates, and at last loses itself 
in the surrounding families. So here we see classical art find its 
:entre in the neighbours of Pope, and above all in Pope ; then, after 
being half eiFaced, mingle with foreign elements, until it disappears io 
^he poetry which succeeded it.^ 

n. 

In 1688, at the house of a linen draper in Lombard Street, London 
was born a little, delicate, and sickly creature, by nature artificial, 
constituted beforehand for a studious existence, having no taste but 
for books, who from his early youth derived his whole pleasure from 
the contemplation of printed books. He copied the letters, and thus 
learned to write. He passed his infancy with them, and was a verse- 
maker as soon as he knew how to speak. At the age of twelve he 
had written a little tragedy out of the Iliad^ and an Ode on Solitude. 
From thirteen to fifteen he composed a long epic of four thousand 
verses, called Alexander. For eight years shut up in a little house in 
Windsor Forest, he read all the best critics, almost all the English, 
Latin, and French poets Avho have a reputation, Homer, the Greek 
poets, and a few of the greater ones in the original, Tasso and Ariosto 
in translations, with such assiduity, that he nearly died from it. He 
did not search in them for passions, but style : there was never a more 
devoted adorer, never a more precocious master of form. Already his 
taste showed itself: amongst all the English poets his favourite was 
Dryden, the least inspired and the most classical. He perceived his 
career. He states that Mr. Walsh told him there was one way left of 

^ The Rev. Whitwell Ehvin, in liis second volume of the Works of Alexander 
Pope, at the end of his introduction to An Essay on Man, says, p. 338 : ' M. Taine 
asserts that from the Restoration to the French Revolution, from Waller to Jolm- 
a>)n, from Hobbes and Temple to Robertson and Hume, all our literature, both prose 
aid verse, bears the impress of classic art. The mode, he says, culminated in the 
r*eign of Queen Anne, and Pope, he considers, was the sxtreme example of it. . . . 
Many of the mos t eminent authors who flourished between the English Restoration 
■»rote in a style far removed from that which ]\I. Taine calls classical. . . . The 
verse diflers like the prose, though in a less degree, and is not ** of a uniform make, 
MB if fabricated by a machine. "... Neither is the substance of the pros:^ and 
verse, from the Restoration to the French Revolution, an invariable common -sense 
niDdiocrity. . . . There is much truth in his (M. Taine's) view, that there was 
a growing tendency to cultivate style, and in some writers the art degenerated 
into the artificial,' — Tr. 



196 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Hi 

excelling. * We had several great poets/ he sai^, * but we never had 
one great poet that was correct ; and he advised me to make that my 
study and aini.' * He followed this advice, tried his hand in transla- 
tions of Ovid and Statins, and in recasting parts of old Chaucer. H« 
appropriated all the poetic elegances and excellencies, stored them up 
in his memory ; he arranged in his head the complete dictionary of all 
happy epithets, all ingenious turns of expression, all sonorous rhythmt 
by which one may exalt, render precise, illuminate an idea. He was 
like those little musicians, infant prodigies, who, brought up at the 
piano, suddenly acquire a marvellous touch, roll out scales, brilliant 
shakes, make the octaves vault with an agility and justice which drive 
off the stage the most famous artists. At seventeen, becoming ac- 
quainted with old Wycherley, who was sixty-nine, he undertook, at 
his request, to correct his poems, and corrected them so well, that the 
other was at once charmed and mortified. Pope blotted out, added, 
recast, spoke frankly, and eliminated firmly. The author, in spite of 
himself, admired the corrections secretly, and tried openly to make 
light of them, until at last his vanity, wounded at owing so much to 
so young a man, and at finding a master in a scholar, ended by break- 
ing off an intercourse by which he profited and suffered too much. 
For the scholar had at his first step carried the art beyond his master**. 
At sixteen* his Pastorals bore witness to a correctness which no one 
had possessed, not even Dryden. To read these choice words, these 
exquisite arrangements of melodious syllables, this science of division 
and rejection, this style so fluent and pure, these graceful images 
rendered still more graceful by the diction, and all this artificial and 
many-tinted garland of flowers which he called pastoral, people thought 
of the first eclogues of Virgil. Mr. Walsh declared *that it is not 
flattery at all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his 
age.'* When later they appeared in one volume, the public was 
dazzled. * You have only displeased the critics,' wrote Wycherley, * by 
pleasing them too well.'* The same year the poet of twenty-one 
finished his Essay on Criticism^ a sort of A rs Poetica : it is the kind of 
poem a man might write at the end of his career, when he has handled 
all modes of writing, and has grown grey in criticism ; and in this sub- 
ject, whose treatment demands the experience of a whole literary life, 
he was in an instant as ripe as Boileau. 

This consummate musician, who begins by a treatise on harmony, 
what will he make of his incomparable mechanism and his professional 
science ? It is well to feel and think before writing ; a full source of 



> R. Carmthers, Life of Alexander Pope, 2d ed. 1857, ch. i. 33. 

' It is very doubtful whether Pope was not older than sixteen when he wrotv 
the pastorals. See, on this subject, Pope's Works, ed. El win, London, 1871, S 
239 et passim. — Tr. 

i Pope's Works, ed. El win, i. 233. " Ihid. i. 242. 



OHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 197 

living ideas and candid passions is necessary to make a genuine, poet, 
and in him, seen closely, we find that everything, to his very person, is 
tricked out and artificial ; he was a dwarf, four feet high, contorted, 
hunchbacked, thin, valetudinarian, appearing, when he arrived at 
maturity, no longer capable of existing. He could not get up him- 
Belf, a woman dressed him ; he wore three pairs of stockings, drawn en 
on e over the other, so slender were his legs ; * when he rose, he was 
invested in bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to hold 
himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waist- 
coat;'^ next came a sort of fur doublet, for the least thing made him 
shiver ; and lastly, a thick linen shirt, very warm, with fine sleeves. 
Over all this he wore a black garment, a tye-Avig, a little sword ; thus 
equipped, he went and took his place at the table of his great friend, 
Lord Oxford. He was so small, that he had to be raised on a chair of 
his own ; so bald, that when he had no company he covered his head with 
a velvet cap ; so punctilious and exacting, that the footmen avoided to go 
his errands, and the Earl had to discharge several ' for their resolute re- 
fusal of his messages.' At dinner he ate too much; like a spoiled child, he 
would have highly seasoned dishes, and thus ' would oppress his stomach 
with repletion.' When cordials were offered him, he got angry, but did 
not refuse them. He had all the appetite and whims of an old child, 
an old invalid, an old author, an old bachelor. You are prepared to 
find him w^himsical and susceptible. He often,, without saying a word, 
and without any known cause, quitted the house of the Earl of Oxford, 
and the ladies had to go repeatedly with messages to bring him back. 
If Lady Mary Wortley, his former poetical divinity, were unfortunately 
at table, there was no dining in peace ; they would not fail to contra- 
dict, peck at each other, quarrel ; and one or other would leave the 
room. He would be sent for and would return, but he brought his 
hobbies back with him. He was crafty, malignant, like a nervous 
abortion as he was ; when he wanted anything, he dared not ask for it 
plainly ; with hints and contrivances of speech he induced people to 
mention it, to bring it forward, after which he would make use of it. 
* Thus he teased Lord Orrery till he obtained a screen. He hardly 
drank tea without a stratagem. Lady Bolingbroke used to say that 
"he played the politician about cabbages and turnips." '^ 

The rest of his life is not much more noble. He wrote libels on 
the Duke of Chandos, Aaron Hill, Lady Mary Wortley, and then lied 
or equivocated to disavow them. He had an ugly liking for artifice, 
and prepared a disloyal trick against Lord Bolingbroke, his greatest 
friend. He was never frank, always acting a part ; he aped the hlase 
man, the impartial great artist, a contemner of the great, of kings, of 
poetry itself. The truth is, that he thought of nothing but his phrases, 

' Johnson, Lives of the most Eminent English Poets, 3 vols., ed. Cunning- 
ham. 1854 ; A. Pope, iii. 96. ^ lUd In. 99. 



198 THE CLASSIC ^GE. [BOOK III 

his author's r^piitation, and * a little regard shown him by the Prince 
of Wales melted his obduracy.'^ When you read his correspondence, 
you find thit there are not more than about ten genuine letters ; he 
is a literary man even in the moments when he opened his heart ; his 
confidences are formal rhetoric ; and when he conversed with a friend 
he was always thinking of the printer, who would give his effusions t.o 
the public. Through his very pretentiousness he grew awkward, and 
unmasked himself. One day Richardson and his father, the painter, 
found him reading a pamphlet that Gibber had written against him. 
* These things,' said Pope, * are my diversion.' * They sat by him while 
he perused it, and saw his features writhing v/ith anguish ; and young 
Richardson said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be 
preserved from such diversion.'^ In fine, his great cause for writing 
was literary vanity ; he wished to be admired, and nothing more ; hia 
life was that of a coquette studying herself in a glass, bedecking her- 
self, smirking, paying compliments to iierself, yet declaring that com- 
pliments weary her, that painting the face makes her dirty, and that 
she has a horror of affectation. Pope has no dash, no naturalness or 
manliness ; no more ideas than passions ; at least such ideas as a man 
feels it necessary to write, and in connection with -which we lose thought 
of words. Religious controversy and party quarrels resound about him ; 
he studiously avoids them; amidst all these shocks his chief care is to pre- 
serve his writing-desk ;. he is a very lukewarm Catholic, all but a deist, 
not well aware of what deism means ; and on this point he borrows 
from Bolingbroke ideas whose scope he cannot see, but which he thinks 
suitable to be put into verse. In a letter to Atterbury (1717) he says : 

' In my politics, I think no further than how to prefer the peace of my life, 
in any government under which I live ; nor in my religion, than to preserve the 
peace of my conscience in any church with which I communicate. I hope all 
churclies and governments are so far of God, as they are rightly understood and 
rightly administered ; and where they err, or may be wrong, I leave it to God 
alone to mend or reform them.'^ 

Such convictions do not torment a man. In reality, he did not write 
because he thought, but thought in order to write ; inky paper, and 
the noise it makes in the world, was his idol ; if he wrote verses, it wv 
merely for the sake of doing so. 

This is the best training for versification. Pope gave himself up to 
it ; he was a man of leisure, his father had left him a very fair fortune ; 
he earned a large sum by translating the Iliad and Odyssey ; he had an 
income of eight hundred pounds. He was never in the pay of a pub- 
lisher ; he looked from an eminence upon the beggarly authors grovel- 
ling in their Bohemianism, and, calmly seated in his pretty house at 
Twickenham, in his grotto, or in the fine garden which he had himself 



* Bos well's Li^e of Johnson, ch. Ixxi. 670. 

s Carruther's Life of Pope, cli. i. 377. * Ibid ch. iv 164 



CHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 198 

planned, he could polish and file his writings as long as he ehose He 
L not fail to do so. When he had written a ^"■•k. ''«J«I;^^"J';^^'^ ;! 
two ye.ars in his desk. From time to time he re-read and «»;««'f '' ' 
took counsel of his friends, then of his enemies ; no new edmon wa 
unamended; he moulded without wearying. H,s first production was 
^0 much recast and transformed, that it could not be recognised in the 
fin" copy. The pieces which seem least retouched are two satires, and 

DTdsLy''^..ys that in the manuscript ' ^'^-'T? ""t^riTt ime 
twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time 
afterwaX to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over 
a second time.' ' Dr. Johnson says : ' From his attention to poetry he 
wa never diverted. If conversation offered anything that could be 
mLoved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an ex- 
wession more happy than was common, rose to his mmd, he was ca relu 
rrte'irin independent distich was preserved for an opportunity of 
iLertion ; and some little fragments have been found containing hn^ 
or parts of lines, to be wrought upon at some other time. His 

wriL" box had to be placed upon his bed before he rose. 'Lord 
Orrd'slon!:::! related that, in the dreadful winter of "40, she was 
called from her bed by him four times in one night to supply hun with 
paper lest he should lose a thought." Swift complams that he wa 
^evr at leisure for conversation, because he ' had always some poetica 
scheme in his head.' Thus nothing was lacking for the attamment 
:f ;rfec: expression; the practice of a lifetime, tl- study of every 
model, independent fortune, the company of men of the w»ld ree 
dom f^m turbulent passions, the absence of dommant ideas the facihty 
of an infant prodigy, the assiduity of an old man of letters. It seems 
s lugh he' werf;xpressly endowed with faults -^ good quaUtie^ 
here enriched, there impoverished, at once narrowed and developed, to 
seTL relief the classical form by the diminution of the classica depth 
o present the public with a model of a well-used and accomplished art 
to reTuce to a brilliant and rigid crystal the flowing sap of an expmng 
Hteralure. 

It is a great misfortune for a poet to know Ws business too well ; 
his poetry then shows a man of business, and not the poet, l-fl^^f 
admire Pope's works of imagination, but I cannot. In vam I read the 
testimony of his contemporaries, and even that of '- -°^--;^-f^ 
repeat to myself that in his time he was the prince of poets, that hi 
Epistle fcom Eloisa to Abdard was received with a cry of enthusia n 
Z one could not then imagine a finer expression o t-e poetry " th^ 
to this day it is learned by heart, like the speech of Hippolyte in the 
PMre of Eacine; that Johnson, that great literary critic, ranked tf 

. Johnson, TM Urn of the English Poets ; Mizander Pope iii. 114. 

.2W<iiii.Ul. MM.U1.105. 



200 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 1!2 

•mongst * ihe hnppiest productions of the human mind ; ' that Lord 
Byron himself preferred it to the celebrated ode of Sappho. I road it 
again, and am bored : this is not as it ought to be ; but, in spite of my- 
self, I yawn, and I open the original letters of Eloisa to find the cause 
of my weariness. 

Doubtless poor Eloisa is a barbarian, nay worse, a literary barbarian*, 
she makes learned quotations, arguments, tries to imitate Cicero, to 
aiTsnge her periods ; she could not do otherwise, writing a dead lan- 
guage, with an acquired style ; perhaps the reader would do as much if 
lie were obliged to write to his mistress in Latin.^ But how the true 
tentiment pierces through the scholastic form I 

* Thou art the only one who can sadden me, console me, make me joyful. . . . 
1 should be happier and prouder to be called thy mistress than to be the lawful 
wife of an emperor. . . . Never, God knows it, have I wished for anything else 
in thee but thee. It is thee alone whom I desire ; nothino; that thou couldst give ; 
it is not a marriage, a dowry : I never dreamt of doing my pleasure or my will, 
thou knowest it, but thine. ' 

Then come passionate words, genuine love words,* then the candid 
words of a penitent, who says and dares everything, because she wishes 
to be cured, to show her wound to her confessor, even .her most shame- 
ful wound ; perhaps also because in extreme agony, as in childbirth, 
modesty vanishes. All this is very crude, very rude ; Pope has more 
wit than she, and how he endues her with it I In his hands she becomes 
an academician, and her letter is a repertory of literary effects. Portraits 
•md descriptions ; she paints to Abelard the nunnery and the landscape: 

* In these lone walls (their days eternal bound), 
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned, 
Where awful arches make a noon-day night, 
And the dim windows shed a solemn light. . . . 
The wandering streams that shine between the hilla, 
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills. 
The dying gales that pant upon the trees, 
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze.' * 

Declamation and commonplace : she sends Abelard discourses on love 
and the liberty which it demands, on the cloister and the peaceful life 

* Eev, "W, Elwin, in his edition of Pope's Works, ii. 224, says : ' The authenti- 
city of the Latin letters has usually been taken for gi'anted, but I have a strong 
belief that they are a forgery. ... It is far more likely that they are the fabri- 
cation CI an unconcerned romancer, who speaks in the name of others with 8, 
latitude which people, not entirely degraded, would never adopt towards the^'ji- 
•elves. The suspicion is stren,s;thened when the second party to the corrcspon* 
dence, the chief philosopher of his generation, exhibits the same exceptiona 
depravity of taste.' — Tr. 

2 ' Vale, unice.' 

* Pope's Wo^ks. ed. Elwin ; ElQisa to Abdard, ii. 245, v. 141-160 



CHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 201 

which it affords, on writing and the advantages of the post.^ Antithesea 
and contrasts, she forwards them to Abelard by the dozen ; a contrast 
between the convent illuminated by his presence and desolate by his 
absence, between the tranquillity of the pure nun and the anxiety of the 
culpable nun, between the dream of human happiness and the dream of 
divine happiness. In fine, it is a bravura, with contrasts of forte and 
piano, variations and change of key. Eloisa makes the most of hei 
theme, and sets herself to crowd into it all the powers and effects of her 
voice. Admire the crescendo, the shakes by which she ends her brilliant 
morceaux; to transport the hearer at the close of the portrait of the 
innocent nun, she says : 

' How happy is the blameless vestal's lot ! 
The world forgetting, by the world forgot ; 
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ! 
Each prayer accepted, and each wisli resigned 
Labour and rest, that equal peiiods keep ; 
** Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep ; ** 
Desu-es composed, affections ever even ; 
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n. 
Grace shines around her, with serenest beams, 
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden di'eama. 
For her, th' unfading rose of Eden blooms. 
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes, 
For her the spouse prepares the bridal rin^- 
For her white virgins hymeneals sing. 
To sounds of heavenly harps she dies away. 
And melts in visions of eternal day. ' * 

Observe the noise of the big drum, I mean the grand contrivances, foi 
so may be called all that a person says who wishes to rave and cannot ; 
for instance, speaking to rocks and walls, praying the absent Abelard to 
come, fancying him present, apostrophising grace and virtue: 

* Oh grace serene ! Oh virtue heavenly fair I 
Divine oblivion of low-tlioughted care ! 
Fresh -blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky ! 
And faith, our early immortality ! 
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest ; 
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest I * • 

» Eloisa to Abelard, ii. 240, v. 51-58 : 

Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid, 

Some banished lover, or some captive maid : 

They live, tliey speak, they breathe what love inspires, 

Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires, 

The virgin's wish without her fears impart. 

Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart. 

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul. 

And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.' 

• md. 349, v. 207-232. » Md. 354. v, 397-303. 



202 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK lU 

Hearing the dead speaking to her, telling the angels : 

* I come ! I come ! Prepare your roseate bow'ra^ 
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs.' * 

This is the final symphony with modulations of the celestial orgaD. I 
Buppose that Abelard cries * Bravo ' when he hears it. 

But this is nothing in comparison with the art exhibited by her m 
fcvery phrase. She puts ornaments into every line. Imagine an Italian 
iinger trilling every word. O what pretty sounds 1 how nimbly and 
bTlliiantly they roll along, how clear, and always exquisite ! it is im- 
possible to reproduce them in another tongue. Now it is a happy 
image, filling up a whole phrase ; now a series of verses, full of sym- 
metrical contrasts ; two ordinary words set in relief by strange con- 
junction ; an imitative rhythm completing the impression of the mind 
by the emotion of the senses ; the most elegant comparisons and the 
most picturesque epithets ] the closest style and the most ornate. 
Except truth, nothing is wanting. Eloisa is worse than a singer, she 
is an author : we look at the back of her epistle to Abelard to see if 
she has not written * For Press.* 

Pope has somewhere given a receipt for making an epic poem : take 
a storm, a dream, five or six battles, three sacrifices, funereal games, a 
dozen gods in two divisions ; shake together until there rises the froth 
of a lofty style. You have just seen the receipt for making a love- 
letter. This kind of poetry resembles cookery ; neither heart nor 
genius is necessary to produce it, but a light hand, an attentive eye, 
and a cultivated taste. 

It seems that this kind of talent is made for light verses. It it 
factitious, and so are the manners of society. To make pretty speeches, 
to prattle with ladies, to speak elegantly of their chocolate or their fan, 
to jeer at fools, to criticise the last tragedy, to be good at compliments 
or epigrams, — this, it seems, is the natural employment of a mind such 
aB this, but slightly impassioned, very vain, a perfect master of style, as 
careful of his verses as a dandy of his coat. Pope wrote the Hape of 
the Lock and the Dunciad; his contemporaries went into ecstasies on the 
charm of his badinage and the exactness of his raillery, and believed 
that he had surpassed Boileau's Lutrin and Satires. 

That may well be ; at all events the praise would be scanty. In 
Boileau there are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man of 
wit;* most of which seem to be those of a sharp schoolboy in the third 
class, the rest those of a good schoolboy in the upper division. Boileau 
wrote the second verse before the first ; this is why once out of four 
times his first verse only serves to stop a gap. Doubtless Pope had a 
more brilliant and adroit mecftianism ; but this facility of hand does not 
suffice to make a poet, even a poet of the boudoir. There, as elsewhere, 
we need genuine passions, or at least genuine tastes. When we wish to 

* Eloisa to Abelard, ii. 255, v. 317. * M. Guillaume Guizot. 



i HAP, VII.^ THE POETS. 203 

paint the pretty nothings of conversation anil the world, vre must like 
them. We can only paint well what we love.^ Is there no charming 
grace in the prattle and frivolity of a pretty woman ? Painters, like 
Watteau, have spent their lives in feasting on them. A lock of hair 
which is lifted up, a pretty arm peeping from underneath a great deal 
of lace, a stooping figure making the bright folds of a petticoat sparkle, 
and the arch, half engaging, half-mocking smile of the pouting mouth, — 
these are enough to transport an artist. Certainly he will be aware of 
the influence of the toilet, as much so as the lady herself, and will nev€f 
scold her for passing three hours at her glass; there is poetry in 
elegance. He enjoys it as a picture ; enjoys the refinements of worldly 
life, the long quiet lines of the lofty, wainscoted drawing-room, the soft 
refle«»tion of the high mirrors and glittering porcelain, the careless gaiety 
of the little sculptured Loves, locked in embrace above the mantel- 
piece, the silvery sound of these soft voices, buzzing scandal round the 
tea-table. Pope hardly, if at all, rejoices in them ; he is satirical and 
English amidst this amiable luxury, introduced from France. Although 
he is the most worldly of English poets, he is not enough so ; nor is the 
society around him. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who was in her 
time * the pink of fashion,' and who is compared to Madame de Sevigne, 
has such a serious mind, such a decided style, such a precise judgment, 
and such a harsh sarcasm, that you would take her for a man. In fine, 
the English, even Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, never mastered 
the true tone of the salon. Pope is like them ; his voice thunders, and 
then suddenly becomes biting. Every instant a harsh mockery blots 
out the graceful images, which he began to arouse. Consider The Rape 
of the Lock as a whole ; it i« a buffoonery in a noble style. Lord 
Petre had cut ofi" a lock of hair of a fashionable beauty, Mrs. Arabella 
Fermor; out of this trifle the problem is to make an epic, with invoca- 
tions, apostrophes, the intervention of supernatural beings, and the rest 
of poetic mechanism ; the solemnitj^ of style contrasts with the little- 
ness of the events ; we laugh at these bickerings as at an insect^'s quarreL 
Such has always been the case in this country ; whenever Englishmen 
wish to represent social life, it is with an external and assumed polite- 
ness ; at the bottom of their admiration there is scorn. Their insipid 
compliments conceal a mental reservation ; observe them well, and 
you will see .that they look upon a pretty, well-dressed, and coquettish 
woman as a pink doll, fit to amuse people for half an hour, by her out- 
ward show. Pope dedicates his poem to Mistress Arabella Fermor 
with every kind of compliment. The truth is, he is not polite; a 
Frenchwoman would have sent him back his book, and advised him to 
learn manners ; for one commendation of her beauty she would find 
ten sarcasms upon her frivolity. Is it very pleasant to have it said to 

* Goethe sings — 'Liebe sei vor alien Dingen, 

Unser Thema, wenn wir singen.' 



2U4 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK 111 

one : * You have the prettiest eyes in the world, bnt you live in th« 
pursuit of trifles?' Yet to this all his homage is reduced.^ His com- 
plimentary emphasis, his declaration that the ' ravish'd hair . . . adda 
new glory to the shining sphere,' ^ all his stock of phrases is but a 
parade of gallantry which betrays indelicacy and grossness. Will sha 

* Stain her honour, or her new brocade, 
Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade, 
Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball ? ' * 

No Frencliman of the eighteenth century would have imagined such ■ 
compliment. At most, that bearish Rousseau, that former lackey and 
Geneva moralist, might have delivered this disagreeable thrust. In 
England it was not found too rude. Mrs. Arabella Fermor WHS so 
pleased with the poem, that she gave about copies of it. Clearly she 
was not hard to please, for she had heard much worse compliments. 
If you read in Swift the literal transcript of a fashionable conversation, 
you will see that a woman of fashion of that time could endure much 
before she was angry. 

But the strangest thing is, that this badinage is, for Frenchmen at 
least, no badinage at all. It is not all like lightness or gaiety. Dorat, 
Gresset, would have been stupefied and shocked by it. We remain 
cold under its most brilliant hits. Now and then at most a crack of the 
whip arouses us, but not to laughter. These caricatures seem strange 
to us, but do not amuse. The wit is no wit ; all is calculated, combined, 
artificially prepared ; we expect flashes of lightning, but at the last 
moment they do not descend. Thus Lord Petre, to * implore propitio is 
heaven, and every power,' 

* To Love an altar built 
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. 
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, 
And all the trophies of his former loves ; 
"With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre, 
And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire.'* 

We remain disappointed, not seeing the comicality of the descnphon. 
We go on conscientiously, and in the picture of Melancholy and hfi 
palace find figures very strange after another fashion : 

* Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pye talks ; 
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works. 
And maids turned bottles, call aloud for corks. ' ■ 

We tell ourselves now that we are in China ; that so far from Paris 

^ See his Epistle of the Characters of Women. According to Pope, tluf 
character is composed of love of pleasure and love of power. 

« Rapr. of the Lock, c. v. 181, v. 141. Ihid. c. ii. 156, v. 107. 

« Ibid. c. ii. 153, -o. 37-43. « JMd. c. iv. 169. «. 52 



CHAP. VIl.J THE POETS. 203 

and Voltaire we mnst be surprised at nothing, that these folk have ears 

different from ours, and that a Pekin mandarin vastly relishes a con- 
cert of kettles. Finally, we comprehend that, even in this correct age 
and this artificial poetry, the old imagination exists ; that it is nourished, 
as before, by oddities and contrasts ; and that taste, in spite of all culture^ 
will never become acclimatised; that incongruities, far from shocking, 
delight it ; that it is insensible to French sweetness and refinements ; that 
f.f needg a succession of expressive figures, unexpected and grinning, to 
pass beibre it ; that it prefers this coarse carnival to delicate insinuations ; 
that Pope belongs to his country, in spite of his classical polish and 
his studied elegances, and that his unpleasing and vigorous fancy is akin 
to that of Swift. 

We are now prepared and can enter upon his second poem, The 
Dunciad. We need much self-command not to throw down this master- 
piece as insipid, and even disgusting. Rarely has so much talent been 
spent to produce greater tedium. Pope wished to be avenged on his 
literary enemies, and sang of Dulness, the sublime goddess of literature, 
*daughter of Chaos and eternal Night, . . . gross as her sire, and as her 
mother grave,' ^ queen of hungry authors, who chooses for her son and 
favourite Gibber. There he is, a king, and to celebrate his ac«ession 
she institutes pviblic games in imitation of the ancients ; first a race of 
booksellers, trying to seize a poet ; then the struggle of the authors, who 
first vie with each other in braying, and then dash into the Fleet-ditch 
filth; then the strife of critics, who have to undergo the reading of 
two voluminous authors without falling asleep.* Strange paradise, to be 
sure, and in truth not very striking. Who is not deafened by these 
hackneyed and -bald allegories, Dulness, poppies, mists, and Sleep? 
AVhat if I entered into details, and described the poetess offered for a 
prize, ' with cow -like udders, and with ox-like eyes ;' if I related the 
plunges of the authors, floundering in the Fleet-ditch, the vilest sewer 
in the town ; if I transcribed all the extraordinary verses, in which 

* First he relates, how sinking to the chin, 
Smit with his mien, the mud-nymphs suck'd him in: 
Hov; young Lutetia, softer than the down, 
Nigrina black, and Merdamante brown. 
Vied for his love in jetty how'rs below.' . . , ' 

1 must stop. Some passages, for instance that on the fall of Curl, Swift 
alone might have seemed capable of writing ; we might have excused 
it in Swift; the extremity of despair, the rage of misanthropy, the 
approach of madness, might have carried him to such excess. Bui 
Pope, who lived calm and admired in his villa, and who was only urged 
by literary rancour I He can have had no nerves I How could a poet 
have dragged his talent wantonly through such images, and so con- 

1 Pope's Works, The Dunciad, bk. i. * lUd. bk. ii 

' ibid 



206 ^HE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK Ui 

strained his ingenious!/ woven verses "to receive inch dirt? Picture a 
pretty drawing-room basket, destined only to contain flowers and fancy- 
work, sent down to the kitchen to be turned into a receptacle for filth. 
In fact, all the filth of literary life is here ; and heaven knows what it 
then was I In no age were hack-writers so beggarly and more vile. 
Poor fellows, like Richard Savage, who slept during one winter in tha 
open air on the cinders of a glass manufactory, lived on what he rectivt d 
for a dedication, knew the inside of a prison, rarely dined, and drank 
at the expense of his friends; pamphleteers like Tutchin, who was 
iCTindly whipped; plagiarists like Ward, exposed in the pillory and 
pelted with rotten eggs and apples; courtesans like Eliza Hey wood, 
notorious by the shamelessness of their public confessions ; bought 
journalists, hired slanderers, vendors of scandal and insults, half-rogues, 
complete roysterers, and all the literary vermin which haunted the 
gambling-houses, the stews, the gin-cellars, and at a sign from a book- 
seller stung honest folk for a crown. These villanies, foul linen, th« 
greasy coat six years old, musty pudding, and the rest, are in Pope aa 
in Hogarth, with English crudity and preciseness. This is their fault, 
they are realists, even under the classical wig ; they do not disguise 
what it ugly and mean ; they describe that ugliness and meanness with 
their exact outlines and distinguishing marks ; they do not clothe them 
in a fine cloak of general ideas ; they do not cover them with the pretty 
innuendoes of society. This is the reason why their satires are so harsh. 
Pope does not flog the dunces, he knocks them down ; his poem la 
truly hard and mischievous ; it is so much so, that it becomes clumsy : 
to add to the punishment of dunces, he begins at the deluge, wTitea 
historical passages, represents at length the past, present, and future 
empire of Dulness, the library of Alexandria burned by Omar, learning 
extinguished by the invasion of the barbarians and by the superstition 
of the middle-iige, the empire of stupidity which extends over England 
and will swallow it up. What paving-stones to crush flies 1 

* See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, 
Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head ! 
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before. 
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. 
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, 
And Metaphysic calls for aid on sense ! • • • 
Religion blushing veils her sacred fii-es, 
And unawares Morality expires. 
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shins ; 
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine t 
Lo ! thy dread empire. Chaos ! is restored ; 
Light dies before thy uncreating word : 
Thy hand, great anurch ! lets the curtain fall j 
And universal darkness buries all.' ' 

* THie Dunciad, the end. 



CBAP VILJ THE POETS. 207 

The last scene ends with noise, cymbals and trombones, crackers and 
fireworks. For me, I carry away from this celebrated entertainment 
only the remembrance of a hubbub. Unwittingly I have counted the 
lights, I know the machinery, I have touched the toilsome stage- 
property of apparitions and allegories. I bid farewell to the scene 
puinter, the machinist, the manager of literary effects, and go elsewhere 
tc find the poet. 

IV. 

There is, however, a poet in Pope, and to discover him we hare 
only to read him by fragments ; if the whole is, as a rule, wearisome 
or shocking, the details are admirable. It is so at the end of all literary 
ages. Pliny the younger, and Seneca, so affected and so inflated, are 
charming in small bits; each of their phrases, taken by itself, is a 
masterpiece ; each verse in Pope is a masterpiece when taken alone. 
At this time, and after a hundred years of culture, there is no movement, 
no object, no action, which poets cannot describe. Every aspect of 
nature was observed ; a sunrise, a landscape reflected in the water,^ 
a breeze amid the foliage, and so forth. Ask Pope to paint in verse an 
eel, a perch, or a trout ; he has the exact phrase ready ; you might 
glean from him the contents of a ' Gradus.' He gives the features so 
exactly, that at once you think you see the thing ; he gives the ex- 
pression so copiously, that your imagination, however obtuse, will end 
hj seeing it. He marks everything in the flight of a pheasant : 

* See ! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs 
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings. . . • 
All ! what avail his glossy, varying dyes, 

His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes, 

The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, 

His painted wings, and Breast that flames with gold ? ** 

He pcssepfies the richest store of words to depict the sylphs whiok 
iutter )!-ound his lieroine Belinda : 

* But now secure the painted vessel glides, 

The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides : 

"While melting music steals upon the sky, 

And softened sounds along the waters die ; 

Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, • • • 

The lucid squadrons round the sails repair : 

Soft o'er the shrouds the aerial whispers breathe, 

That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. 

• Wip-y's Works, i. 352 ; Windsor Forest, v. 211. 

' Oft in her glass the musing shepherd spies 
The headlong mountains and the downward skies, 
The wat'ry landscape of the pendant woods. 
And absent trees that tremble in the flooda.' 
Ihifi ^47 V. 111-118. 



208 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK IK 

Some to the sun their insect-wings nnfold, 
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold 
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight. 
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. 
Loose to the wind their airy garment flew, 
Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew, 
Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, 
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes ; 
While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings, 
Colours that change whene'er they wave their wingg.' 

Doubtless these are not Shakspeare's sylphs ; but side by si le wit! a 
natural and living rose, we may still look with pleasure on a flowei :>i 
diamonds, as they come from the hand of the jeweller, a masterpiece of 
art and patience, whose facets make the light glitter, and cast a shower 
of sparkles over the filagree foliage in which they are embedded. A 
score of times in a poem of Pope's we stop to look with wonder on one 
of these literary adornments. He feels so well in which the strong 
point of his talent lies, that he abuses it ; he delights to show his skill. 
What can be staler than a card party, or more repellent of poetry than 
the queen of spades or the king of hearts? Yet, doubtless for a wager, 
he has recorded in the Rape of the Lock a game of ombre ; we follow 
it, hear it, recognise the dresses : 

* Behold, four kings, in majesty revered, 
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard ; 
And four fair queens whose hands sustain a flow'r, 
Th' expressive emblem of their softer power ; 
Four knaves in garb succinct, a trusty band ; 
Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand ; 
And parti-coloured troops, a shining train, 
Drawn forth to combat o» the velvet plain. ' * 

We see the trumps, the cuts, the tricks, and instantly afteiAvards the 
coffee, the china, the spoons, the fiery spirits (to Avit, spirits of wine); 
we have here in advance the modes and periphrases of Delille. The 
celebrated verses in which Delille at once employs and describes 
imitative harmony, are translated from Pope.^ It is an expiring 
poetry, but poetry still : an ornament to put on a mantelpiece is aa 
inferior work of art, but still it is a work of art. 

To descriptive talent Pope unites oratorical talent. This art, propel 
to the classical age, is the art of expressing mediocre general ideas. 
For a hundred and fifty years men of both the thinking countries, Eng- 
land and France, employed herein all their studies. They seized these 
universal and limited truths, which, being situated between lofty philo- 

^ Pope's Works, ii. 154 ; The Rape of the Lock, c. 2, v. 4"^ -68. 

2 Ibid. c. 3. 160, -». 37-44. 

^ ' Peius-moi legerement I'amant leger de Flore, 

Qu'an doux ruisseau murmure en vers plus doux encore,' etc. 



THE POETS. 209 

sophical abstractions and petty sensible details, are the subject-matteT 
of eloquence and rhetoric, and form what we now-a-days call common- 
places. They arranged them in compartments ; methodically developed 
them ; made them obvious by grouping and symmetry ; disposed them 
in regular successions, which with dignity and majesty advance under 
discipline, and in a body. The influence of this oratorical reason he- 
fiime so great, that it was imposed on poetry itself. BufFon ends by 
?;aying, in praise of verses, that they are as fine as fine prose. In fact, 
poetry at this time became a more affected prose subjected to rhyme. 
It was enly a kind of higher conversation and more select discourse. 
It is found powerless when it is necessary to paint or represent an 
action, when the need is to see and make visible living passions, large 
genuine emotions, men of flesh and blood ; it results only in college 
epics like the Hemnade, freezing odes and tragedies like those of Voltaire 
and Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, or those of Addison, Thomson, Johnson, 
and the rest. It makes them up of dissertations, because it is capable 
of nothing else but dissertations. Here henceforth is its domain ; and 
its final task is the didactic poem, which is a dissertation in verse. 
Pope excelled in it, and his most perfect poems are those made up of 
precepts and arguments. Artifice in these is less shocking than else- 
where. A poem — I am wrong, essays like his upon Criticism, on Ma?i, 
and the Government of Providence^ on the Knowledge and Characters oj 
Men, deserve to be written after reflection; they are a study, and almost 
a scientific monograph. . We may, we even ought, to weigh all the 
words, and verify all the connections : art and attention are not super- 
fluous ; the question concerns exact precepts and close arguments. In 
this Pope is incomparable. I do not think that there is in the world 
a versified prose like his ; that of Boileau does not approach it. Not 
that its ideas are very worthy of attention ; we have worn them out, 
they interest us no longer. The Essay on Criticism resembles Boileau's 
EpUres and IJArt Poetiqiie, excellent works, no longer read but in 
classes at school. It is a collection of very wise precepts, whose only 
fault is their being too true. To say that good taste is rare; that we 
onght to reflect and be mstructed before deciding ; that the rules of 
art are drawn from nature ; that pride, ignorance, prejudice, partiality, 
i^nvy, pervert our judgment ; that a criticism should be sincere, modest, 
polished, kindly, — all these truths might then be discoveries, but not so 
UDW. 1 suppose that, at the time of Pope, Dry den, and Boileau, men 
had special need of setting their ideas in order, and of seeing them very 
clearly in very clear phrases. Now that this need is satisfied, it has 
disappeared : we demand ideas, not arrangement of ideas ; the pigeon- 
holes are manufactured, fill them. Pope Vv^as obliged to do it once in 
the Essay on MaUj which is a sort ol" Vicaire Savoyard,^ less original 

' A tale of J. J. Rousseau, in which he tri*i.s to de^^ict a philosophical clergy 
aaaii. — Tr. 

VOL. II 



^^510 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK ID 

than the other. He shows that God made all for the best, that man 
is limited in his capacity and ought not to judge God, that our passions 
and imperfections serve for the general good and for the ends of Provi- 
dence, that happiness lies in virtue and submission to the divine will 
You recognise here a sort of deism and optimism, of which there w^ 
much at that time, borrowed, like those of Rousseau, from the Theodicea 
of Leibnitz, but tempered, toned down, and arranged for the use of 
honest people. The conception is not very lofty : this curtailed deity, 
making his appearance at the beginning of the eighteenth century, is 
but a residuum: religion being extinguished, he remained at the bottom 
of the crucible ; and the reasoners of the time, having no metaphysical 
inventiveness, kept him in their system to stop a gap. In this state and 
at this place this deity resembles classic verse. He has an imposing ap- 
pearance, is comprehended easily, is stripped of efficacy, is the product 
of cold argumentative reason, and leaves the people who attend to him, 
very much at ease ; on all these accounts he is akin to an Alexandrine. 
This poor conception is all the more wretched in Pope from not belong- 
ing to him, for he is only accidentally a philosopher; and to find matter 
for his poem, three or four systems, deformed and attenuated, are amal- 
gamated in his work. He boasts of having tempered them one with 
the other, and having * steered between the extremes.' ^ The truth is, 
that he did not understand them, and that he jumbles incongruous 
ideas at every step. There is a passage in which, to obtain an effect 
of style, he becomes a pantheist; moreover, he is bombastic, and 
assumes the supercilious, imperious tone of a young doctor. I find no 
individual invention except in his Moral Essays ; in them is a theory of 
dominant passion which is worth reading. After all, he went farther 
than Boileau, for instance, in the knowledge of man. Psychology ia 
indigenous in England ; we meet it there throughout, even in the least 
creative minds. It gives rise to the novel, dispossesses philosophy, pro- 
duces the essay, appears in the newspapers, fills current literature, like 
Jiose indigenous plants which multiply on every soil. 

But if the ideas are mediocre, the art of expressing them is truly 
inarvellous : marvellous is the word. ' I chose verse,' says Pope in his 
Design of an Essay on Man, * because I found I could express them 
(ideas) more shortly this way than in prose itself.' In fact, every word 
is effective ; every passage must be read slowly ; every epithet is an 
epitome ; a more condensed style was never written ; and, on the 
other hand, no one laboured more skilfully in introducing philosophical 
formulas into the current conversation of society. His maxims have 
become proverbs. I open his Essay on Man at random, and fall upon 
the beginning of his second book. An orator, an author of the school 
of BuffDn, would be transported wdth admiration to see so many literary 
treasures collected in so small a space : 



' These words a it taken from tlie TJedgn of an Eisay on Man 



CHaP. VII.] THE POETS 211 

Know tlien thyself, presume not God to scan. 

The proper study of mankind is man. 

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 

A being darkly wise, and rudely great : 

With too much knowledge for the skeptic side, 

With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, 

He hangs between ; in doubt to act, or rest ; 

In doubt to deem himself a God or beast ; 

In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 

Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err ; 

Alike in ignorance, his reason such 

Whether he thinks too little or too much ; 

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused ; 

Still by himself abused, or disabused ; 

Created half to rise, and half to fall ; 

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled. 

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.' * 
The first verse epitomises the whole of the preceding book, and the 
second epitomises the present one ; it is, as it were, a kind of staircase 
leading from temple to temple, regularly composed of symmetrical steps, 
so aptly disposed that from the first step we see at a glance the whole 
building we have left, and from the second the whole edifice we are about 
to visit. Have you ever seen a finer entrance, or one more conformable 
to the rules which bid us unite our ideas, recall them when developed, 
pre-announce them when not yet developed ? But this is not enough. 
After this brief announcement, which premises that he is about to treat 
of human nature, a longer announcement is necessary, to paint in ad- 
vance, with the greatest possible splendour, this human nature of which 
he is about to treat. This is the proper oratorical exordium, like those 
which Bossuet sets at the beginning of his funeral orations; a sort of 
elaborate portico to receive the audience on their entrance, and prepare 
them for the magnificence of the temple. Couple by couple the anti- 
theses follow each other like a succession of columns ; thirteen couples 
form a suite ; and the last is raised above the rest by a word, which 
concentrates and combines all. In other hands this prolongation of 
the same form would become tedious ; in Pope's it interests us, so much 
variety is there in the arrangement and the adornments. In one place 
the antithesis is comprised in a single line, in another it occupies two ; 
now it is in the substantives, now in the adjectives and verbs ; now 
only in the ideas, now it penetrates the sound and position of the words. 
In vain we see it reappear ; we are not wearied, because each time it 
adds somewhat to our idea, and shows us the object in a new light. 
This object itself may be abstract, obscure, unpleasant, opposed to 
poetry ; the style spreads over it its own light ; noble images borrowed 
from the grand and simple spectacles of nature, illustrate and adorn it. 

' Pope's Works, ii. ; An Essay on Man, Ep. ii. 375, u. 1-18, 



212 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

For thc'ie is a classical architecture of ideas as well as of stones : the first 
like the second, is a friend to clearness and regularity, majesty and calmj 
like the second, it was invented in Greece, transmitted through Kome to 
France, through France to England, and slightly altered in its passage. 
Of all the masters who have practised it in England, Pope is the most 
skilled. 

If Pope's arguments were written in prose, the reader would hardly 
be moved by them ; he would instinctively think of Pascal's book, and 
remark upon the astonishing difference between a versifier and a man. 
A good epitome, a good bit of style, well worked out, well Avritten, 
he would say, and nothing further. Clearly the beauty of the verses 
arose from the difficulty overcome, the chosen sounds, the symmetrical 
rhythms ; this was all, and it was not much. A great writer is a 
man who, having passions, knows his dictionary and grammar ; Pope 
thoroughly knew his dictionary and his grammar, but stopped there. 

People will say that this merit is small, and that I do not inspire 
them with a desire to read Pope's verses. True; at least I do not 
counsel them to read many. I Avould add, however, by way of excuse, 
that there is a kind in which he succeeds, that his descriptive and 
oratorical talents find in portraiture matter which suits them, and that 
in this he frequently approaches La Bruyere ; that several of his por- 
traits, those of Addison, Lord Hervey, Lord Wharton, the Duchess 
of Marlborough, are medals worthy of finding a place in the cabinet of 
the curious, and of remaining in the archives of the human race ; that 
when he chisels one of these heads, the abbreviative images, the un- 
looked-for connections of words, the sustained and multiplied contrasts, 
the perpetual and extraordinary conciseness, the incessant and increas- 
ing impulse of all the strokes of eloquence combined upon the same 
spot, stamp upon the memory an impress which we never forget. It 
is better to repudiate these partial apologies, and frankly to avow that, 
on the whole, this great poet, the glory of his age, is wearisome, 
wearisome to us. * A woman of forty,' says Stendhal, * is only beautiful 
to those who have loved her in their youth.' The pooz muse in ques- 
tion is not forty years old for us ; she is a hundred and forty. Let us 
remember, when we wish to judge her fairly, the time when we made 
French verses like our Latin verse. The taste has been transformed 
an age ago, for the human mind has wheeled round ; with the prospect 
the perspective has changed ; we must take this displacement into ac- 
count. Now-a-days we demand new ideas and bare sentiments ; we 
care no longer for the clothing, we want the thing. Exordium, transi- 
tions, peculiarities of style, elegances of expression, the whole literary 
wardrobe, is sent to the old-clothes shop ; we only keep what is indis- 
pensable ; we trouble ourselves no more about adornment, but about 
truth. The men of the preceding century were quite different. Thii 
was seen when Pope translated the Iliad ; it was the Iliad written iu 
the style of the Henriade <• by virtue of this travesty the public admired 



CHAP. VII.] THE POETiS. 213 

it. They would not have admired it in the simple Greek guise ; they 
only consented to see it in powder and ribbons. It was the costume of 
the time, and it was very necessary to put it on. Dr. Johnson in his com- 
mercial and academical style affirms even that the demand for elegance 
Vad increased so much, that pure nature could no longer be borne. 

Good society and men of letters made a little world by themselves, 
which had been formed and refined after the manner and ideas of France. 
They had taken a correct and noble style at the same time as fashion 
and fine manners. They held by this style as by their coat; it was a 
matter of propriety or ceremony ; there was an accepted and unalterable 
pattern; they could not change it without indecency or ridicule: to 
■write, not according to the rules, especially in verse, effusively and 
naturally, would have been like showing oneself in the drawing-room 
in slippers and a dressing-gown. Their pleasure in reading verse was to 
try whether the pattern had been exactly followed, originality was only 
permitted in details ; you might adjust here a lace, there some band, 
but you were bound scrupulously to preserve the conventional form, 
to brush everything minutely, and never to appear without new gold 
lace and glossy broadcloth. The attention was only bestowed on refine- 
ments ; a more elaborate braid, a more brilliant velvet, a feather more 
gracefully arranged ; to this were boldness and experiment reduced ; 
the smallest incorrectness, the slightest incongruity, would have offended 
their eyes ; they perfected the infinitely little. Men of letters acted like 
these coquettes, for whom the superb goddesses of Michael Angelo and 
Rubens are but milkmaids, but who utter a cry of pleasure at the sight 
of a ribbon at twenty francs a yard. A division, a displacing of verses, 
a metaphor delighted them, and this was all which could still transport 
them. They went on day by day embroidering, bedizening, narrowing 
the bright classic robe, until at last the human mind, feeling fettered, 
tore it, cast it away, and began to move. Now that this robe is on the 
ground the critics pick it up, hang it up in their museums, so that 
everybody can see it, shake it, and try to conjecture from it the feelings 
of the fine lords and of the fine speakers who wore it. 

V. 
It is Dot everything to have a beautiful dress, strongly sewn and 
fashionable ; one must be able to get into it easily. Reviewing the whole 
train of the English poets of the eighteenth century, we perceive that 
they do not easily get into the classical dress. This gold-embroidered 
jacket, so well fitted for a Frenchman, hardly suits their figure ; from 
time to time a hasty, awkward movement makes rents in the sleeves 
and elsewhere. For instance, Matthew Prior seems at first sight to 
have all the qualities necessary to wear the jacket well ; he has been an 
ambassador to France, and writes pretty French vers de societe ; he turns 
off with facility little jesting poems on a dinner, a lady ; he is gallant, 
a man of society, a pleasant story-teller, epicurean, even sceptical like 



214 THE CLASSIC AGE [BOOK 111 

the courtiers of Charles ii., that is to say, as far as and including poli« 
tical roguery; in short, he is an accomplished man of the world, at 
times went, with a correct and flowing style, having at command a light 
and a noble verse, and pulling, according to the rules of Bossu and 
Boileau, the string of mythological puppets. With all this, we find 
him neither gay enough nor refined enrugh. Bolingbroke called him 
wooden-faced, stubborn, and said he had something Dutch in his ap- 
pearancs. His manners smacked very strongly of those of Rochester, 
and the well-clad refuse which the Restoration bequeathed to th(! Re- 
volution He took the first woman at hand, shut himself up with her 
for several days, drank hard, fell asleep, and let her make off with hia 
money and clothes. Amongst other drabs, ugly enough and alwayj 
dirty, he finished by keeping Elizabeth Cox, and all but married her ; 
fortunately he died just in time. Hig style was like his manners. 
When he tried to imitate La Fontaine's Hans Carvel^ he made it dull, 
and lengthened it; he could not be piquant, but he was biting; his 
obscenities have a cynical crudity ; his raillery is a satire ; and in one 
of his poems, To a Young Gentleman in Love, the lash becomes a knock- 
down blow. On the other hand, he was not a common roysterer. 
Of his two principal poems, one on Solomon paraphrases and treats 
of the remark of Ecclesiastes, * All is vanity.' From this picture you 
see forthwith that you are in a biblical land : such an idea would not 
then have occurred to a friend of the Regent of France, the Duke of 
Orleans. Solomon relates how he in vain ' proposed his doubts to the 
lettered Rabbins,' how he has been equally unfortunate in the hopes 
and desires of love, the possession of power, and ends by trusting to 
an * omniscient Master, omnipresent King.* Here we have English 
gloom and English conclusions.^ Moreover, under the rhetorical and 
uniform composition of his verses, we perceive warmth and passion, 
rich paintings, a sort of magnificence, and the profusion of a surcharged 
imagination. The sap in England is always stronger than in France ; 
the sensations there are deeper, and the thoughts more original. Prior's 
other poem, very bold and philosophical, against conventional truths 
and pedantries, is a droll discourse on the seat of the soul, from which 
Voltaire has taken many ideas and much foulness. The whole arsenal 
of the sceptic and materialist was built and published in England, when 
the French took to it. Voltaire has only selected and sharpened the 
arrows. Observe also that this poem is wholly written in a prosaic 
style, with a harsh common sense and a medical frankness, unterrified 
by the foulest abominations.* Candide and the Earl of ChesterfieUCi 

> Prior's Works, ed. Gilfillan, 1851 : ' 

* In the remotest wood and lonely grot. 
Certain to meet that worst of evils, thought.* 

• Alma, canto, ii. v. 937-97-8 : 

* Your I icer Hottentots think meet 
With guts and tripe to deck their feet , 



CHAP Vil.] THE POETS. 2^5 

Ears^ by Voltaii«, are more brilliant but not more genuine produ.ctions. 
On the whole, with his coarseness, want of taste, prolixity, perspicacity^ 
passion, there is something in this man not in accordance with classical 
elegance. He goes beyond it or does not attain it. 

This uncongeniality increases, and attentive eyes soon discover under 
the regular cloak a kind of energetic and precise imagination, ready to 
break through it. In this age lived Gay, a sort of La Fontaine, as near 
La Fontaine as an Englishman can be, that is, not very near, but at 
least kind and amiable, very sincere, very frank, strangely thoughtless, 
born to be duped, and a young man to the last. Swift said of him that 
he ought never to have lived more than twenty-two years. * In wit a 
man, simplicity a child,' wrote Pope. He lived, like La Fontaine, at the 
expense of the great, travelled as much as he could at their charge, lost 
his money in South- Sea speculations, aspired to a plac^ at court, wrote 
fables full of humanity to form the heart of the Duke of Cumberland,* 
ended by settling as a friend and parasite, as a domestic poet with the 
Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. He had Uttle of the grave in his 
character ; not much of scruple and persistence. It was his sad lot, he 
said, * that he could get nothing from the court, whether he wrote lot 
or against it.* And he wrote his own epitaph : 

* Life is a jest ; and all things show it, 
I thought so once ; but now I know it,** 

This careless laugher, to revenge himself on the minister, wrote the 
Beggari Opera^ the fiercest and dirtiest of caricatures.^ In this court 
they slaughter men in place of scratching them ; babes handle the 
knife like the rest. Yet he was a laugher, but in a style of his own, 
or rather in that of his country. Seeing 'certain young men of 
insipid delicacy,'* Ambrose Philips, for instance, who wrote elegant 
and tender pastorals, in the manner of Fontenelle, he amused him- 
self by parodying and contradicting them, and in the Shepherd's Week 
introduced real rural manners into the metre and form of the visionary 
poetry : 

* Thou wilt not find my shepherdess idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking 
die kine, tying up the sheaves, or, if the hogs are astray, driving them to theii 

With downcast looks on Totta's legs 
The ogling youth most humbly begs. 
She would not from his hopes remove 
At once his breakfast and his love. . . . 
Before you see, you smell your toast. 
And sweetest she who stinks the most-' 
' The duke who was afterwards nicknamed * the Butcher.' 
' Poems on Several Occasions, by Mr. John Gay, 1745, 2 vols, ii. 141. 
' See vol. \i. ch. ii. p. 50. 

* Poems on Several Occasions ; The Proeme to The Shepherd's Week, i 64. 



216 THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK III 

Btyes. My sheplii^rd . . sleepeth not under myrtle shades, bat under a hedge» 
nor doth he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none.' * 

Fancy a shepherd of Theocritus or Virgil, compelled to put on hob- 
nailed shoes and the dress of a Devonshire cowherd ; such an oddity 
would amuse us by the contrast of Jiis person and his garments. So 
here The Magician^ The Shepherd's Strvggle, are travestied in a modern 
guise. Listen to the song of the first shepherd, ' Lobbin Clout : * 

* Leek to the Welch, to Dutchmen butter's dear, 
Of Irish swains potatoe is the chear ; 
Oat for their feasts, the Scotish shepherds grind. 
Sweet turnips are the food of Blouzelind. 
While she loves turnips, butter I'll despise, 
Nor leeks, nor oatmeal, nor potatoe prize.'* 

The other shepherd answers in the same metre ; and the duet continues, 

verse after verse, in the ancient manner, but now amidst turnips, strong 
beer, fat pigs, bespattered at will by modern country vulgarities and 
the dirt of a northern climate. Van Ostade and Teniers love these 
vulgar and clownish idyls ; and in Gay, as well as with them, unvarnished 
and sensual drollery has its sway. The people of the north, who are 
great eaters, always liked country fairs. The vagaries of toss-pots and 
gossips, the grotesque outburst of the popular and animal mind, put 
them into good humour. One must be genuinely a worldling or an 
artist, a Frenchman or an Italian, to be disgusted with them. They 
are the product of the country, as well as meat and beer : let us try, 
in order that we may enjoy them, to forget wine, delicate fruits, to 
give ourselves blunted senses, to become in imagination compatriots 
of such men. We have become used to the pictures of these drunken 
clods, which Louis xiv. called ' baboons,' to these red cooks who scrape 
their horse-raddish, and to the like scenes. Let us get used to Gay • 
to his poem Trivia^ or the Art of Walking the Streets of London ; to his 
advice as to dirty gutters, and shoes ' with firm, well-hammer'd soles ;' 
his description of the amours of the goddess Cloacina and a scavenger, 
whence sprang the shoeblacks. He is a lover of the real, has a pre- 
cise imagination, does not see objects on a large scale, but singly, with 
all their outlines and surroundings, whatever they may be, beautiful or 
ugly, dirty or clean. The other literary men act likewise, even the 
known classical writers, even Pope. There is in Pope a minute descrip- 
tion, adorned with high-coloured words, local details, in which abbre- 
viative and characteristic features are stamped with such a liberal and 
Bure hand, that you would take the author for a modern realist, and 
would find in the work an historical document.* As to Swift, he is the 

' The Proeme to The Shepherd's Week, i. 66. 

' Gay's Poems, The Shepherd's Week ; first pastoral, The Squabble, p. 80. 

• Emstle to Mrs. Blount, 'on her leaviup: the town/ 



CHAP. VII.J THE POETS. 21^ 

bitterest positivist, and more so in poetry thAti in prose. Read hie 
eclogue on Strephon and Chloe, if you would know how far men can 
debase the noble poetic drapery. They make a dishclout of it, or dress 
clodhoppers in it ; the Eoman toga and Greek chlamys do not suit these 
barbarians' shoulders. They are like those kniglits of the middle-ages, 
who, when they had taken Constantinople, muffled themselves for a 
joke, in long Byzantine robes, and went riding through the streets in 
these disguises, dragging their embroidery in the gutter. 

These men will do well, like the knights, to return to their manor, 
their country, the mud of their ditches, and vhe dunghill of their farm- 
yards. The less man is fitted for social life, the more he is fitted for 
solitary life. He enjoys the country the more for enjoying the world 
less. Englishmen have always been more feudal and more fond of the 
country than Frenchmen. Under Louis xiv. and Louis xv. the worst 
misfortune for a nobleman was to go to his estate in the country and 
grow rusty there ; away from the smiles of the king and the fine con- 
versations of Versailles ; there was nothing left but to yawn and die 
In England, in spite of the artificial civilisation and worldly ceremonies, 
the love of the chase and of physical exercises, political interests and 
the necessities of elections brought the nobles back to their domains. 
And there their natural instincts returned. A sad and impassioned 
man, naturally self-dependent, converses with objects ; a grand grey 
sky, whereon the autumn mists slumber, a sudden burst of sunshine 
lighting up a moist field, depress or excite him ; inanimate things seem 
to him instinct with life ; and the feeble clearness, which in the morn- 
ing reddens tlie fringe of heaven, moves him as much as the smile of a 
young girl at her first ball. Thus is genuine descriptive poetry born. 
It appears in Dryden, in Pope himself, even in the writers of elegant 
pastorals, and breaks out in Thomson's Seasons. This poet, the son of 
a clergyman, and very poor, lived, like most of the literary men of the 
time, on benefactions and literary subscriptions, on sinecures and poli- 
tical pensions ; he did not marry for lack of money ; wrote tragedies, 
because tragedies were lucrative ; and ended by settling in a country- 
house, lying in bed till mid-day, indolent, contemplative, but a good 
and honest man, affectionate and beloved. He saw and loved the 
country in its smallest details, not outwardly only, as Saint Lambert,* 
his imitator ; he made it his joy, his amusement, his habitual occupa- 
tion ; a gardener at heart, deligl'ted to see the spring arrive, happy to 
be able to enclose an extra field in his garden. He paints all the little 
things, without being ashamed, for they interest him ; takes pleasure 
in ' the smell of the dairy ; ' you hear him speak of the ' insect armies,' 
and ' when the envenomed leaf begins to curl,' ^ and of the birds which, 

* A French pastoral writer (1717-1803), who wrote, in imitation of Thomsr q 
Les Saisons, — Tr. 

* Poetical Works of J. TJuir.pso% ed R. Bell, 1855, 2 vols. ; ii. Spring, la 



218 THE CLASSIC AGE, [BOOK III 

foreseeing the approaching rain, * streak their wings mth oil, to thro^ 
the hicid moisture trickling off.' ^ He perceives objects so clearly that 
he makes them visible : we recognise the English landscape, green and 
moist, half drowned in floating vapours, blotted here and there ty vIq!^ 
clouds, which burst in showers at the horizon, which they dark«ii : 

' Til' effusive South 
Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven 
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.' 
Thus all day long the full-distended clouds 
Indulge their genial stores, and well-showered earth 
Is deep enriched with vegetable life ; 
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun 
Looks out, effulgent from amid the flush 
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam. 
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes 
The illumined mountain ; through the forest streams ; 
Shakes on the floods ; and in a yellow mist. 
Far smoking o'er the interminable plain, 
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems. 
Moist, bright, and green, the ]andscape laughs around*' ' 

This is emphatic, but it is also opulent. In this air and this vegetation, 
in this imagination and this style, there is a heaping up, and, as it were, 
an imparting of effaced or sparkling tints ; they are here the glistening 
and lustrous robe of nature and art. We must see them in Rubens-— he 
is the painter and poet of the teeming and humid clime ; but we find it 
also in others, and in this magnificence of Thomson : in this exagge- 
rated, luxuriant, grand colouring, we find occasionally the rich palette 
of Rubens. 

VI. 
All this suits ill the classical embroidery. Thomson's visible imita- 
tions of Virgil, his episodes inserted like a veneering, his invocations to 
spring, to the muse, to philosophy, all the relics of the conventionalisms 
of the college, produce an incongruity. But the contrast is much more 
marked in another way. The worldly artificial life such as Louis xiv 
had made fashionable, began to weary Europe. It was found dry and 
hollow; people grew tired of always acting, submitting to etiquette. 
They felt that gallantry is not love, nor madrigals poetry, nor amuse- 
ment happiness. They perceived that man is not an elegant doll, or a 
dandy the masterpiece of nature, and that there is a world outside the 
drawing-rooms. A Genevese plebeian (J. J. Rousseau), Protestant and 
solitary, whom religion, education, poverty, and genius had led more 
quickly and further than others, spoke out the public secret aloud; 
and it was thought that he had discovered or rediscovered the country, 
conscience, religion, the rights of man, and natural sentiments. Theu 

» Poetical Works of Thomson, Spring, ii. 19. Ibid. 19. 

« IHd. 20. 



CHAP. VII. THE POETS. 219 

appeared a new personality, the idol and model of his time, the sensi- 
ti-ve man, who, by his grave character and relish of nature, contrasted 
•with the man of the court. Doubtless this personality smacks of the 
places he has frequented. He is refined and insipid, melting at the 
Bight of the young lambs nibbling the springing grass, blessing the little 
birds, who give a concert to celebrate their happiness. He is emphatic 
and wordy, writes tirades on sentiment, inveighs against the age, apos- 
trophises virtue, reason, truth, and the abstract divinities, which are 
engraved in delicate outline on the frontispiece. In spite of himself, lie 
continues a man of the drawing-room and the academy ; after uttering 
sweet things to the ladies, he utters them to nature, and declaims in 
polished periods about the Deity. But after all, it is through him that 
the revolt against classical customs begins ; and in this respect, it is 
more precocious in Germanic England than in Latin France. Thirty 
years before Rousseau, Thomson had expressed all Rousseau's senti- 
ments, almost in the same style. Like him, he painted the country with 
sympathy and enthusiasm. Like him, he contrasted the golden age of 
primitive simplicity with modern miseries and corruption. Like him, 
he exalted deep love, conjugal tenderness, the union of souls, and perfect 
esteem animated by desire, paternal affection, and all domestic joys. 
Like him, he combated contemporary frivolity, and compared the 
ancient with the modern republics : 

* Proofs of a people, whose heroic aims 
Soared far above the little selfish sphere 
Of doubting modern life. ' ^ 

Like Rousseau, he praised gravity, patriotism, liberty, virtue ; rose froni 
the spectacle of nature to the contemplation of God, and showed to 
man glimpses of immortal life beyond the tomb. Like him, in fine, he 
marred the sincerity of his emotion and the truth of his poetry by sen- 
timental vapidities, by pastoral billing and cooing, and by such an 
abundance of epithets, personified abstractions, pompous invocations 
and oratorical tirades, that we perceive in him beforehand the false and 
decorative style of Thomas, David,^ and the Revolution. 

Others follow. The literature of that period might be called the 
library of the sensitive man. First there was Richardson, the puritanic 
printer, with his Sir Charles Grandison,^ a man of principles, accom- 
plished model of the gentleman, professor of decorum and morality, 
with a soul into the bargain. There is Sterne too, the refined and 
sickly blackguard, who, amid his buffooneries and oddities, pauses to 
weep over an ass or an imaginary prisoner."* There is, in particular, 
Mackenzie, ' the Man of Feeling,' whose timid, delicate herD weeps five 
or six times a day; who grows consumptive through sensibility, dares 

* Poetical Works of Thomson, Liberty, part i. 103. 

^ See the paintings of David, called Les Fetes de la Revolution. 

3 See vol. ii. bk. iii. cli. 6. p. 167. * See vol. ii. bk. ill. eh. 7, p 179 



THE CLASSIC AGE. [BOOK II. 

not broach his love till at the point of death, and dies in broaching it 
Naturally, praise induces satire ; and in the opposite field we see Fielding, 
valiant roysterer, and Sheridan, brilliant rake, the one with Blifil, the 
other with Joseph Surface, two hypocrites, especially the second, not 
coarse, red-faced, and smelling of the vestry, like Tartuffe, but worldly, 
well-clad, a good speaker, loftily serious, sad and gentle from excess of 
tenderness, who, with his hand on his heart and a tear in his eye, 
showers on the public his sentences and periods, whilst he soils his 
brother's reputation and debauches his neighbour's wife. A character, 
thus created, soon has an epic made for him. A Scotchman, a man o( 
wit, of overmuch wit, having written to his cost an unsuccessful rhap- 
sody, wished to recover himself, went amongst the mountains of his 
country, gathered picturesque images, collected fragments of legends^ 
plastered over the whole an abundance of eloquence and rhetoric, and 
created a Celtic Horner^ Ossian, who, with Oscar, Malvina, and his 
whole troop, made the tour of Europe, and, about 1830, ended by 
furnishing baptismal names for French grisettes and perniquiers. Mac- 
pherson displayed to the world an imitation of primitive manners, not 
over-true, for the extreme rudeness of barbarians would have shocked 
the people, but yet well enough preserved or portrayed to contrast with 
modern civilisation, and persuade the public that they were looking 
upon pure nature. A keen sympathy with Scotch landscape, so grand,, 
so cold, so gloomy, rain on the hills, the birch trembling to the 
wind, the mist of heaven and the vagueness of the soul, so that every 
dreamer found there the emotions of his solitary walks and his philo- 
sophical glooms ; chivalric exploits and magnanimity, heroes who set 
out alone to engage an army, faithful virgins dying on the tomb of 
their betrothed ; an impassioned, coloured style, affecting to be abrupt, 
yet polished ; able to charm a disciple of Rousseau by its warmth and 
elegance : here was something to transport the young enthusiasts of 
the time, civilised barbarians, scholarly lovers of nature, dreaming of 
the dehghts of savage life, whilst they shook off the powder which the 
hairdresser had left on their coats. 

Yet this is not the course of the main current of poetry ; it lies in 
tlie direction of sentimental reflection : the greatest number of poems, 
and those most sought after, are emotional dissertations. In fact, a 
sensitive man breaks out in violent declamations. When he sees a 
cloud, he dreams of human nature, and constructs a phrase. Hence 
at this time among poets, swarm the melting philosophers and the 
tearful academicians ; Gray, the morose hermit of Cambridge, and 
Akenside, a noble thinker, both learned imitators of lofty Greek 
poetry ; Beattie, a metaphysical moralist, with a young girl's nerves 
and an old maid's hobbies ; the amiable and affectionate Goldsmith, 
who wrote the Vicar of Wakejield,^ the most charming of Protestant 

» See vol. ii. bk. iii. ch. 8, p. 182. 



CHAP. VII.] THE POETS. 221 

pastorals ; poor Collins, a young enthusiast, who was disgusted with 
life, would read nothing but the Bible, went mad, was shut up in 
an asylum, and in his intervals of liberty wandered in Chichester 
cathedral, accompanying the music with sobs and groans ; Glover, 
Watts, Shenstone, Smart, and others. The titles of their worka 
sufficiently indicate their character. One writes a poem on Tfli 
Pleasures of Imagination, another on the Passions and on Liberty; 
one an Elegy in a Country Churchyard and a Hymn to Adversity^ 
another a poem on a Deserted Village, and on the character of sur- 
rounding civilisations (Goldsmith's Traveller)', another a sort of epic 
tm Thermopylce, and another the moral history of a young Minstrel. 
They were nearly all grave, spiritual men, impassioned for noble ideas, 
with Christian aspirations or convictions, given to meditating on man, 
inclined to melancholy, to descriptions, invocations, lovers of abstrac- 
tion and allegory, who, to attain greatness, willingly mounted on stilts. 
One of the least strict and most noted of them was Young, the author 
of Night Thoughts, a clergyman and a courtier, who, having vainly 
attempted to enter Parliament, then to become a bishop, married, 
lost his wife and children, and made use of his misfortunes to write 
meditations on Life, Death, Immortality, Time, Friendship, The Christian 
Triumph, Virtue's Apology, A Moral Survey of the Nocturnal Heavens^ 
and many other similar pieces. Doubtless there are brilliant flashes 
of imagination in his poems ; seriousness and elevation are not wanting! 
we can even see that he aims at them ; but we discover much more 
quickly that he makes the most of his grief, and strikes attitudes. He 
exaggerates and declaims, studies effects and style, confuses Greek and 
Chris^^^ian ideas. Fancy an unhappy father, who says: 

* Silence and Darkness ! Solemn sisters ! Twins 
Of ancient night ! I to Day's soft-ey'd sister pay my court 
(Endymion's rival), and her aid implore 
Kow first implor'd in succour to tlie Muse.'* 

And a few pages further on invokes heaven and earth, when mention 
iiig the resurrection of the Saviour. And yet the sentiment is fresh 
and sincere. Is it not one of the greatest of modern ideas to put 
Christian philosophy into verse ? Young and his contemporaries say 
beforehand that which Chateaubriand and Lamartine were to discover. 
The true, the futile, all is here forty years earlier than in France. The 
wigels and the other celestial machinery long figured in England before 
appearincr in Chateaubriand's Genie du Christianisme and t\\Q Martyrs, 
Atala and Ch;ictas are of the same family as Malvina and Fingal. If M. 
de Lamartine read Gray's odes and Akenside's reflections, he would find 
there the melancholy sweetness, the exquisite art, the fine arguments, 
and half the ideas of his own poetry. And yet, near as they were to 
a literary renovation, Englishmen did not yet attain it. In vain the 



Young's Night Thoughts. 



222 THE CLASSIC AGE. fBOOK IH 

foundation was changed, the form persisted. They did not shake cff 
the classical drapery ; they write too well, they dare not be natural 
They have always a patent stock of fine suitable words, pontic 
elegances, where each of them thought himself bound to go and 
search out his phrases. It boots them nothing to be impassioned or 
realistic ; to dare, like Shenstone, describe a Schoolmistress, and the 
very part on which she whips a young rascal ; their simplicity is 
conscious, their frankness archaic, their emotion compassed, their 
tears academical. Ever, at the moment of writing, an august model 
starts up, a sort of schoolmaster, weighing on each with his full 
weight, with all the weight which a hundred and twenty years of 
literature can give his precepts. Their prose is always the slave of 
the period : Samuel Johnson, who was at once the La Harpe and the 
Boileau of his age, explains and imposes on all the studied, balanced, 
irreproachable phrase ; and the classical ascendency is still so strong 
that it domineers over the infancy of history, the only kind of English 
literature which was then European and original. Hume, Robertson, 
and Gibbon were almost French in their taste, language, education, 
conception of man. They relate like men of the world, cultivated and 
instructed, with charm and clearness, in a polished, rhythmic, sustained 
style. They show a liberal spirit, a continuous moderation, an im- 
partial reason. They banish from history all coarseness and tedious- 
ness. They write without caprice or prejudice. But, at the same 
time, they attenuate human nature; comprehend neither barbarism 
nor exaltation ; paint revolutions, as people might do who had seen 
nothing but decked drawing-rooms and dusted libraries ; they judge 
enthusiasts with the coldness of chaplains or the smile of a sceptic; 
they blot out the salient features which distinguish human physiog- 
nomies ; they cover all the harsh points of truth with a brilliant and 
uniform varnish. At last there started up an unfortunate Scotch 
ploughman (Burns), rebelling against the world, and in love, with the 
yearnings, lusts, greatness, and irrationality of modern genius. Now 
and then, driving his plough, he lighted on genuine verses, vMse» 
such as Heine and Alfred de ]\Iusset have made in our own days, la 
those few words, combined after a new fashion, there was a revolu- 
tion. Two hundred new verses sufficed. The human mind turned oa 
its hinges, and so did civil society. When Roland, being made a 
minister, presented himself before Louis xvi. in a simple dress-coal 
atd shoes without buckles, the master of the cereioonies >-aised hie 
bsmds to heaven, thinking that all was lost. In fact, ali wm changed. 



BOOK IV 



CHAPTER I. 
Ideas and Productions. 

I, Changes in society — Kise of democracy — The Erench Ue-^olution — Desire of 
getting on — Changes ya. the human mind — New notioii Df 3ause8 — Ger- 
man philosophy — Craving for the beyond. 
£L Robert Burns — His country — Family — Youth — Wretchedness — His yearn- 
ings and efforts — Invectives against society and church — The Jolly 
Beggars — Attacks on conventional cant — His idea of natural life — of 
moral life — Talent — Spontaneity — Style — Innovations — Success — Affec- 
tations — Studied letters and academic verse — Farmer's life — Employment 
in the Excise — Disgust — Excesses — Death. 

III. Conservative rule in England — The Revolution affects the style only — 

Cowper — Sickly refinement — Madness — Retirement — The Task — Modem 
idea of poetry — Of style. 

IV. The Romantic school — Its pretensions — Its tentatives — The two ideas of 

modern literature — History enters into literature — Lamb, Coleridge, 
Southey, Moore — Faults of this school — Why it succeeded less in Eng- 
land than elsewhere — Sir Walter Scott — Education — Antiquarian studies 
— Aristocratic tastes — Life — Poems — Novels — Incompleteness of his his- 
torical imitations — Excellence of his national pictures — His interiors — 
Amiable railleiy — Moral aim — Place in modern civilisation — Develop- 
ment of the novel in England — Realism and uprightness — Wherein this 
Rjhool is cockneyfied and English. 
▼ rii0.osophy enters into literature — Lack of harmony in the style — Wordg- 
worth — Character — Condition — Life — Painting of the moral life in the 
Tulgar life — Introduction of the gloomy style and psychological divisions 
— Faults of style — Loftiness of his sonn^ *« — The Excursion — Austera 
beauty of this Protestant poetry — Shelley- -Imprudences — Theories-* 
Fancy — Pantheism — Ideal characters — Life-like scenery — General tejL- 
dency of the new literature — Gradual introduction of continental ideas. 



ON the eve of the nineteenth century began in Europe the great 
modern revolution. The thinking public and the human mind 
changed, and underneath these two collisions a new literature sprang 
up. 

228 



224 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK 19 

The preceding age bad done its work. Perfect prose and classical 
style put within reach of the most backward and the dullest minds 
the notions of literature and the di&coveries of science. Moderate 
monarchies and regular administrations had permitted the middle class 
to develop itself under th',^ pompous aristocracy of the court, as useful 
plants may be seen shooting up under trees which serve for show and 
ornament. They multiply, grow, rise to the height of their rivals, 
eDvelop them in" their luxuriant growth, and obscure them by their 
density. A new woi-ld, commonplace, plebeian, thenceforth occupies 
the ground, attracts the gaze, imposes its form in manners, stamps ita 
image in the n ind. Towards the close of the century a sudden con- 
course of extraordinary events displays it all at once to the light, and 
sets it on an eminence unknown to any previous age. With the grand 
applications of science, democracy appears. The steam-engine and 
spinning-jenny create in England towns of from three hundred and 
jifty thousand to five hundred thousand souls. The population is 
doubled in fifty years, and agriculture becomes so perfect, that, in spite 
of this enormous increase of mouths to be fed, one-sixth of the inhabit- 
ants provide from the same soil food for the rest ; importations increase 
threefold, and even more ; the tonnage of vessels increases sixfold, the 
(exportation sixfold and more.^ Prosperity, leisure, instruction, reading, 
travels, whatever had been the privilege of a few, became the common 
property of the majority. The rising tide of wealth raised the best of 
the poor to comfort, and the best of the well-to-do to opulence. The 
rising tide of civilisation raised the mass of the people to the rudi- 
ments of education, and the mass of citizens to complete education. 
In 1709 appeared the first daily newspaper,^ as big as a man's hand, 
which the editor did not know how to fill, and which, added to all 
the other papers, did not produce yearly three thousand numbers. In 
1844 the Stamp Ofiice showed 71 million numbers, many as large and 
as full as volumes. Artisans and townsfolk, enfranchised, enriched, 
having gained a competence, left the low depths where they had been 
buried in their narrow parsimony, ignorance, and routine ; they came 
on the scene, forsook their workman-like and supernumerary's dross, 
assumed the leading parts by a sudden irruption or a continuous pro- 
gress, by dint of revolutions, with a prodigality of labour and genius, 
amidst vast wars, successively or simultaneously in America, France, 
the whole of Europe, founding or destroying states, inventing or restor- 
ing sciences, conquering or acquiring political rights. They grew nobis 
through their great deeds, became the rivals, equals, conquerors of their 
masters ; they need no longer imitate them, being heroes in their 

* See Alison, History of Europe ; Porter, Progress of the Nation. 

» In the Fourth Estate, hy F. Knight Hunt, 2 vols, 1840, it is said (i. 176^ 
that the first daily and morning paper, The Daily Gourant, appeared in 1709.— 
Tr. 



CHAP. 1.1 IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 225 

turn : like them, they can point to their crusades ; like them, they 
have gained the right of having a poetry ; and like them, they will 
have a poetry. 

In France, the land of precocious equality and finished revolutions, 
we must observe this new character — the plebeian bent on getting on : 
Augereau, son of a greengrocer ; JSIarceau, son of a lawyer ; Murat, 
son of an innkeeper ; Ney, son of a cooper ; Hoche, an old sergeant, 
who in his tent, by night, read Condillac's Traite des Sensations ; and 
above all, that thin young man, with lank hair, hollow cheeks, dried 
up with ambition, his heart full of romantic fancies and grand rough- 
hewn ideas, who, a lieutenant for seven years, read twice through the 
whole stock of a bookseller at Valence, who about this time (1792) in 
Italy, though suffering from itch, had just destroyed five armies with 
a troop of barefooted heroes, and gave his government an account of 
his victories with all his faults of spelling and of French. He became 
master, proclaimed himself the representative of the Revolution, de- 
clared 'that the career is open to talent,' and impelled others along 
with him in his enterprises. They follow him, because there is glory, 
and above all, advancement to be won. * Two officers,* says Stendhal, 
* commanded a battery at Talavera; a ball laid low the captain. *'SoI" 
said the lieutenant, *' Fran9ois is dead, I shall be captain." " Not yet," 
said Fran9ois, who was only stunned, and got on his feet again.' Thase 
two men were neither enemies nor wicked ; on the contrary, they w^re 
companions and comrades ; but the lieutenant wanted to rise a step. 
Such was the sentiment which provided men for the exploits and car- 
nages of the Empire, which caused the Revolution of 1830, and which 
now, in this vast stifling democracy, compels men to vie with each 
other in intrigues and labour, genius and baseness, to get out of their 
primitive condition, and raise themselves to the summit, whose posses- 
sion is assigned to their union or promised to their toil. The dominant 
character now-a-days is no longer the man of the drawing-room, 
whose place is certain and his fortune made, elegant and unruffled^ 
with no employment but to amuse and please himself; who loves 
to converse, v/ho is gallant, who passes his life in conversations with 
highly dressed ladies, amidst the duties of society and the pleasures of 
the world : it is the man in a black coat, who works alone in his roora 
or rides in a cab to make friends and protectors ; often envious, feeling 
himself always above or below his station in life, sometimes resigned, 
never satisfied, but fertile in inventions, lavish of trouble, finding the 
picture of his blemishes and his strength in the drama of Victor Hugo 
and the novels of Balzac.^ 

There are other and greater cares. With the state of human 
society, the form of the human mind has changed. It has changed by 



226 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

,a natural and irresistible development, like a flower growing into « 
fruit, like a fruit turning to seed. The mind renews the evolution 
which it had already performed in Alexandria, not as then in a dele- 
terious atmosphere, in the universal degradation of enslaved men, in 
the increasing decadence of a dissolving society, amidst the anguish of 
despair and the mists of a dream ; but lapt in a purifying atmosphere, 
amidst the visible progress of an improving society and the general 
ennobling of free and elevated men, amidst the proudest hopes, in the 
wholesome clearness of experimental sciences. The oratorical age which 
declined, as it declined in Athens and Rome, grouped all ideas in beau- 
tiful commodious compartments, whose subdivisions instantaneously led 
the gaze towards the object which they would define, so that thence- 
forth the intellect could enter upon the loftiest conceptions, and seize 
the aggregate which it had not yet embraced. Isolated nations, French, 
English, Italians, Germans, came to draw near and know each other after 
the shaking of the Re%olution and the wars of the Empire, as formerly 
the separate races, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Gauls, by the conquests 
of Alexander and the domination of Rome : so that henceforth each 
civilisation, expanded by the collision of neighbouring civilisations, can 
pass beyond its national limits, and multiply its ideas by the commix- 
ture of the ideas of others. History and criticism grew as under the 
Ptolemies ; and from all sides, throughout the universe, at all points of 
time, they were engaged in resuscitating and explaining literatures, 
religions, manners, societies, philosophies : so that thenceforth the in- 
tellect, enfranchised by the spectacle of past civilisations, could escape 
from the prejudices of its country. A new race, hitherto torpid, gave 
the signal: Germany communicated over the whole of Europe the 
impetus to the revolution of ideas, as France to the revolution of 
manners. These good folk who smoked and warmed themselves by the 
side of a stove, and seemed only fit to produce learned editions, found 
themselves suddenly the promoters and leaders of human thought. No 
race has such a comprehensive mind ; none is so well endowed for 
lofty speculation. We see it in their language, so abstract, that beyond 
the Rhine it seems an unintelligible jargon. And yet, thanks to this 
language, they attained to superior ideas. For the specialty of this 
revolution, as of the Alexandrian revolution, was that the human mind 
became more capable of abstraction. They made, on a large scale, the 
same step as the mathematicians when they passed from arithmetic to 
algebra, and from the ordinary calculus to the calculus of the infinite. 
They perceived, that beyond the limited truths of the oratorical age, 
there were deeper unfoldings ; they passed beyond Descartes and Locke, 
as the Alexandrians beyond Plato and Aristotle : they understood that 
a great architect, or round and square atoms, were not causes ; that 
fluids, molecules, and monads were not forces ; that a spiritual soul or 
a physiological secretion would not account for thought. They sought 
religious sentiment beyond dogmas, poetic beauty beyond rules, criticaJ 



CHAP. l.J IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 221 

truth beyond myths. They desired to grasp natural and moral powert 
themselves, independently of the fictitious supports to which their pre- 
decessors had attached them. All these supports, souls and atoms, all 
these fictions, fluids, and monads, all these conventions, rules of the 
beautiful and religious symbols, all rigid classifications of things natural, 
human and divine, faded away and vanished. Thenceforth they were 
nothing but figures ; they were only kept as an aid to the memory, and 
RS auxiliaries of the mind ; they served only provisionally, and as start- 
ing -points. Through a common movement along the whole line of human 
thought, causes draw back into an abstract region, where philosophy 
had not been to search them out for eighteen centuries. Then was 
manifested the disease of the age, the restlessness of Werther and Faust, 
very like that which in a similar moment agitated men eighteen cen- 
turies ago ; I mean, discontent with the present, the vague desire of a 
higher beauty and an ideal happiness, the painful aspiration for the 
infinite. Man suffered from doubt, yet he doubted ; he tried to seize 
again his beliefs, they melted in his hand ; he would sit down and rest 
in the doctrines and the satisfactions which sufiiced his predecessors, 
and he does not find them sufficient. He expends himself, like Faust, 
in anxious researches through science and history, and judges them 
vain, dubious, good for men like Wagner,^ pedants of the academy and 
the library. It is the beyond he sighs for ; he forebodes it through the 
formulas of science, the texts and confessions of the churches, through 
the amusements of the world, the intoxications of love. A sublime 
truth exists behind coarse experience and handed-down catechisms ; a 
grand happiness exists beyond the pleasures of society and the delights 
of a family. Sceptical, resigned, or mystics, they have all caught a 
glimpse of or imagined it, from Goethe to Beethoven, from Schiller to 
Heine ; they have risen towards it in order to stir up the whole swarm 
of their grand dreams ; they will not be consoled for falling away from 
it; they have mused upon it, even during their deepest fall; they have 
instinctively dwelt, like their predecessors the Alexandrians and Chris- 
tians, in that splendid invisible world in which, in ideal peace, slumber 
the creative essences and powers ; and the vehement aspiration of theij 
heart has drawn from their sphere the elementary spirits, ' film of flame, 
who flit and wave in eddying motion I birth and the grave, an infinite 
ocean, a web ever growing, a life ever glowing, ply at Time's whizzing 
loom, and weave the vesture of God.' ^ 

Thus rises the modern man, impelled by two sentiments, one demo- 
cratic, the other philosophic. From the shallows of his poverty and 
ignorance he rises with effort, lifting the weight of established society 
and admitted dogmas, disposed either to reform or to destroy them, 
and at once generous and rebellious. Then two currents from France 
&nd Germany at this moment swept into England. The dykes there 

* The disciple of Faust. ' Goethe's Faust, so, 1. 



J^28 MODERN LIFE. tfiOOK H 

were so strong, they conld hardly force their way, entering more slowly 
than elsewhere, but entering nevertheless. They made themselves a 
new course between tlie ancient barriers, and widened without bursting 
them, by a peaceful and slow transformation which continues till ihik 
day. 

II. 

The new spirit broke out first in a Scotch peasant, Robert Bums ; 
in fact, the man and the circumstances were suitable ; scarcely evef 
was seen together more of misery and talent. He was born January 
1759, in the frost and snow of a Scotch winter, in a cottage of clay 
built by his father, a poor farmer of Ayrshire ; a sad condition, a cad 
country, a sad lot. A part of the gable fell in a few days after his 
birth, and his mother was obliged to seek refuge with her child, in the 
middle of a storm, in a neighbour's house. It is hard to be born in 
this country. The soil is wretched ; and there are many bare hills, 
where the harvest often fails. Burns' father, already old, having little 
more than his arms to depend upon, having taken his farm at too high 
a rent, burdened with seven children, lived parsimoniously, or rather 
fasting, in solitude, to avoid temptations to expense. ' For several 
years butchers' meat was a thing unknown in the house.' Robert went 
barefoot and bareheaded ; at ' the age of thirteen he assisted in thrash- 
ing the crop of corn, and at fifteen he was the principal labourer on the 
farm.' The family did all the labour; they kept no servant, male or 
female. They scarcely ate, and they worked too much. * This kind of 
life — the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing toil of a galley 
slave — brought me to my sixteenth year,' Burns says. His shoulders 
were bowed, melancholy seized him ; ' almost every evening he was con- 
stantly afflicted with a dull headache, which at a future period of his 
life was exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of 
fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time.' ' The anguish of 
mind which we felt,' says his brother, * was very great.' The father 
grew old ; his gray head, careworn brow, temples ' wearing thin and 
bare,' his tall bent figure, bore witness to the grief and toil which had 
spent him. The factor wrote him insolent and threatening letters which 
' set all the family in tears.' There was a respite when the father changed 
his farm, but a lawsuit sprang up between him and the proprietor : 

* After three years' tossing and Avliirling in the vortex of litigation, my father 
was just saved from the horrors of a gaol by a consumption, whlcli after two years* 
promises kindly stepped in.' 

In order to snatch something from the claws of the lawyers, the two 
sons were obliged to step in as creditors for arrears of wages. With 
this little sum they took another farm. Robert had seven pounds a 
year for his labour ; for several years his whole expenses did not 
exceed this wretched pittance ; he had resolved to succeed by forc< 
of abstinence and toil : 



CHAP. I.J IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 229 

' I read farming books, I calculated crops, I attended markets ; . , but tha 
first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second from a lav^ liarv«s* 
we lost half our crops. 

Troubles came apace ; poverty always engenders them. The master- 
mason Armour, whose daughter was Burns' sweetheart, was said to con- 
template prosecuting him, to obtain a guarantee for the support of his 
expected progeny, though he refused to accept him as a son-in-law. 
Jean Armour abandoned him ; he could not give his name to the child 
that was coming. He was obliged to hide ; he had been subjected to 
a public punishment. He said : ' Even in the hour of social mirth, 
my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of 
the executioner.' He resolved to leave the country ; he agreed with 
Mr. Charles Douglas for thirty pounds a year to be bookkeeper or 
overseer on his estate in Jamaica ; for want of money to pay the 
passage, he was about to 'indent himself,' that is, become bound as 
apprentice, when the success of his volume put a score of guineas into 
his hands, and for a time brought him brighter days. Such was his 
life up t^ the age of twenty-seven, and that which succeeded was little 
better. 

Fancy in this condition a man of genius, a true poet, capable of 
the most delicate emotions and the most lofty aspirations, wishing to 
rise, to rise to the summit, of which he deemed himself capable and 
worthy.^ 

Ambition had early made itself heard in him : 

* I had felt early some stimngs of ambition, but they were the blind,groping 
of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. . . . The only two openings by 
which I could enter the temple of fortune were the gate of niggardly economy, or 
the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aper- 
ture, I never could squeeze myself into it j the last I always hated — there was 
contamination in the very entrance. ' * 

Low occupations depress the soul even more than the body; man 
p(!rishes in them — is obliged to perish ; of necessity there remains of 
him nothing but a machine : for in the kind of action in which all is 
monotonous, in which throughout the long day the arms lift the same 
flail and drive the same plough, if thought does not take this uniform 
tQL^vem'int, the work is ill done. The poet must take care not to be 
turned aside by his poetry; to do as Burns did, 'think only of his 
work whilst he ^\as at it.' He must think of it always, in the evening 
unyoking }jis cattle, on Sunday putting on his new coat, counting on 
his fingers the eggs and poultry, thinking of the kinds of dung, finding 
a means of using only one pair of shoes, and of selling his hay at a 
fenny a truss more. He will not succeed if he has not the patient 

' Most of these details are taken from the Life and Works of Burrn, bj 
B. Chambers, 1851, 4 vols. 

' Chambers, Life of Burns, i. 14. 



mo MODERN LIFE. ^BOOK H 

dulness of a labourer, and the crafty vigilance of a petty ehopkeeper. 
How would you have poor Burns succeed ? He was out of place from 
his birth, and tried his utmost to raise himself above his condition.^ 
At Ihe farm at Lochlea, during meal-times, the only moments of re- 
laxation, parents, brothers, and sisters, ate with a spoon in one hand 
and a book in the other. Burns, at the school of Hugh Rodger, a 
teacher of mensuration, and later at a club of young men at Torbolton, 
strove to exercise himself in general questions, and debated pro and 
con in order to see both sides of every idea. He carried a book in his 
pocket to study in spare moments in the fields ; he wore out thus two 
copies of Mackenzie's Man of Feeling. * The collection of songs waa 
my vade mecum. 1 poured over them driving my cart, or walking to 
labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, 
sublime, or fustian.' He maintained a correspondence with several of 
his companions in the same rank of life in order to form his style, kept a 
common-place book, entered in it ideas on man, religion, the greatest 
subjects, criticising his first productions. Burns says, ' Never did a heart 
pant more ardently than mine to be distinguished.' He thus divined 
what he did not learn, rose of himself to the level of the most highly 
cultivated ; in a while, at Edinburgh, he was to read through and through 
respected doctors, Blair himself; he was to see that Blair had attainments, 
but no depth. At this time he studied minutely and lovingly the old 
Scotch ballads; and by night in his cold little room, by day whilst 
whistling at the plough, he invented forms and ideas. We must think 
of this in order to understand his miseries and his revolt. We must think 
that the man in whom these great ideas are stirring, threshed the corn, 
cleaned his cows, went out to dig turf, waded in the muddy snow, and 
dreaded to come home and find the bailiflts to carry him off to prison. 
We must think also, that with the ideas of a thinker he had the delicacies 
and reveries of a poet. Once, having cast his eyes on an engraving re- 
presenting a dead soldier, and his wife beside him, his child and dog lying 
in the snow, suddenly, involuntarily, he burst into tears. He writes : 

* There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more — I do not know if I should 
call it pleasure — ^but something which exalts me, which enraptures me — ^than to 
walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, 
and hear the stormy mnd howling among the trees and raving over the plain. . . . 
I listenaj to the birds and frequently turned out of my path, lest I should disturb 
their litth songs or frighten them to another station. Even the hoary hawthorn 
twig that shot across the way, what Leart, at such a time, but must Lave been 
interested for his welfare ? ' * 

This swarm of grand or graceful dreams, the slavery of mechanical 
toil and perpetual economy crushed as soon as they began to soar. 
Add to this a proud character, so proud, that afterwards in the 
world, amongst the great, ' an honest contempt for whatever bore the 

' My great constituent elements are pride and passion. 

' Extract from Barns' common-place book ; Chambers' Life, i. ?9. 



CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 23] 

appearance of meanness and servility * made him * fall into the opposite 
error of hardness of manner.' He had also the consciousness of hi§ 
own merits. * Pauvre tnconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high 
an opinion of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when 
the public has decided in their favour.' * What wonder if we find at 
every step in his poems the bitter protests of an oppressed and rebelliont 
plebeian ? 

We find such recriminations against all society, against State and 
Church. Burns has a harsh tone, often the very phrases of Rousseau, 
and wished to be a * vigorous savage,' as he says, quit civilised life, 
the dependence and humiliations which it imposes on the wretched. 

'It is mortifying to see a fellow, whose abilities would scarcely have made 
t,n eight-penny taylor, and whose heart is not worth three farthings, meet with 
utteution and notice that are withheld from the sou of genius and poverty ' '^ 
It is hard to 

' See yonder poor, oe'rlabour'd wight, 

So abject, mean and vile, 

Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil ; 

And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn. 

Unmindful, though a weeping wife 
And helpless offspring mourn.' '^ 
Burns says also : 

* While winds frae off Ben-Lomond blaw, 

And bar the doors wi' driving snaw, . . , 

I grudge a wee the great folks' gift, • 

That live so bien an' snug : 

I tent less, and want less 

Their roomy fire-side ; 

But hanker and canker 

To see their cursed pride. 

It's hardly in a body's power 

To keep, at times, frae being sour. 

To see how things are shar'd ; 

How best o' chiels are whiles in want. 

While coofs on countless thousands rant. 

And ken na how to wair't.' ^ 

But * a man's a man for a' that,' and the peasant is as good as the 
lord. There are men noble by nature, and they alone are noble ; the 
coat is the business of the tailor, titles a matter for the Herald's oflice. 
♦ The rank is but the guinea's stamp, the man's the gowd for a' that.' 

' Chamber's Life, i, 231. Burns had a right to think so ; when he spoke 
at night in an inn, the very servants woke their fellow-labourers to come and 
bear him. 

^ Chambers, Life and Works of Robert Bums, ii. 68. 

" Man was made to Mourn, a dirge. 

• First Epistle to Davie, a hrotJier poet. 



232 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

Against such as reverse this natural equality Bums is pitiless ; th« 
least thing puts him out of temper. Read his ' Address of Beelzebub, 
to the Right Honourable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the 
Right Honourable and Honourable the Highland Society, which met 
on the 23d of May last at the Shakspeare, Covent Garden, to concert 
ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders, 
who, as the society were informed by Mr. Mackenzie of Applecross, 
were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and 
masters, whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of 
Mr. M'Donald of Glengarry to the wilds of Canada, in search of that 
fantastic thing — liberty!' Rarely was an insult more prolonged and 
more biting, and the threat is not far behind. He warns Scottish 
members like a revolutionist : withdraw ' that curst restriction on 
aquavitae ;* * get auld Scotland back her kettle ;* 

' An', Lord, if ance they pit lier till't 
Her tartan petticoat she'll kilt, 
An' durk an' pistol at her belt, 

She'll tak the streets, 
An' rin her whittle to the hilt 

I' the first she meets 1 ' * 

in vain, he writes, that 

' In politics if thou wouldst mix 
And mean thy fortunes be ; 
Bear this in mind, be deaf and blind, 
Let great folks hear and see.' '^ 

Not alone did he see and hear, but he also spoke, and that aloud. 
He congratulates the Fi-ench on having repulsed conservative Eu- 
rope, in arms against them. He celebrates the Tree of Liberty, 
planted * where ance the Bastile stood ; ' 

* Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit, 
Its virtues a' can tell, man ; 
It raises man aboon the brute, 
It makes him ken himsel' man. 
Gif ance the peasant taste a bit 
He's greater than a Lord, man. . . 
King Loui' thought to cut it down. 
When it was unco sma', man. 
For this the watchman cracked his crown. 
Cut off head and a', man.' * 

Strange gaiety, always savage and nervous, and which, in better style, 
resembles that of the Ca ira. 

Burns is hardly more tender to the church. At that time the strait 
puritanical garment began to give way. Already the learned world 

» Earnest Cry and Prayer to tne Scotch Representatives, 

« 7"he Greed of Poverty ; Chambers' Life, iv. 86, ^ j^jig free of Liberty 



CHAP. I.J IDEAS AND PKOI UCTIONS. 233 

of Edinburgh had Frenchified, widened, adapted it to the fasliions of 
society, decked it with ornaments, not very brilliant, it is true, but 
select. In the lower strata of society dogma became less rigid, and 
approached by degrees the looseness of Arminius and Sodnus. John 
Goldie, a merchant, had quite recently discussed the authority of Scrip- 
ture.^ John Taylor had denied original sin. Burns' father, pious as he 
was, inclined to liberal and humane doctrines, and detracted from the 
province of faith to add to that of reason. Burns, after his wont, pushed 
things to an extreme, thought himself a deist, saw in the Saviour only an 
inspired man, reduced religion to an inner and poetic sentiment, and at- 
tacked with his railleries the paid and patented orthodox people. Since 
Voltaire, no one in religious matters was more bitter or more jocose. 
According to him, ministers are shopkeepers trying to cheat each other 
out of their customers, decrying at the top of their voice the shop next 
door, puffing their drugs on numberless posters, and here and there set- 
ting up fairs to push the trade. These *holy fairs' are the gatherings 
of piety, where the sacrament is administered. Successively the clergy- 
men preach and thunder, in particular a Rev. Mr. Moodie, who raves 
and fumes to throw light on points of faith — a terrible figure : 

* Should Hornie, as in ancient day8, 
'Mang sons o' God present him, 
The vera sight o' Moodie face 
To's ain het hame had sent him 

Wi' fright that day. 
Hear how he clears the points o' faith 
Wi' ratthn' an' wi' thumpin' ; . . . 
He's stampin' an' he's j ampin ! 
His lengthen'd chin, his tiirn'd-up snout, 
His eldritch squeel and gestures, 
Oh ! how they fire the heart devout, 
Like cantharidian plasters, 

On sic a day ! ' ^ 

The minister grows hoarse, and his audience take their ease ; they begin 
to eat. Each brings cakes and cheese from his bag ; the young folks 
have their arms round their lassies' waists. That was the attitude to 
listen in ! There is a great noise in the inn ; the cans rattle on the 
board ; whisky flows, and provides arguments to the tipplers comment- 
ing on the sermon. They demolish carnal reason, and exalt free faith. 
Arguments and stamping, shouts of sellers and drinkers, all niing)« 
together. It is a * holy fair : ' 

* But now the Lord's ain tnimpet touts, 
Till a' the hills are rairin'. 

An' echoes back return the shouts ; 
Black Russell is na spairin' ; 



1780. ' TJie Holy Fair, 



234 MODERN LIFE. (l^OOK 17 

His piercing words, like Higlilan' swords, 
Divide the joints and marrow. 
His talk o' liell, wliare devils dweli 
Our vera sauls does harrow 
Wi' fright that day. 

A vast unbottom'd boundless pit, 
Fill'd fu' o' lowin' brunstane, 
Wlia's raging flame, an' scorchin' heat 
Wad melt the hardest whunstane. 
The half -asleep start up wi' fear, 
An' think they hear it roarin'. 
When presently it does appear 
'Twas tut some neebor snorin' 
Asleep that day. . . . 

How monie hearts this day converts 

O' sinners and o' lasses ! 

Their hearts o' stane, gin night, are gane, 

As saft as ony flesh is. 

There's some are fou o' love divine. 

There's some are fou o' brandy.' ^ 

The young men meet the girls, and the devil has done better hnsincgg 
than God. A fine ceremony and morality I Let us cherish it carefully, 
and our wise theology too, which damns men. 

As for that poor dog common sense, which bites so hard, let us send 
him across seas ; let him go * and bark in France.' For where shall 
we find better men than our * unco guid ' — Holy Willie for instance? He 
feels himself predestinated, full of never-failing grace ; therefore all who 
resist him resist God, and are fit only to be punished ; he may * blast 
their name, who bring thy elders to disgrace, and public shame.'* 
Bums says also : 

♦ An honest man may like a glass. 
An honest man may like a lass. 
But mean revenge an' malice fause 

He'll still disdain ; 
An' then cry zeal for gospel laws 
Like some we ken. . . . 
. I rather would be 
An atheist clean, 
Than under gospel colors hid be 
Just for a screen.' 

There is a beauty, an honesty, a happiness outside the conventionalitiet 
and hypocrisy, beyond correct preachings and the proper drawnig- 
rooms, unconnected with gentlemen in white ties and reverends in new 

bands. ^•^ ■> r^ 

Now Burns wrote his masterpiece, the Jolly Beggars, like the Cruem 



' Th^ Holy Fair. * ^oly Willie's Fray^. 

* Epistle to the Rev. John M'Maih. 



UHAP. 1 J IDE IS AND PRODUCTIONa 236 

of B^ranger ; but how much more picturesque, varied, and powerful 1 
It is the end of autumn, the gray leaves float on the gusts of the wind ; 
a joyous band of vagabonds, happy devils, come for a junketing at the 
change-house of Poosie Nansie : 

* Wi' quaffing and laughing 
They ranted and they sang ; 
Wi jumping: and thumping 
The very girdle rang.' 

First, by the fire, in old red rags, is a soldier, and his old woman is 

with him ; the jolly old girl has drunk freely ; he kisses her, and she 
again pokes out her greedy lips ; the coarse loud kisses smack like * a 
cadger's whip.* * Then staggering and swaggering, he roar'd this ditty 
up:> 

*I lastly was with Curtis, among the floating batt'ries, 
And there I left for witness an arm and a limb ; 
Yet let my country need me, with Elliot to liead me, 
I'd clatter on my stumps at the sound of a dnmu , , , 
He ended ; and the kebars sheuk, 
Aboon the chorus roar ; 
WhUe frighted rattons backward lenk, 
And seek the benmost bore.' 

Now it is the * doxy^s ' turn : 

*I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when, 
And still my delight is in proper young men. . , « 
Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddia, 
JTo wonder I'm fond of a sodger laddie. 
The first of my loves was a swaggering blade. 
To rattle the thundering drum was his trade. . . . 
The sword I forsook for the sake of the church. , , .• 
Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot. 
The regiment at large for a husband I got, 
From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was readj, 
I asked no more but a sodger laddie. 
But the peace it reduc'd me to beg in despair, ^ 

Till I met my old boy at a Cunningham fair ; 
His rags regimental they flutter'd so gaudy, 
My heart it rejoic'd at a sodger laddie. . . . 
But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady, 
Here's to thee, my hero, my sodger laddie.' 

I hope you think this a free style, and that the poet is not mealy- 
nJouthecL His other characters are in the same taste, a Merry Andrew, 
a raucle carlin (a stout beldame), a * pigmy-scraper wi' his fiddle,' a 
travelling tinker, — all in rags, brawlers and gipsies, who fight, bang, 
and kiss each other, and make the glasses ring with the noise of their 
good humour : 

'They toonied their pocks, and pawned their duds, 
They scarcely left to co'er tlieir fuds, 
To quench their lowin' drouth.' 



336 MODERN LIFE [BOOK IV 

Anil their chorus rolls about like thunder, shaking the ratlcrs and w&Ils, 

* A fig for those by law protected I 
Liberty's a glorious feast ! 
Courts for cowards were erected, 
Churches built to please the priest ! 

What is title ? What is treasure ? 
What is reputation's care 1 
If we lead a life of pleasure, 
'Tis uo matte? how or where ! 

With the ready trick and fable 
Round we wander all the day ; 
And at night, in barn or stable, 
Hug our doxies on the hay. 

Life is all a variorum. 
We regard not how it goes ; 
Let them cant about decorum, 
Who have characters to lose. 

Here's to budgets, bags and Avallets ! 
Here's to all the Avandering train ! 
Here's our ragged brats and callets I 
One and all cry out. — ^Amen.' 

Has any one better spoken the language of rebels and levellers. Tliew 
is here, however, something else than the instinct of destruction and the 
appeal to the senses ; there is hatred of cant and return to nature. 
Burns sings : 

* Morality, thou deadly bane. 

Thy tens o' thousands tliou hast slain ; 
Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust 19 
In moral mercy, truth and justice ! ' * 

Mercy! this great word renews all: as, eighteen centuries ago, men 
passed beyond legal formulas and prescriptions ; as, under Virgil and 
Marcus Aurelius, refined sensibility and wide sympathies embraced 
beings who seemed for ever banished out of the pale of society and law. 
Burns grows tender, and that sincerely, over a wounded hare, a mouse 
whose nest was upturned by his plough, a mountain daisy. Man, beast, 
or plant, is there so much difference ? A mouse stores up, calculate*, 
suffers like a man : 

* I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve ; 
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live.* 

We even no longer wish to curse the fallen angels, the grand male- 
factors, Satan and his troop ; like the * randie, gangrel bodies, who in 
Poosie Nancy's held the splore,' they have their good points, and 
perhaps after all are not so bad as people say : 

' A Dedication to G-avin HamiUoii 



r.llAP. i.\ IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 231 

' Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee. 
An' let poor damned bodies be ; 
Fm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, 

E'en to a deil, 
To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me. 

An' hear ns squeel ! , . . 

Then }ou, ye auld, snic-drawing dog 

Ye came to Paradise incog. 

An' play'd on man a cursed brogue, 

(Black be your fa' !) 
An' gied the infant warld a shog, 

'Maist ruin'd a'. . . . 

But, fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben I 
O wad ye tak a thought an' men' ! 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake — 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Ev'n for your sake.* * 

We see that he speaks to the devil as to an unfortunate comrade, a 

quarrelsome fellow, but fallen into trouble. Another step, and you 
will see in a contemporary, Goethe, that Mephistoplieles himself is not 
overmuch damned; his god, the modern god, tolerates him, and tells 
him that he has never hated such as he. For wide conciliating nature 
assembles in her company, on equal terms, the ministers of destruction 
and life. In this deep change the ideal changes ; citizen and orderly 
life, strict Puritan duty, do not exhaust all the powers of man. Burns 
cries out in favour of instinct and joy, so as to seem epicurean. He hast 
genuine gaiety, comic energy; laughter commends itself to him; he 
praises it and the good suppers of good comrades, where the wine flows, 
pleasantry abounds, ideas pour forth, poetry sparkles, and causes a 
carnival of beautiful figures and good-humoured people to move about 
in the human brain. 

In love he always was.* He made love the great end of existence, 
to finch a degree that at the club which he founded with the young 
men if Torbolton, every member was obliged * to be the declared lover 
of tr.e or more fair ones.' From the age of fifteen this was his main 
busir^ess. He had for companion in his harvest toil si sweet and 
iovable girl, a year younger than himself: 

.a short, she, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious 
passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book- 
worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, oiu* dearest blessing hero 
below.'* 

He sat beside her, with a joy which he did not understand, to * pick 

* Address to the Deil. 
, * He himself says : ' I have been all along a miserable dupe to Love.' His 
brother Gilbert said: * He was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver.' 
2 Chambers' Life of Burns, J. 13. 



238 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

out from her little hand the cniel nettle-stings ancl thistles.* He had 
many other less innocent fancies ; it seems to me that he was at bottom 
in love with all women : as soon as he saw a pretty one, he grew gay ; 
his commonplace-book and his songs show that he set off in pursuit 
after every butterfly, golden or not, which seemed about to settle. 
Observe that he did not confine himself to Platonic reveries ; he was 
as fre^ of action as of words ; obscene jokes come freely in his verses. 
He calls himself an unregenerate heathen, and he is right. He has 
even written ribald verses ; and Lord Byron refers to a packet of his 
letters, unedited of course, than which worse could not be imagined : 
it was the excess of the sap which overflowed in him, and soiled the bark. 
Doubtless he did not boast about these excesses, he rather repented of 
them; but as to the uprising and blooming of the free poetic life 
toward the open air, he found no fault with it. He thought that love, 
with the charming dreams it brings, poetry, pleasure, and the rest, are 
beautiful things, appropriate to human instincts, and therefore to the 
designs of God. In short, in contrast with morose Puritanism, be 
approved joy and spoke well of happiness.^ 

Not that he was a mere epicurean ; on the contrary, he could be 
religious. When, after the death of his father, he prayed aloud in the 
evening, he drew tears from those present; and his Cottar'' s Satwda?/ Night 
IS the most feeling of virtuous idyls. I even believe he was fundamentally 
religious. He advised his * pupil, as he tenders his own peace, to keep 
up a regular warm intercourse with the Deity.* Often, before Dugald 
Stewart at Edinburgh, he disapproved of the sceptical jokes which he 
heard at the supper table. He thought he had ' every evidence for 
the reality of a life beyond, the stinted bourne of our present existence ;' 
and many a time, side by side with a jocose satire, we find in his 
writings stanzas full of humble repentance, confiding fervour, or 
Christian resignation. These, if you will, are a poet's contradictions, 
but they are also a poet's divinations ; under these apparent variations 
there rises a new ideal; old narrow moralities are to give place to the 
wide sympathy of the modern man, who loves the beautiful wherever 
it meets him, and who, refusing to mutilate human nature, is at once 
Pagan and Christian. 

This originality and divining instinct exist in his style as in his 
ideas. The specialty of the age in which we live, and which he 
inaugurated, is to blot out rigid distinctions of class, catechism, and 
style ; academic, moral, or social conventions are falling away, and we 
claim in society dominion for individual merit, in morality for inborn 
generosity, in literature for genuine feeling. Burns was the first to 
enter on this track, and he often pursues it to the end. When he 
wrote verses, it was not on calculation or in obedience to the fashion : 

' See a parage from Burns' common-place book in Chambers' Life of 
Bur^s, i. 98. 



CHAP. I.J IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 239 

-My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got 
vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into 
quiet.' 1 

He hummed tliem, as he drove his plough, to old Scotch airs, which h« 
passionately loved, and which, he says, as soon as he sang them, brought 
ideas and rhymes to his lips. That, indeed, was natural poetry ; not 
forced in a hothouse, but born of the soil between the furrows, side 
by side with music, amidst the gloom and beauty of the climate, like 
the violet gorse of the hillside and wolds. We can understand that it 
gave vigour to his tongue : for the first time this man spoke as men 
speak, or rather as they think, without premeditation, with a mixture 
of all styles, familiar and terrible, hiding an emotion under a joke, 
tender and jeering in the same place, apt to combine taproom trivialities 
with the high language of poetry,^ so indifferent was he to rules, con- 
tent to exhibit his feeling as it came to him, and as he felt it. At last, 
alter so many years, we escape from the measured declamation, we liear 
a man's voice I much better, we forget the voice in the emotion which it 
expresses, we feel this emotion reflected in ourselves, we enter into 
relations with a soul. Then form seems to fade away and disappear : 
I will say that this is the great feature of modern poetry ; Burns has 
reached it seven or eight times. 

He has done more ; he has made his way, as we say now-a-days. 
On the publication of his first volume he became suddenly famous. 
Coming to Edinburgh, he was feasted, caressed, admitted on a footing of 
equality in the best drawing-rooms, amongst the great and the learned, 
loved of a woman who was almost a lady. For one season he was sought 
after, and he behaved worthily amidst these rich and noble people. He 
was respected, and even loved. A subscription brought him a second 
edition and five hundred pounds. He also at last had won his position, 
like the great French plebeians, amongst whom Rousseau was the first. 
Unfortunately he brought thither, like them, the vices of his condition 
and of his genius. A man does not rise with impunity, nor, above all, 
desire to rise with impunity ; we also have our vices, and suffering 
vanity is the first of them. Nobody wished more anxiously than 
Burns to be distinguished This grievous pride marred his talent, and 
threw him into follies. He laboured to attain a fine epistolary style, 
and brought ridicule on himself by imitating in his letters the men of 
the academy and the court. He wrote to his loves with choice phrases, 
full of periods, as pedantic as those of Dr. Johnson. Certainly we 
dare hardly quote them, the emphasis is so grotesque.^ At other time© 

» Chambers' Life, i. 38. 

* See 2a7n o' Shanter, Address to the Deil, The Jolly Beggars, A Man's a 
Man for a' that, Green grow the rushes, etc. 

^ * O Clarinda, shall we not meet in a state, some yet unknown state of 
being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall minister to the highest wish of 



240 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK I^ 

he committed to his commonplace-book literary tirades that occurred 
to him, and six months afterwards sent them to his correspondents 
as extemporary effusions and natural improvisations. Even in his 
verses, often enough, he fell into a grand conventional style ; ^ brought 
into play sighs, ardours, flames, even the big classical and mythological 
machinery. Beranger, who thought or called himself the poet of Ik* 
people, did the same. A plebeian must have much courage to venture 
on always remaining himself, and never slipping on the court dress. 
Thus Burns, a Scottish villager, avoided, in speaking, all Scotch village 
expressions ; he was pleased to show himself as well-bred as fashionjtolis 
folks. It was forcibly and by surprise that his genius drew him out cf 
these proprieties : twice out of three times his feeling was marred by 
his pretentiousness. 

His success lasted one winter, after which the wide incurable wound 
of plebeianism made itself felt, — I mean that he was obliged to work for 
his living. With the money gained by his book he hired a little farm. 
It was a bad bargain ; and, moreover, we can imagine that be had not 
the money-grubbing character necessary. He says : 

* I might write you on farming, on building, on marketing ; but my poor dis- 
tracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bedeviled with the task of the 
superlatively damned obligation to make one guinea do the business of three, that 
I detest, abhor, and swoon at the very word business.' 

Soon he left his farm, with empty pockets, to fill at Dumfries the small 
post of exciseman, which was worth, in all, £90 a year. In this fine 
employment he branded leather, gauged casks, tested the make of 
candles, issued licences for the carriage of spirits. From his dunghills 
he passed to office work and grocery: what a life for such a man I 
He would have been unhappy, even if independent and rich. These 
great innovators, these poets, are all alike. What makes them poets is 
the violent afflux of sensations. They have a nervous mechanism more 
sensitive than ours ; the objects which leave us cool, transport them 
suddenly beyond themselves. At the least shock their brain is set 
going, after which they once more fall flat, loathe existence, sit morose 
amidst the memories of their faults and their last delights. Bums said : 

* My worst enemy is vioi-meme. . . . There are just two creatures 1 would 
envy : a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some 
of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without eBJcyment, the 
other has neither wish nor fear.' 

He was always in extremes, at the height or at the depth ; in the 

benevolence, and where the chill north wind of prudence shall never biow 
over the flowery fields of enjoyment ? * 

* Epistle to James Smith : 

* O Life, how pleasant is thy morning. 
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning, 
Cold pausing Caution's lessor spurning ' * 



CHAP. I.] IDEAS *AND PRODUCTION'S. 24] 

morning, ready to weep ; in the evening, at table ot under the table ; 
enamoured of Jean Armour, then on her refusal engaged to another, 
then returning to Jean, then quitting her, then taking her back, amidst 
much scandal, many blots on his character, still more disgust. In such 
heads ideas are like cannon balls : the man, hurled onwards, bursts 
through everything, shatters himself, begins again the next day, but in 
a contrary direction, and ends by finding nothing left, but ruins within 
and without him. Burns had never been prudent, and was so less than 
ever, after his success at Edinburgh. He had enjoyed too much ; he 
henceforth felt too acutely the painful sting of modern man, to wit, 
the disproportion between desire and power. Debauch had all but 
spoiled his fine imagination, which had before been * the chief source 
of his happiness;' and he confessed that, instead of tender reveries, he 
had now nothing but sensual desires. He liad been kept drinking till 
six in the m-orning ; he was very often drunk at Dumfi ies, not that the 
whisky was very good, but it raises a carnival in the head ; and hence 
poets, Hke the poor, are fond of it. Once, at Mr. Riddell's, he made 
himself so tipsy that he insulted the lady of the house ; next day he sent 
her an apology which was not accepted, and, out of spite, wrote rhymes 
against her : lamentable excess, betraying an unseated mind. At thirty- 
seven he was worn out. One night, having drunk too much, he sat down 
and went to sleep in the street. It was January, and he caught rheumatic 
fever. They wanted to call in a doctor. * What business has a physician 
to waste his time on me ? ' he said ; ' I am a poor pigeon not worth pluck- 
ing.' He was horribly thin, could not sleep, and could not stand on his 
legs. * As to my individual self, I am tranquil. But Burns' poor widow 
and half a dozen of his dear little ones, there I am as weak as a woman's 
tear.' He was even afraid he should not die in peace, and had the 
bitterness of being obliged to beg. Here is a letter he wrote to a friend ; 

' A rascal of a haberdasher, taking into his head that I am dying, has com- 
menced a process against me, and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. 
Will you be so good as to accommodate me, and that by return of post, with ten 
pounds ? Oh James ! did you know the pride of ray heart, you would feel doubly 
for me I Alas, I am not used to beg ! ' * 

He died a few days afterwards, at thirty-eight. His wife was lying-in 
of hei fifth child at the time of her husband's funeral. 

II. 

A sad life, most often the life of the men in advance of their age ; 
it is not wholesome to go too quick. Burns was so much in advance, that 
it took forty years to catch him. At this moment in England, the Con- 
servatives and the believers took the lead before sceptics and revolution- 
ists. The constitution was liberal, and seemed to be a guarantee of 
lights ; the church was popular, and seemed to be the support of morality. 

' Cliamber's Life ; Letter to :SIr. Js Burns, iv. 205. 
VOL, U. Q 



242 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

Practical capacity and speculative incapacity turned the min.^ uside from 
the propounded innovations, and bound them down to the established 
order. The people found themselves well oif in their great feudal house, 
widened and accommodated to modern needs ; they thought it beauti- 
ful, they were proud of it ; and national instinct, like public opinion, 
declared against the innovators who would throw it down to build it up 
again. Suddenly a violent shock changed this instinct into a passion, 
and this opinion into fanaticism. The French Eevclution, at first 
admired as a sister, had shown itself a fury and a monster. Pitt 
declared in Parliament, ' that one of the leading features of this (French) 
Government was the extinction of religion and the destruction of pro- 
perty.' ^ Amidst universal applause, the whole thinking and influential 
class rose to stamp out this party of robbers, united brigands, atheists 
on principle ; and Jacobinism, sprung from blood to sit in purple, was 
persecuted even in its child and champion ' Buonaparte, who is now 
the sole organ of all that was formerly dangerous and pestiferous in the 
revolution.' ^ Under this national rage liberal ideas dwindled ; the 
most illustrious friends of Fox — Burke, Windham, Spencer — abandoned 
him: out of a hundred and sixty partisans in the House of Commons, 
only fifty remained to him. The great Whig party seemed to be dis- 
appearing ; and in 1799, the strongest minority that could be collected 
against the Government was twenty-nine. Yet English Jacobinism was 
taken by the throat and held down : 

* The Habeas Corpus Act was repeatedly suspended. . , . "Writers who pro- 
pounded doctrines adverse to monarchy and aristocracy, were proscribed and 
punished without mercy. It was hardly safe for a republican to avow his pohtical 
creed over his beefsteak and his bottle of port at a cliophouse. ... Men of cidti- 
vated mind and polished manners were (in Scotland), for offences which at West- 
minster would have been treated as mere misdemeanours, sent to herd with felons 
at Botany Bay. ' ' 

But the intolerance of the nation aggravated that of the Government. 
If any one had dared to avow democratic sentiments, he would have 
been insulted. The papers represented the innovators as wretches 
and public enemies. The mob in Birmingham burned the houses of 
Priestley and the Unitarians. In the end Priestley was obliged to leave 
England. Lord Byron exiled himself under the same constraint ; and 
when he left, his friends feared that the crowd round his carriage would 
have laid hands on him. 

New theories could not arise in this society armed against new 
theories. Yet the revolution made its entrance ; it entered disguised, 
and through a byway, so as not to be recognised. It was not social 
ideas, as in France, that were transformed, nor philosophical ideas, as iu 

^ The Speeches of William Pitt, 2d ed. 3 vols., 1808. ii. 17, Jan. 21; 1794. 

3 Ihid. iii. 152, Feb. 17, 1800. 

" Macaulay's Works, Life of William Pitt, 396. 



CHAP. I.l IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 243 

Germany, but literary ideas ; the great rising tide of the modern mind, 
which elsewhere overturned the whole edifice of human conditions and 
speculations, succeeded here only at first in changing style and taste. 
It was a slight change, at least apparently, but on the whole of equal 
value with the others ; for this renovation in the manner of writing ia 
a renovation in the manner of thinking : the one led to all the rest, as 
the movement of a central pivot constrains the movement of all tho 
indented wheels 

Wherein consisted this reform of style ? Before defining it, I prefer 
to exhibit it ; and for that purpose, we must study the character and 
life of a man who was the first to use it, without any system — William 
Cowper : for his talent is but the picture of his character, and his poems 
but the echo of his life. He was a delicate, timid child, of a tremulous 
sensibility, passionately tender, who, having lost his mother at six, was 
almost at once subjected to the fagging and brutality of a public school. 
These, in England, are peculiar : a boy of about fifteen singled him out 
as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his 
temper ; and the poor little fellow, ceaselessly ill-treated, ' conceived/ 
he says, 'such a dread of his (tormentor's) figure, . . . tliat I well re- 
member being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees ; 
and that I knew liim better by his shoe-buckles than by any other part 
of his dress.' ^ At the age of nine melancholy seized him, not the sweet 
reverie which we call by that name, but the profound dejection, gloomy 
and continual despair, the horrible malady of the nerves and the soul, 
which leads to suicide, Puritanism, and madness. ' Day and night I was 
upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair.' ^ 

The evil changed form, diminished, but did not leave him. As he 
had only a small fortune, though born of a high family, he accepted, 
without reflection, the offer of his uncle, who wished to give him a place 
as clerk of the journals of the House of Lords ; but he had to undergo 
an examination, and his nerves were unstrung at the very idea of having 
to speak in public. For six months he tried to prepare ; but he read 
without understanding. His continual misery brought on at last a 
nervous fever, Cowper writes of himself: 

* The feelings of a man when he anives at the place of execution, are probably 
much like mine, every time I set my foot in the office, which was every day, for 
more than a half year together. '^ 

* In this situation, such a fit of passion has sometimes seized me, when alone in 
in^ chambers, that I have cried out aloud, and cursed the hour of my birth ; 
lifting up my eyes to heaven not as a suppliant, hut in the hellish spirit of 
rancorous reproach and blasphemy against my Jlaker. * * 

The day of examination came on : he hoped he was going mad, so 
that he might escape from it ; and as his reason held, he thought even 
of * self-murder.' At last, whilst * in a horrible dismay of soul,' insanity 

» The Works of W. Cowper, ed. Southey, 8 vols. 1843, i. 5. ' 

' Jbid. 18, 3 Md. 79. ^ jbid. 81. 



244 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IT 

came, and lie was placed in aii asylum, whilst * Ms conscjence was scar* 
ing him, and the avenger of blood pursuing him * ^ to the extent eren 
of thinking himself damned, like Bunyan and the first Puritans. After 
several months his reason returned, but it bore traces of the strange 
lands where it had journeyed alone. He remained sad, like a man who 
thought himself in disfavour with God, and felt himself incapable of an 
active life. However, a clergyman, Mr. Unwin and his wife, very pious 
and very regular people, had taken charge of him. He tried to busy 
himself mechanically, for instance, in making rabbit-hutches, in garden- 
ing, and in taming hares. He employed the rest of the day like 4 
Methodist, in reading Scripture or sermons, in singing hymns with his 
friends, and speaking of spiritual matters. This way of living, the 
wholesome country air, the maternal tenderness of Mrs. Unwin and 
Lady Austin, brought him a few gleams of light. They loved him so 
generously, and he was so lovable ! Affectionate, full of freedom and 
innocent raillery, with a natural and charming imagination, a graceful 
fancy, an exquisite delicacy, and so unhappy I He was one of those to 
whom women devote themselves, whom they love maternally, first from 
compassion, then by attraction, because they find in them alone the 
contrivances, minute and tender attentions, delicate observances which 
men's rude nature cannot give them, and which their more sensitive 
nature nevertheless craves. These sweet moments, however, did not 
last. He says : 

* My mind has always a melancholy cast, and is like some pools I have seen, 
which, though filled with a black and putrid water, will nevertheless in a bright 
day reflect the sunbeams from their surface.' 

He smiled as well as he could, but with effort ; it was the smile of a 
sick man who knows himself incurable, and tries to forget it for an 
instant, at least to make others forget it ; 

* Indeed, I wonder that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my 
intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin 
ghould intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in 
state. His antic gesticulations would be unseasonable at any rate, but more spe- 
cially so if they should distort the features of the mournful attendants into 
laughter. But the mind, long wearied with the sameness of a dull, dreary pro- 
spect, will gladly fix his eyes on any thing that may make a little variety in iti 
eontemplations, though it were but a kitten playing with her tail.** 

In fine, he had too delicate and too pure a heart : pious, irreproach- 
able, austere, he thought himself unworthy of going to church, or even 
if praying to God. He says also : 

* As for happiness, he that once had communion with his Maker must be mcrt 
fraatic than ever I was yet, if he can dream at finding it at a distance from Him.'' 

1 The Works of W. Cowper, ed. Southey, i. 97. 

2 75^-^ ii 269 ; Letter to the Rev. John Newton, July 13, 1780. 

3 Ihid. i. 887; Lettor to Rev. J. Newton, August 5, 1786. 



CHAP. I.J IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 245 

(Jowpei states then : 

* The heart of a Christian, mourning and yet rejoicing, (is) pierced with thorns^ 
yet wreathed about with rosea. I have the thorn without the rose. My brier is 
a wiutry one ; the flowers are withered, but the thorn remains.' 

0& his deathbed, when the clergyman told him to confide in the love 

li the Redeemer, who desired to save all men, he gave a passionate cry, 
b "gging him not to give him such consolations. He thought himself 
1 /St, and had thought so all his life. One by one, under this terror, all 
his faculties failed. Poor charming soul, perishing like a frail flower 
transplanted from a warm land to the snow : the world's temperature 
was too rough for it ; and the moral law, which should have supported 
it, tore it with its thorns. 

Such a man does not write for the pleasure of making a noise. 
He made verses as he painted or planed, to occupy himself, to distract 
his miiid. His soul was overcharged ; he need not go far for subjects. 
Picture this pensive figure, silently wandering and gazing along the banks 
of the Ouse. He gazes and dreams. A buxom peasant girl, with a basket 
on her arm ; a distant cart slowly rumbling on behind, horses in a sweat; 
a shining spring, which polishes the blue pebbles, — this is enough to 
fill him with sensations and thoughts. He returned, sat in his little 
summer-house, as large as a sedan-chair, the window of which opened 
out upon a neighbour's orchard, and the door on a garden full of 
pinks, roses, and honeysuckle. In this nest he laboured. In the even- 
ing, beside his friend, whose needles were working for him, he read, or 
listened to the drowsy sounds without. Rhymes are bors; in such a 
life as this. It sufficed for him, and for their birth. He did not need 
a more violent career : less harmonious or monotonous, it would have 
upset him ; impressions small to us, were great to him ; and in a room, 
a garden, he found a world. In his eyes tke smallest objects were 
poetical. It is evening ; winter ; the postman comes : 

* The herald of a noisy world, 
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks, 
News from all nations lumbering at his back. 
True to his charge, the close -packed load behind. 
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern 
Is to conduct it to the destined inn, 
And, having dropped the expected bag, pass on. 
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, 
CoM and yet cheerful : messenger of grief 
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some.** 

At last we have the precious ' close-packed load ;' we open it ; we wish 
lo near the many noisy voices it brings from London and the universe; 

* Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 

— — ■ «) . ^ 

' The Task, iv. ; The, Winter Evening. 



246 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK H 

A. "id while the bubbling and loud-hissins tim 
Tlirov/s up a steamy column, and the cups. 
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each. 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. ' * 

Then he unfolds the whole contents of the newspaper — politics, newt, 
even advertisements — not as a mere realist, like so many writers of 
to-day, but as a poet ; that is, as a man who discovers a beauty and 
harmony in the coal of a sparkling fire, or the movement of finL^ors 
over a piece of wool-work ; for such is the poet's strange distinction. 
Objects not only spring up in his mind more powerful and more pre- 
cise than they were of themselves ; but also, once conceived, they ar€ 
purified, ennobled, coloured like gross vapours, which, being transfigured 
by distance and light, change into silky clouds, lined with purple and 
gold. For him there is a charm in the rolling folds of the vapour sent 
up by the tea-urn, sweetness in the concord of guests assembled about 
the same table in the same house. This one expression, * News from 
India,' causes him to see India itself, ' with her plumed and jewelled 
turban.'^ The mere notion of ' excise' sets before his eyes ' ten thousand 
casks, for ever dribbling out their base contents, touched by the Midas 
finger of the State, (which) bleed gold for ministers to sport away.' * 
Strictlv, nature is like a gallery of splendid and various pictures, which 
to us ordinary folk are always covered up with cloths. At most, now 
and then, a rent suffers us to imagine the beauties hid behind the 
monotonous curtains ; but these curtains the poet raises, one and all, 
and sees a picture where we see but a covering. Such is the new 
truth which Cowper's poems brought to light. We know from him 
that we need no longer go to Greece, Rome, to the palaces, heroes, and 
academicians, to search for poetic objects. They are quite near us. 
If we see them not, it issbecause we do not know how to look for them ; 
the fault is in our eyes, not in the things. We shall find poetry, if w« 
wish, at our fireside, and amongst the beds of our kitchen- garden.* 

Is the kitchen-garden indeed poetical ? To-day, perhaps ; but to- 
morrow, if my imagination is barren, I shall see there nothing bu? 
carrots and other kitchen stuff. It is m.y sensation which is poetic^ 
which I must respect, as the most precious flower of beauty. Hence 
a new style. It is no longer a question, after the old oratorical fashion^ 
of boxing up a subject in a regular plan, dividing it into symmetrical 
portions, arranging ideas into files, like the }.ieces on a draught-boani 
Cowper takes the first subject that comes to hand — one which Lady 
Austin gave him at hap-hazard — the Sofa^ and speaks about it for a 
couple of pages ; then he goes whither the bent of his mind leads him, 

' The Task, iv. ; The Winter Evening. ' Ibid, * Md. 

* Crabbe may also be considered one of the masters and renovators of 
poetry, but his «fcyle is too classical, and he has been rightly nicknamed ' « 
Popfi in worsted stockings.' 



CHAP, r.l IDEAS AND PEODUCTIONS. 247 

describing a winter evening, a nn/nber of interiors and landscapes, 
mingling here and there all kinds of moral reflections, st )rieSj disser- 
tations, opinions, confidences, like a man who thinks aloud before th« 
most intimate and beloved of his friends. ' The best didactic poems,' 
says Southey, ' when compared with the Task^ are like formal gardens 
in comparison with woodland scenery.' ^ This is his great poem, the 
Task. If we enter into details, the contrast is greater still. He doea 
not Sr-eir to dream that he is being listened to; he only speaks to him- 
self He does not dwell on his ideas, to set them in relief, and make 
them stand out by repetitions and antitheses ; he marks his sensation, 
and that is all. We follow it in him as it is born, and we see it risinsr 
from a former on.*, swelling, falling, remounting, as we see vapour 
issuing from a spring, and insensibly rising, unrolling, and developing 
its shifting forms. Thought, which in others was curdled and rigid, 
becomes here mobile and fluent ; the rectilinear verse grows flexible; 
the noble vocabulary widens its scope to let in vulgar words of con- 
versation and life. At length poetry has again become lifelike; we 
no longer listen to words, but we feel emotions ; it is no longer an 
author, but a man who speaks. His life is there perfect, beneath its 
black lines, without falsehood or concoction ; his whole effort is ben-i 
on removing falsehood and concoction. When he describes his little 
river, his dear Ouse, 'slow winding through a level plain of spacious 
meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,' ^ he sees it with his inner eye ; and 
each word, ca3sura, sound, answers to a change of that inner vision. 
It is so ill all his verses ; they are full of personal emotions, genuinely 
felt, never altered or disguised ; on the contrary, fully expressed, with 
their transient shades and fluctuations ; in a word, as they are, that is, 
in the process of production and destruction, not all complete, motion- 
less, and fixed, as the old style represented them. Herein consists the 
great revolution of the modern style. The mind, outstiipping the known 
rules of rhetoric and eloquence, penetrates into profc/.nd psychology, 
ftnd no longer employs words except to mark emotioars. 

III. 

Now ' appeared the English romantic school, closely resembling tha 
French in its doctrines, origin, and alliances, in the truths which it dis- 
covered, the exaggerations it committed, and the scandal it excited. The 
£d11owsx3 of that school formed a sect, a sect of ' dissenters in poetry,' who 
spoke out aloud, kept themselves close together, and repelled settled 
minds by the audacity and novelty of their theories. For their foundation 
were attributed to them the anti-social principles and the sickly sensi- 
bility of Rousseau; in short, a sterile and misanthropical dissatisfaction 
with the present institutions of society. In fact, Southey, one of theii 
leaders, had begun by being a Socinian and Jacobin ; and one of his 

> Southey, Life of Cowper, I 341. ^ The Ta^k, i. ; T7ie Sofa. 

» ] 793- 1794. 



^48 MODERN LIFE » [BOOK IV 

first poems, Wat Tyler ^ cited the glory of the past Jacquerie in support 
of the present revolution. Another, Coleridge, a poor fellow, who had 
served as a dragoon, his brain stuffed with incoherent reading and 
humanitarian dreams, had thought of founding in America a communist 
republic, purged of kings and priests ; then, having turned Unitarian, 
steeped himself at Gottingen in heretical and mystical theories on the 
Word and the absolute. Wordsworth himself, the third and most 
moderate, had begun with enthusiastic verses against kings : 

' Great God, . . . grant that every sceptred child of clay, 
Who cries presumptuous, " Here the flood shall stay," 
May in its progress see thy guiding hand. 
And cease the acknowledged purpose to withstand ; 
Or, swept in anger from the insulted shore, 
Sink with his servile bands, to rise no more ! ' * 

But these rages and aspirations did not last long ; and at the end of a 
few years, the three, brought back into the pale of State and Church, 
were, Coleridge, a Pittite journalist, Wordsworth, a distributor of stamps, 
and Southey, poet-laureate ; all converted zealots, decided Anglicans, and 
intolerant Conservatives. In point of taste, however, they had advanced, 
not retired. They had violently broken with tradition, and leaped over 
all classical culture to find their models from the Renaissance and the 
middle-age. One of their friends, Charles Lamb, like Sainte-Beuve, 
had discovered and restored the sixteenth century. The most un- 
polished dramatists, like Marlowe, seemed to these men admirable ; and 
they sought in the collections of Percy and Warton, in the old national 
ballads and ancient foreign poetry, the fresh and primitive accent which 
had been wanting in classical literature, and whose presence seemed to 
them to be a sign of truth and beauty. Above every other reform, 
they labored to destroy the great aristocratical and oratorical style, 
such as it sprang from methodical analyses and court conventions, to 
adapt to poetry the ordinary language of conversation, such as is spoken 
in the middle and lower classes. They proposed to replace studied 
phrases and lofty vocabulary by natural tones and plebeian words. In 
place of the ancient mould, they tried the stanza, the sonnet, the ballad, 
blank verse, with the rudenesses and breaks of the primitive poe-'s. They 
resumed or arranged the metres and diction of the thirteenth and six- 
teenth centuries. Charles Lamb wrote an archaic tragedy, JTohn IVood- 
villy which one might fancy contemporary with Elizabeth's reign. Others, 
like Southey, and Coleridge in particular, manufactured totally new 
rhythms, as happy at times, and at times also as unfortunate, as those 
of Victor Hugo : for instance, a verse in which accents, and not syl- 
lables, were counted ; ^ a singular medley of confused attempts, mani- 

1 Wordsworth's Works, new edition, 1870, 6 volumes ; Descriptive Sketches during c 
Pedestrian Tour, i. 42. 

^ In English poetry as since modified, no one dreams of limiting the number of Byllm 
bles. even in blank verse. — Tr. 



CHAP I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 249 

fest abortions, and original inventions. The plebeian, enfranchised 
from the aristocratical costume, sought another; borrowed one piece of 
his dress from the knights or the barbarians, another from peasants or 
journalists, not too critical of incongruities, pretentious, and satisfied 
with his motley and badly sewn cloak, till at last, after many attempts 
end many rents, he ended by knowing himself, and selecting the dresi 
that fitted him. 

In this confusion of labours two great ideas are distinguished : the 
first producing historical poetry, the second philosophical ; the one 
especially manifest in Southey and Walter Scott, the other in Words- 
worth and Shellej ; both European, and displayed with equal brilliancy 
in France by Hugo, Lamartine, and Musset ; with greater brilliancy in 
Germany by Goethe, Schiller, Ruckert, and Heine ; both so profound, 
that none of their representatives, except Goetlie, divined their scope ; 
and hardly now, after more than half a century, can we define their 
nature, so as to forecast their results. 

The first consists in saying, or rather foreboding, that our ideal is 
not the ideal ; it is one ideal, but there are others. The barbarian, 
the feudal man, the cavalier of the Renaissance, the Mussulman, the 
Indian, each age and each race has conceived its beauty, which was a 
beauty. Let us enjoy it, and for this purpose put ourselves in the place 
of the discoverers ; altogether ; for it will not sufl^ce to represent, like 
the previous novelists and dramatists, modern and national manners 
under old and foreign names ; let us paint the sentiments of other ages 
and other races with their own features, however different these features 
may be from our own, and however unpleasing to our taste. Let us 
show our character as he was, grotesque or not, with his costume and 
speech : let him be fierce and superstitious if he was so ; let us dash 
the barbarian with biood, and load the covenanter with his bundle of 
biblical texts. Then one by one on the literary stage men saw the 
vanished or distant civilisations return : first the middle age and the 
Renaissance ; then Arabia, Hindostan, and Persia; then the classical age, 
and the eighteenth century itself; and the historic taste becomes so 
eager, that from literature the contagion spread to other arts. The 
theatre changed its conventional costumes and decorations into true 
ones. Architecture built Roman villas in our northern climates, and 
feudal towers amidst our modern security. Painters travelled to imitate 
local colouring, and studied to repr(>duce moral colouring. Every one 
became a tourist and an archaeologist ; the hur^ian mind, quitting its 
individual sentiments to adopt sentiments really felt, and finally all 
possible sentiments, found its pattern in the great Goethe, who by his 
TassOj Iphigeniay Divan, his second part of Faust, became a citizen of 
all nations and a contemporary of all ages, seemed to live at pleasure at 
every point of time and place, and gave an idea of universal mind. 
Yet this literature, as it approached perfection, approached its limit, and 
was only developed iu order to die. Men did comprehend at last tlia* 



250 MODERN LIFE. [BOO4 IT 

attOitipted resurrections are always incomplete, that ever\ imitation is 
only an imitation, that the modern accent infallibly penetrates the wordfl 
which we lend to antique characters, that every picture of manners 
must be indigenous and contemporaneous, and that archaic literature 
is a false kind. They saw at last that it is in the writers of the past 
that we must seek the portraiture of the past ; that there are no Greek 
tragedies but the Greek tragedies ; that the concocted novel must 
give place to authentic memoirs, as the fabricated ballad to the spon- 
taneous ; in short, that historical literature must vanish and become 
transformed into criticism and history, that is, into exposition and cona- 
mentary of documents. 

In this multitude of travellers and historians, disguised as poets, 
how shall we select ? They abound like swarms of insects, hatched on 
a summer's day amidst the rank vegetation ; they buzz and glitter, 
and the mind is lost in their sparkle and hum. Which shall I quote ? 
Thomas Moore, the gayest and most French of all, a witty railer,^ too 
graceful and recherche, writing descriptive odes on the Bermudas, 
sentimental Irish melodies, a poetic Egyptian romance,* a romantic 
poem on Persia and India ;^ Lamb, -the restorer of the old drama; 
Coleridge, a thinker and dreamer, poet and critic, who in Christabel 
and the Ancient Mariner hit the supernatural and the fantastic; Camp- 
bell, who, having begun with a didactic poem on the Pleasures of Hope^ 
entered the new school without giving up his noble and half-classical 
style, and wrote American and Celtic poems, only slightly Celtic and 
American ; in the first rank. South ey, a clever man, who, after several 
mistiikes in his youth, became the professed defender of aristocracy 
and cant, an indefatigable reader, an inexhaustible writer, crammed 
with erudition, gifted in imagination, famed like Victor Hugo for the 
freshness of his innovations, the combative tone of his prefaces, the 
splendours of his picturesque curiosity, having spanned the universe 
and all history with his poetic shows, and embraced, in the endless 
web of his verse, Joan of Arc, Wat Tyler, Roderick the Goth, Madoc, 
Thahiba, Kehama, Celtic and Mexican traditions, Arabic and Indian 
le^^ends, successively Catholic, Mussulman, Brahman, but only in verse; 
in fine, a prudent and licensed Protestant. You must receive these 
as examples merely — there are thirty others behind ; and I think that, 
of all fine visible or imaginable sceneries, of all great real or legendary 
evpnts, at all points of time, in the four quarters of the world, not 
one has escaped them. This diorama is very brilliant; unfortunately 
we perceive that it is manufactured. If you would have its picture, 
imagine yourself at the opera. The decorations are splendid, we see 
them coming down from heaven, that is, from the ceiling, thrice in an 
act ; lofty Gothic cathedrals, whose rose- windows glow in the rays of 
the setting sun, whilst processions wind round the pillars, and the 

• See 77w Fudge Family ^ The Epicurean. ^ Lalla Rookh, 



L'HAP r.J IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 251 

lights float over the ehiboiate copes and the gold-work of the priestly 
Vestments ; mosques and minarets, moving caravans creeping afar ovel 
the yellow sand, whose lances and canopies, ranged in line, fringe 
the immaculate whiteness of the horizon ; Indian pariidises, where the 
heaped roses multiply in myriads, where fountains mingle their plumes 
of pearls, where the lotus spreads its large leaves, whire thorny plants 
bristle their hundred thousand purple calices around the divine apei 
ftsd 3rocodiles which crawl in their thickets. Meantime the dancing- 
^rls lay their hands on their heart with deep and delicate emotion, 
the tenors sing that they are ready to die, tyrants roll forth their 
deep bass voice, the orchestra struggles hard, accompanying the varia- 
tions of sentiments with the gentle sounds of their flutes, the lugubrious 
clamours of the trombones, the angelic melodies of the harps ; till at 
last, when the heroine sets her foot on the throat of the traitor, it 
breaks out triumphantly with its thousand vibrant voices harmonised 
into a single strain. A fine spectacle 1 we depart mazed, deafened ; 
the senses fail under this inundation of splendours ; but as we return 
home, we ask ourselves what we have learnt, felt — whether we have, in 
truth, felt anything. After all, there is little here but decorations and 
scenery ; the sentiments are factitious ; they are operatic sentiments : 
the authors are only clever men, libretti-makers, manufacturers of 
painted canvas; they have talent without genius; they draw their 
ide;is not from tlie heart, but from the head. Such is the impression 
left by Lalla Rookh, Thalaba, Roderick the last of the Goths, The Curse 
of Kehama, and the rest of these poems. They are great decorative 
machines suited to the fashion. The mark of genius is the discovery 
of some wide unexplored region in human nature, and this mark fails 
them ; they prove only much cleverness and knowledge. In fine, I 
prefer to see the East in Orientals from the East, rather than in 
Orientals in England; in Vyasa or Firdousi, rather than in Southey^ 
and Moore. These poems may be descriptive or historical; they are 
less so than the texts, notes, emendations, and justifications which they 
carefully print at the foot of the page. 

Beyond all general causes which have fettered this literature, there 
ii a national one : the mind of these authors is not sufficiently flexiblcj 
»,nd too moral. Their imitation is only literal. They know the past time 
and the distant lands only as antiquarians and travellers. When they 
mention a custom, they put their authorities in a foot-note ; they do not 
present themselves before the public without being furnished with 
testimonials ; they establish by weighty certificates that they have not 
made a~ fault in topography or costume. Moore, like Southey, named 
his authorities ; Sir John Malcolm, Sir William Ouseley, Mr. Carew, 
»nd others, who had returned from the East, all ocular witnesses, stata 

* See also The History of the Caliph Vathek, a fantastic but powerfuUj 
Written tale, b;y W. "Beckford, published first in French iu 1784. 



252 MODERN LIFE. [BO^K W 

that his descriptions are wonderfully fuithful, that they thought that 
Moore had travelled in the East. In this respect their minuteness ig 
ridiculous;^ and their notes, lavished without stint, show that their 
positive public imposed on the poetical commodities the necessity of 
proving their origin and alloy. But the great truth, which lies in the 
penetration into the sentiments of the characters, escaped them ; these 
sentiments are too strange and immoral. When Moore tried to trans- 
late and recast Anacreon, he Avas told that his poetry wms fit for * the 
stews.' ^ To write an Indian poem, we must be pantheistical at heart, 
a little mad, and pretty generally visionary : to write a Greek poem, 
we must be polytheistic at heart, fundamentally pagan, and a naturalist 
by profession. This is the reason that Heine spoke so fitly of India, and 
Goethe of Greece. A genuine historian is not sure that his own civilisa 
tion is perfect, and lives as gladly out of his country as in it. Judge 
whether Englishmen can succeed in this style. In their eyes, there is 
only one rational civilisation, which is their own ; every other morality is 
inferior, every other religion is extravagant. Amidst such want of reason, 
how can they reproduce different moralities and religions ? Sympathy 
alone can restore extinguished or foreign manners, and sympathy here is 
forbidden. Under this narrow rule, historical poetry, which itself is 
hardly likely to live, languishes as though suffocated under a leaden cover. 
One of them, a novelist, critic, liistorian, and poet, the favourite of 
his age, read over the whole of Europe, was compared and almost 
equalled to Shakspeare, had more popularity than Voltaire, made 
dressmakers and duchesses weep, and earned about two hundred 
thousand pounds. Murray, the publisher, wrote to him : ' I believe 
I might swear that I never experienced such unmixed pleasure as the 
reading of this exqidsite work (first series of Tales of my Landlord) has 
afforded me. . . . Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion : 
"Opinion! we did none of us go to bed last night — nothing slept but 
my gout."'^ In France, 1,400,000 of these novels were sold, and they 
continue to sell. The author, born in Edinburgh, was the son of a 
Writer to the Signet, learned in feudal law and ecclesiastical history, 
himself an advocate, then sheriff, and always fond of antiquities, 
especially national antiquities; so that by his family, education, perfcu 
he found the materials of his works and the stimulus for his talent. 
His past recollections were impressed on him at the age of three, in a 
faxm-house, where he had been taken to try the effect of bracing fir 
on his little shrunken leg. He was wrapt naked in the warm skin of a 
recently slain sheep, and he crept about in this attire, which passed foi 
a specific. He continued to limp, and became a reader. From his 
infancy he had been bred amongst the stories which he afterwards gavs 

* See tlie notes of Southey, worse than those of Chateaubriand in th& Martyrs 

' Edinburgh Beview. 

» Lockh&n, Life of Sir Walter Scott, 10 vols., 3d ed.,1839, ii. ch. xixvii. p. 170 



i;HAP. L] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 253 

to the public, — that of the battle of Culloden, of the cruelties practised 
on the Highlanders, the wars and sufiFerings of the Covenanters. At 
three he used to sing out the ballad of Hardyknute so loudly, that 
he pr evented the village minister, a man gifted with a very fine voice, 
from being heard, and even from hearing himself. As soon as he had 
heard ' a Border-raid ballad,' he knew it by heart. For the rest, he 
was indolent, studied by fits and starts, did not readily learn dry hard 
facts ; but for poetry, playhouse-ditties, and ballads, the flow of his 
genius was precocious, swift, and invincible. The day on which he first 
opened, ' under a platanus tree,' the volumes in which Percy had col- 
lected the fragments of the ancient poetry, he forgot dinner, ' notwith- 
standing the sharp appetite of thirteen,' and thenceforth he flooded 
with these old rhymes not only his schoolfellows, but even all who 
would hear him. Becoming a clerk to his father, he stuflfed into hi3 
desk all the works of imagination which he could find. * The whole 
Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred,' he said, ' and it required 
the art of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon 
a domestic tale. But all that was adventurous and romantic, . . . that 
touched upon knight-errantry, I devoured.'^ Having contracted an 
illness, he was kept a long time in bed, forbidden to speak, with no other 
pleasure than to read the poets, novelists, historians, and geographers, 
illustrating the battle-descriptions by setting in line and disposing little 
pebbles, which represented the soldiers. Once cured, and able to walk 
well, he turned his walks to the same purpose, and developed a passion 
for the country, especially the historical regions. He said : 

* But show me an old castle or a field of battle, and I was at home at once, 
filled it with its combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers 
by the enthusiasm of my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near St. Andiews, 
the spirit moved me to give a picture of the assassination of the Archbishop of St. 
Andrews to some fellow-travellers with wliom I was accidentally associated, and 
one of them, though well acquainted with the story, protested my narrative had 
frightened away his night's sleep. ' * 

Amidst other studious excursions, he travelled for seven years suc- 
cessively in the wild district of Liddesdale, exploring every stream 
and every ruin, sleeping in the shepherds' huts, gleaning legends and 
ballads. Judge from this of his antiquarian tastes and habits. He 
read provincial charters, the wretched middle-age Latin verses, the 
parish registers, even contracts and wills. The first time he was 
able to lay his hand on one of the great 'old Border Avar- horns,' 
he blew it all along his route. Rusty mail and dirty parchment at- 
tracted him, filled his head with recollections and poetry. In truth, 
he had a feudal mind, and always wished to be the founder of a 
distinct branch. Literary glory was only secondary ; his talent was 
to him only as an instrument. He spent the vast sums which his prose 

^Lockhart's Life of Sir W Scott; Autobiography, i. 62. ^ Ihid. i. 72 



254 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IT 

and verse liai won, in building a castle in imitation of the ancient 
knights, *with a tall tower at either end, . . . sundry zigzagged 
gables, .... a myriad of indentations and parapets, and machicoUatcd 
eaves ; most fantastic waterspouts ; labelled windows, not a .ew of 
tlicm painted glass; . . . stones carved with heraldries innumerable;** 
apartments tilled with sideboards and carved chests, adorned with 
* cuirasses, helmets, swords of every order, from the claymore and 
rapifi to some German executioner's swords.' For long years he held 
open house there, so to speak, and did to every stranger the * honours 
of Scotland,' trying to revive the old feudal life, with all its customs 
ani its display ; dispensing open and joyous hospitality to all comers, 
alove all to relatives, friends, and neighbours; singing ballads and 
sounding pibrochs amidst the clinking of glasses; holding gay hunting- 
parties, where the yeomen and gentlemen rode side by side ; and en- 
couraging lively dances, where the lord was not ashamed to give 
his hand to the miller's daughter. He himself, open, happy, amidst 
his forty guests, kept up the conversation with a profusion of stories, 
lavished from his vast memory and imagination, conducted his guests 
over his domain, extended at large cost, amidst new plantations whose 
future shade was to shelter his posterity ; and he thought with a poet'g 
smile of the distant generations who would acknowledge for ancestor 
Sir Walter Scott, first baronet of Abbotsford. 

The Lady of the Lake^ Marmion, The Lord of the Isles, The Fair Maid 
of Perth, Old Mortality y Ivanhoe^ Quentin Durward, who does not know 
these names by heart ? From Walter Scott we learned history. And 
yet is this history ? All these pictures of a distant age are false. 
Costumes, scenery, externals alone are exact; actions, speech, senti- 
ments, all the rest is civilised, embellished, arranged in modern guise. 
We might suspect it when looking at the character and life of the 
author ; for what does he desire, and what do the guests, eager to hear 
him, demand ? Is he a lover of truth as it is, foul and fierce ; an in- 
quisitive explorer, indifferent to contemporary applause, bent alone 
on definhig the transformations of living nature ? By no means. He 
is in history, as he is at Abbotsford, bent on arranging points of view 
and Gothic halls. The moon will come in well there between the 
towers; here is a nicely placed breastplate, the ray of light which it 
throws back is pleasant to see above these old hangings ; suppose we 
took out the feudal garments from the wardrobe and invited the guests 
to a masquerade ? The entertainment would be a fine one, agreeable 
with their reminiscences and their aristocratic principles. English lords, 
fresh from a bitter war against French democracy, ought to enter 
zealously into this commemoration of th 3ir ancestors. Moreover, there 
are ladies and young girls, and we must arrange the show, so as not to 
shock their severe morality and their delicate feelings, make them weep 

' Lo:kliart's Life of ^ir IF. jScoU, vii. ; Abbotsford in 182.^. 



CHAP. I. IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 255 

becomingly; not put on the stage over-strong passions, wliit.h inoj 
would not understand ; on the contrary, select heroines to resen)blo 
them, always touching, but above all correct ; young gentlemen, Evan- 
dale, Morton, Ivanhoe, irreproachably brought up, tender and grave, 
even slightly melancholic (it is the latest fashion), and worthy to lead 
them to the altar. Is there a man more suited than the author to 
compose such a spectacle ? He is a good Protestant, a good husband, 
a good father, very moral, so decided a Tory, that he carries off as a rplio 
& glass from which the king has just drunk. In addition, he has neither 
talent nor leisure to reach the depth of his characters. He devotes 
himself to the exterior ; he sees and describes forms and externals 
much more at length than feelings aTid internals. Again, he treats 
his mind like a coal-mine, serviceable for quick working, and for thf^ 
greatest possible gain : a volume in a month, sometimes in a fortnight 
even, and this volume is worth one thousand pounds. How should he 
discover, or how dare exhibit, the structure of barbarous souls ? This 
structure is too difficult to discover, and too little pleasing to show. 
Every two centuries, amongst men, the proportion of images and 
ideas, the source of passions, the degree of reflection, the species of 
inclinations, change. Who, without a long preliminary training, now 
understands and relishes Dante, Rabelais, and Rubens? And how, 
for instance, could these great Catholic and mystical dreams, these 
vast temerities, or these impurities of carnal art, find entrance into 
the head of this gentlemanly citizen? Walter Scott pauses on the 
threshold of the soul, and in the vestibule of histor}^, selects in the 
Renaissance and the Middle-age only the fit and agreeable, blots out 
frank language, licentious sensuality, bestial ferocity. After all, hia 
characters, to whatever age he transports them, are his neighbours, 
*cannie' farmers, vain lairds, gloved gentlemen, young marringeable 
ladies, all more or less commonplace, that is, well-ordered by education 
and character, hundreds of miles away from the voluptuous fools of 
the Restoration, or vhe heroic brutes and fierce beasts of the Middle- 
age. As he has the richest supply of costumes, and the most in- 
exhaustible talent for scenic effect, he makes his whole world get on 
very pleasantly, and composes tales which, in truth, have only the 
merit of fashion, but which yet may last a hundred years. 

That which he himself acted lasted for a briefer time. To sustain 
his princely hospitality and his feudal magnificence, he had gone into 
partnership with his printers ; lord of the manor in public and 
merchant in private, he had given them his signature, without keeping 
a check over the use they made of it. Bankruptcy followed ; at the 
age uf fifty-five he was ruined, and one hundred and seventeen thousand 
pounds in debt. With admirable courage and uprightness, he refused 
all favour, accepting nothing but time, set to work on the very day, 
wrote untiringly, in four years paid seventy thousand pounds, exhausted 
hia bl-ain so as to become paralytic, and to perish in the attempt 



256 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

Neither in his conduct nor his literature did his feudal tastes succeed, 
and his manorial splendour was as fragile as his Gothic imaginations. 
He had relied on imitation, and we live by truth only ; his glory lay 
elseAvhere ; and there was something solid in his mind as in his 
writings, Beneath the lover of the Middle-age we find, first ihe 
prudent Scotchman, an attentive observer, whose sharpness has become 
more intense by his familiarity with law ; a good man too, easy and 
gay^ as beseems the national character, so different from the English* 
One of his walking companions (Shortreed) said : 

* Ell me, sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he had wi' him I 
Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Where vei 
we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody f He aye did as the lave 
did ; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company. * ^ 

Grown older and graver, he was none the less amiable ; the most 
agreeable of hosts, so that one of his guests, a farmer, I think, on 
leaving his house, said to his wife, that he was going to bed, and 
should like to sleep for a whole tAvelve months, for that there was only 
one thing in this world worth living for, namely, hunting at Abbots- 
ford. 

In addition to a mind of this kind, he had all-discerning eyes, an 
all-retentive memory, a ceaseless studiousness which comprehended the 
whole of Scotland, all conditions ; and you see his true talent arise, .so 
abundant and so easy, made up of minute observation and sweet 
raillery, recalling at once Teniers and Addison. Doubtless he wrote 
badly, at times in the worst possible manner : ^ it is clear that he dictated, 
hardly re-read his writing, and readily fell into a pasty and emphatic 
style, — a style indigenous to the atmosphere, and Avhich we read day after 
day in prospectuses and newspapers. What is worse, he is terribly long 
and diffuse ; his conversations and descriptions are interminable ; he is 
determined, at all events, to fill three volumes. But he has given to 
Scotland a citizenship of literature — I mean to Scotland altogether: 
scenery, monuments, houses, cottages, characters of every age and 
condition, from the baron to the fisherman, from the advocate to tho 
beggar, from the lady to the fishwife. At his name alone they crowd 
forward ; who does not see them coming from every niche of memory ? 
The Baron of Bradwardine, Dominie Sampson, Meg Merrilies, the Anti- 
quary, Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie Deans and her father, — innkeepers, 
shopkeepers, old wives, an entire people. What Scotch features are 
absent? Saving, patient, * cannie,' cunning, necessarily; the poverty 

* Lockhart's Life, i. ch. vii. 269. 

■ See the openfng of Ivanhoe : * Such being our chief scene, the date of oui 
Btory refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard i., when his re- 
turn from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped foi 
by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every speciec 
of subordinate oppression.' It is impossible to write in a heavier fiyle 



CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 25T 

of the soil and the difficulty of existence has compelled them to it: 
this is the specialty of the race. The same tenacity which they intro- 
duced into everyday affairs they have introduced into mental concerns, 
— studious readers and perusers of antiquities and controversies, poets 
also • legends spring up readily in a romantic land, amidst time-honoured 
wars and brigandism. In a land thus prepared, and in this gloomy 
3lime, Fr.isbyterianism fixed its sharp roots. Such was the real and 
modern world, enlightened by the far-setting sun of chivalry, as Sir 
Walter Scott found it ; like a painter who, passing from great show- 
pictuies, finds interest and beauty in the shops of a paltry provincial 
town, or in a farm surrounded by beds of beetroots and turnips. A 
continuous archness throws its smile over these pictures of interiors 
and of peculiarities, so local and minute, which, like the Flemish, indi- 
cate the rise of a bourgeoisie. Most of these good folk are comic. Oui 
author makes fun of them, brings out their little deceits, parsimony, fool- 
eries, vulgarity, and the hundred thousand circumstances of ridicule 
with which their narrow sphere of life never fails to endow them. A 
barber, in The Antiquary^ makes heaven and earth turn about his wigs ; 
if the French Revolution takes root everywhere, it was because the ma- 
gistrates renounced this ornament. He cries out in a lamentable voic«2 : 
* Haud a care, hand a care, Monkbarns ; God's sake, hand a care ! — Sir Arthu r'g 
drowned already, and an' ye fa' over the cleugh too, there will be but ae wig left in 
the parish, and that's the minister's. ' ^ 

Mark how the author smiles, and without malevolence : the barbeir's 
candid selfishness is the effect of the man's calling, and does not repel us. 
Walter Scott is never bitter ; he loves men from the bottom of his heaii, 
excuses or tolerates them ; does not chastise vices, but unmasks them, 
and that not rudely. His greatest pleasure is to pursue at length, not 
indeed a vice, but a hobby; the mania for odds and ends in an anti- 
quary, tlie archseological vanity of the Baron of Bradwardine, the aristo • 
cratic drivel of the Dowager Lady Tillietudlem, — that is the amusing 
exaggeration of sane permissible taste ; and this without anger, because, 
on the whole, these ridiculous people are estimable, and even generous. 
Evn in rogues like Dirck Hatteraick, in cut-throats like Bothwell, he 
allows some goodness. In no one, not even Major Dalgetty, a professional 
murderer, a production of the thirty years' war, is the odious unveiled 
by the ridiculous. In this critical refinement and this benevolent 
philosophy, he resembhs Addison. 

He resembles him again by the purity and endurance of his moral 
principles. His assistant, Mr. Laidlaw, told him that he was doing great 
good by his attractive and noble tales, and that young people would no 
longer wish to look in the literary rubbish of the circulating libraries. 
When Walter Scott heard this, his eyes filled with tears : 

*0n his deathbed he said to his son-in-law: "Lockhart, I may have hut a 

Sir Walter Scott's Works. 48 vols., 1329 ; The Antiquary, ch. viii, 
VOL IL ^ 



258 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

minute to speak to yon- My dear, be a good man — }.e rirtuons, be religioiu* — ^be a 
good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort wlien you come to lie here. " ' * 

This was almost his last word. By this fundamental honesty and this 
wide humanity, he was the Homer of modern citizen life. Around and 
after him, the novel of manners, separated from the historical romance, 
has produced a whole literature, and preserved the character which he 
stamped upon it. Miss Austin, Miss Bronte, Mistress Gaskell, George 
Eliot, Bulwer, Thackeray, Dickens, and many others, paint, especially 
or entirely in his style, contemporary life, as it is, imembellished, 
in all ranks, often amongst the people, more frequently still amongst 
the middle class. And the causes which made the historical novel 
come to naught, in him and others, made the novel of manners, in hiin 
and others, succeed. These men were too minute copyists and too decided 
moralists, incapable of the great divinations and the wide sympathies 
which unlock the door of history ; their imagination was too literal, and 
their judgment too decided. It is precisely by these faculties that they 
created a new species of novel, which multiplies to this day in thou- 
sands of offshoots, with such abundance, that men of talent in this 
respect may be counted by hundreds, and that we can only compare 
them, for their original and national sap, to the great age of Dutch 
painting. Realistic and moral, these are their two features. They are 
far removed from the great imagination which creates and transforms, 
as it appeared in the Renaissance or in the seventeenth century, in the 
heroic or noble ages. They renounce free invention; they narrow 
themselves to scrupulous exactitude ; they paint with infinite detail 
costumes and places, changing nothing; they mark little shades of 
language ; they are not disgusted by vulgarities or platitudes. Their 
information is authentic and precise. In short, they write like citizens 
for fellow -citizens, that is, for well-ordered people, members of a pro- 
fession, whose imagination looks upon the earth, and sees things through 
a magnifying glass, unable to relish anything in the way of a picture 
except interiors and make-believes. Ask a cook which picture sho 
prefers in the Museum, and she will point to a kitchen, in which the 
stewpans are so well painted that one is tempted to mix the soap ic» 
them. Yet beyond this inclination, which is now European, English - 
men have a special craving, which with them is national, and dat'js 
from the preceding century : they desire that the novel, like the rest, 
should contribute to their great work, — the amelioration of man and 
society. They ask from it the glorification of virtue, and the chastise- 
ment of vice. They send it into all the corners of civil society, and 
all the events of private history, in search of documents and expedients, 
to learn thenee the means of remedying abuses, succouring miseries, 
avoiding temptatiDus. They make of it an instrument of inquiry, 
education, and morality. A singular work, which has not its equal in 

» Lockhart's Life, x. 317. 



'.HAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 259 

all history, because in all history there has been no society like it, and 
which — middling to lovers of the beautiful, admirable to lovers of the 
usef id — offers, in the countless variety of its painting, and the invariable 
fixity of its spirit, the picture of the only democracy which knows how 
to restrain, govern, and reform itself. 

IV. 

Side by side with this development there was another, and with 
history philosophy entered into literature, in order to widen and modify 
it. It was manifest throughout, on the threshold as in the centre. 
On the threshold it had planted aesthetics : every poet, becoming 
theoretic, defined before producing the beautiful, laid down principles 
in his preface, and originated only after a preconceived system. But 
the ascendency of metaphysics was much more visible in the middle of 
the work than on its threshold ; for not only did it prescribe the form 
of poetry, but it furnished it with its elements. What is man, and 
what has he come into the world to do ? What is this far-off great- 
ness to which he aspires ? Is there a haven which he may reach, and a 
hidden hand to conduct him thither? These are the questions whicV 
poets, transformed into thinkers, agreed to agitate ; and Goethe, >-ere 
as elsewhere the father and promoter of all lofty modern ideas, at once 
sceptical, pantheistic, and mystic, wrote in Faust the epic of the age and 
the history of the human mind. Need I say that in Schiller, Heine, 
Beethoven, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and de Musset, the poet, in his in- 
dividual person, always speaks the words of the universal man ? The 
characters which they have created, from Faust to Ray Bias, only served 
them to exhibit some great metaphysical and social idea; and twenty 
times this too great idea, bursting its narrow envelope, broke out beyond 
all human likelihood and all poetic form, to display itself to the eyes of 
the spectators. Such was the domination of the philosophical spirit, that, 
after doing violence to literature, or rendering it rigid, it imposed on 
nusic humanitarian ideas, inflicted on painting symboUcal designs, 
penetrated current speech, and marred style by an overflow of abstrac- 
tions- and formulas, from which all our efforts now fail to liberate us. 
As an overstrong child, which at its birth injures its mother, so it hsa 
contorted the noble forms which had endeavoured to contain it, and 
dragged literature through an agony of anguish and of efforts. 

This philosophical spirit was not born in England, and from Ger- 
many to England the passage was very long. For a considerable time it 
appeared dangerous or ridiculous. One of the reviews stated even, 
that Germany was a large country peopled by hussarg and classical 
scholars ; that if folks go there, they will see at Heidelberg a very 
.arge tun, and could feast on excellent Rhine wine and Westphalian 
ham, but that their authors were very heavy and awkward, and that 
a sentimental German resembles a tall and stout bi etcher crying over a 
kiihid calf. If at length German liteiature found entrance, first by the 



260 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

attractiveness of extravagant dramas and fantasth ballads, then by the 
sympathy of the two nations, which, allied against French policy and 
civilisation, acknowledged their coiisinship in speech, religion, and b;ood, 
the German metaphysician stood at the door, unable to overturn the 
barrier which the positive mind and the national literature opposed tc 
him. He was seen trying to pass, in Coleridge for instance, a philos( >ph '.« 
theologian and dreamy poet, who toiled to widen conventional dogma, anc* 
who, at the close of his life, having becom.e a sort of oracle, endeavoured, 
in the pale of the Church, to unfold and unveil before a few faithful 
disciples the Christianity of the future. It did not make head ; the 
English mind was too positive, the theologians too enslaved. It was 
constrained to transform itself and become Anglican, or to deform itself 
and become revolutionary ; and, in place of a Schiller and Goethe, to 
produce a Wordsworth, a Byron, a Shelley. 

The first, a new Cowper, with less talent and more ideas than the 
other, was essentially an interior man, that is, engrossed by the con- 
cerns of the soul. Such men ask what they have come to do in this world, 
and why life has been given to them ; if they are just or unjust, and if 
the secret movements of their heart are conformable to the supreme 
law, without taking into account the visible causes of their conduct. 
Such, for men of this kind, is the master conception which renders them 
serious, meditative, and as a rule gloomy.^ They live with eyes turned 
inwards, not to mark and classify their ideas, like physiologists, but as 
moralists, to approve or blame their feelings. Thus understood, life 
becomes a grave business, of uncertain issue, on which we must in- 
cessantly and scrupulously reflect. Thus understood, the world changes 
its aspect ; it is no longer a machine of wheels working in each other, 
as the philosopher says, nor a splendid blooming plant, as the artist 
feels, — it is the work of a moral being, displayed as a spectacle to moral 
beings. 

Figure such a man facing life and the world; he sees them, and 
takes part in it, apparently like any one else ; but how different he is 
in reality ! His great thought pursues him ; and when he beholds a 
tree, it is to meditate on human destiny. He finds or lends a sense t? 
the least objects : a soldier marching to the sound of the drum makei 
him reflect on heroic sacrifice, the support of societies ; a train of cloud? 
lying heavily on the verge of a gloomy sky, endues him v/ith that 
melancholy calm, so suited to nourish moral life. There is nothing 
which does not recall him to his duty and admonish him of his origin. 
Near or far, like a great mountain in a landscape, his philcsophy will 
appear behind all his ideas and images. If he is restless, impassioned, 
sick with scruples, it will appear to him amidst storm and hghtning, 
as it did to the genuine Puritans, to Cowper, Pascal, Carlyle. It will 

' The Jansenists, the Puritans, and the Methodists are the extremus of 
*h\s class. 



CHAP. I.] IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 201 

appear to him in a grey fog, imposing and calm, if he enjoys, like Words- 
worth, a calm mind and a pleasant life. Wordsworth was a wise and 
happy man, a thinker and a dreamer, who read and walked. He was 
from the first in tolerably easy circumstances, and had a small fortune. 
Happily married, amidst the favours of government and the respect 
'.)f the public, he lived peacefully on the margin of a beautiful lake, 
in sight of noble mountains, in the pleasant retirement of an elegant 
house, amidst the admiration and attentions of distinguishes and chosen 
Inends, engrossed by contemplations which no storm came to distract, 
and by poetry, which was produced without any hindrance. In this 
deep calm he listens to his own thoughts ; the peace was so great, within 
him and around him, that he could perceive the imperceptible. ' To 
me, the meanest flower that blows, can give thoughts that too often lie 
too deep for tears.' He saw a grandeur, a beauty, lessons in the trivial 
events which weave the woof of our most commonplace days. He 
needed not, for the sake of emotion, either splendid sights or unusual 
actions. The dazzling glare of the lamps, the pomp of the theatre, 
would have shocked him ; his eyes are too delicate, accustomed to sweet 
and uniform tints. He was a poet of the twilight. Moral existence in 
commonplace existence, such was his object— the object of his prefer- 
ence. His paintings are cameos with a grey ground, which have a 
meaning ; designedly he suppresses all which might please the senses, 
in order to speak solely to the heart. 

Out of this character sprang a theory, — his theory of art, altogether 
spiritualistic, which, after repelling classical habits, ended by rallying 
Protestant sympathies, and won for him as many partisans as it had 
raised enemies.^ Since the only important thing is moral life, let ua 
devote ourselves solely to nourishing it. The reader must be moved, 
genuinely, with profit to his soul ; the rest is indifferent : let us, then, 
show him objects moving in themselves, without dreaming of clothing 
them in a beautiful style. Let us strip ourselves of conventional 
language and poetic diction. Let us neglect noble words, scholastic 
and courtly epithets, and all the pomp of factitious splendour, which the 
classical writers thought themselves bound to assume, and justified in 
imposing. In poetry, as elsewhere, the grand question is, not orna- 
nient, but truth. Let us leave show, and seek effect. Let us speak m 
a b.ire style, as like as possible to prose, to ordinary conversation, even 
to lustic conversation, and let us choose our subjects at hand, in humble 
life. Let us take for our character an idiot boy, a shivering old peasant 
woman, a hawker, a servant stopping in the street. It is the true 
sentiment, not the dignity of the folks, which makes the beauty of a 
subject ; it is the true sentiment, not the dignity of the words, which 
makes the beauty of poetry. What matters that it is a villager who 
weeps, if these tears enable me to see the maternal sentiment ? Whal 

' See tlie preface of his gecoud edition oi^Lyriad Ballads, 



262 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK H 

matters that my verse is a line of rhymed prose, if this line displays 
a noble emotion ? You read that you may carry away emotions, not 
phrases ; you come to us to look for a moral culture, not pretty ways 
of speaking. And thereon Wordsworth, classifying his poems ac- 
cording to the different faculties of men and the different ages of life, 
undertakes to lead us through all compartments and degrees of inner 
education, to the convictions and sentiments which he has himself 
ettained. 

Ail this is very well, but on condition that the reader is in his own 
position ; that is, an essentially moral philosopher, and an excessively 
sensitive man. When I shall have emptied my head of all worldly 
thoughts, and looked up at the clouds for ten years to refine my soul, 
I shall love this poetry. Meanwhile the web of imperceptible threads 
by which Wordsworth endeavours to bind together all sentiments and 
embrace all nature, breaks in my fingers ; it is too fragile ; it is a woof 
of woven spider-web, spun by a metaphysical imagination, and tearing 
as soon as a solid hand tries to touch it. Half of his pieces are childish, 
almost foolish;^ dull events described in a dull style, one nullity after 
another, and that on principle. All the poets in the w^orld would not 
reconcile us to so much tedium. Certainly a cat playing with three 
dry leaves may furnish a philosophical reflection, and figure forth a wise 
man sporting with the fallen leaves of life ; but eighty lines on such a 
subject make us yawn — much worse, smile. At this rate you will find 
a lesson in an old tooth-brush, which still continues in use. Doubtless, 
also, the ways of Providence are unfathomable, and a selfish and brutal 
workman like Peter Bell may be converted by the beautiful conduct of 
an ass full of virtue and unselfishness ; but this sentimental prettinews 
quickly grows insipid, and the style, by its intentional ingenuousness, 
renders it still more insipid. We are not over-pleased to see a grave 
man seriously imitate the language of nurses, and w^e murmur to our- 
selves that, with so many emotions, he must wet many handkerchiefs. 
We will acknowledge, if you like, that your sentiments are interesting ; 
yet you might do, without trotting tliem all out before us. 

We imagine we hear him say : * Yesterday I read Walton's Complete 
Aigler; let us write a sonnet about it. On Easter Sunday I was in a 
valley in Westmoreland ; another sonnet. Two days ago I put too many 
qu3Stions to my little boy, and caused him to tell a lie ; a poem. I 
am going to travel on the Continent and through Scotland ; poems 
about all the incidents, monuments, adventures of the journey.' 

You must consider your emotions very precious, that you put them 
all under glass ? There are only three or four events in each of oui 
lives worthy of being related ; our pow^erful sensations deserve to be 
exhibited, because they recapitulate our whole existence ; but not the 
little effects of the little agitations which pass through us, and the im- 

' Peter Bell ; The White Doe ; Tli^. Kitten and Falling Leaves, etc. 



CHAP l.J IDEAS AND PRODUCTION) S. 263 

perceptible oscillations of our everyday condition. Eise I might end 
by explaining in rhyme that yesterday my dog broke his leg, and that 
this morning my wife put on her stockings inside out. The specialty 
of the artist is to cast great ideas in moulds as great as they ; Words- 
worth's moulds are of bad common clay, notched, unable to hold the 
noble metal which they ought to contain. 

But the metal is genuinely noble; and besides several very beauti- 
ful sonnets, there is noAV and then a v.'^ork, amongst others The Excur- 
$''on, in which we forget the poverty of the scenery to admire the purity 
and elevation of the thought. In truth, the author hardly puts himself 
to the trouble of imagination ; he walked along and conversed with an 
old Scotch pedlar : this is the whole of the history. The poets of this 
school always walked, regarding nature and thinking of human destiny; 
it is their permanent attitude. He converses, then, with the pedlar, a 
meditative character, who had become educated by a long experience 
of men and things, who spoke very well (too well !) of the soul and of 
God, and relates to him the history of a good woman who died of grief 
in her cottage ; then with a solitary, a sort of sceptical Hamlet — morose, 
made gloomy by the death of his family, and the deceptions of his long 
journey ings ; then with the clergyman, who brought them to the village 
cemetery, and described to them the life of several interesting dead 
people. Observe that, passim and gradually, reflections and moral dis- 
cussions, scenery and moral descriptions, spread before us in hundreds, 
dissertations entwine their long thorny hedgerows, and metaphysical 
thistles multiply in every corner. In short, the poem is grave and sad 
as a sermon. Well I in spite of this ecclesiastical air and the tirades 
against Voltaire and his age,^ we feel ourselves impressed as by a dis- 
course of Theodore JouiFroy. After all, the man is convinced ; he has 
spent his life meditating on these kinds of ideas, they are the poetry of 
his religion, race, climate ; he is imbued with them ; his pictures, stories, 
interpretations of visible nature and human life tend only to put th(» 
mind in the grave disposition which is proper to the inner man. I 
come here as into the valley of Port Royal : a solitary nook, stagnant 
waters, gloomy woods, ruins, gravestones, and above all tho^idea of 
responsible man, and the obscure beyond, to which we involuntarily 
move. I forget the careless French fashions, the custom of not dis- 
turbing the even tenor of life. There is ^n imposing seriousness, an 
austere beauty in this sincere reflection ; respect comes in, we stop 
and are touched. This book is like a Protestant temple, august, 
though bare and monotonous. The poet sets forth the great interesti 
of the soul : 



^ This dull product of a scoffer's pen 
Impure conceits discharging from a heart 
Hardened by impious pride ! 
Wordsworth's V^orks, 7 vols, 1849, viii. ; The Excursion, bk 2 ; The Solitary/. 58 



MODERN LIFE. |BC >K IV 

On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life 

Musing in solitude, I oft perceive 

Fair trains of imagery before me rise, 

Accompanied by feelings of delight 

Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed ; 

And I am conscious of affecting thoughts 

And dear remembrances, whose presence sootliei 

Or elevates the Mind, intent to weigh 

The good and evil of our mortal state. 

— To these emotions, whencesoe'er they come, 

Whether from breath of outward circumstance, 

Or from the Soul — an impulse to herself, — 

I would give utterance in numerous verse. 

Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope, 

And melancholy Fear subdued bj-- Faith ; 

Of blessed consolations in distress ; 

Of moral strength, and intellectual Power ; 

Of joy in widest commonalty spread ; 

Of the individual Mind that keeps her own 

Inviolate retirement, subject there 

To Conscience only, and the law supreme 

Of that Intelligence which governs all — 

I sing.'^ 

This inviolate personage, the only holy part of man, is holy in all stagesj 
for this, Wordsworth selects as his characters a pedlar, a parson, vil- 
lagers ; in his eyes condition, education, habits, all the vjrorldly envelope 
of a man, is without interest ; what constitutes our worth is the integrity 
of our conscience ; science itself is only profound when it penetratei 
moral life ; for this life fails nowhere : 

* To every Form of being is assigned . . . 
An active principle : — howe'er removed 
From sense and observation, it subsists 
In all things, in all natures ; in the stars 
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, 
In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone 
That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks. 
The moving waters, and the invisible air. 
Whate'er exists hath properties that spread 
Beyond itself, communicating good, 

A simple blessing, or with evil mixed ; 
Spirit that knows no insulated spot. 
No chasm, no solitude ; from link to link 
It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds.'' 

Reject, then, with disdain this arid science : 

* Where Knowledge, ill hegxm in cold remarks 
On outward things, with formal inference endf ; 

i> , , , 

* Wordsworth's Works, 7 vols. 1849, vii. ; The Excursion, Preface, 11. 

* ll/id. vii. book 9, Buconrse of the Wanderer, openinfj versep, ;]15. 



CEAP. 1.1 IDEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 2r>£> 

Or, if the mind turn inward, she recoils, 
At once — or, not recoiling, is perplexed — 
Lost in a gloom of uninspired research. . , , 

Viewing all objects -iinremittingly 

In disconnexion deal and spiritless ; 

And still dividing, and dividing still. 

Breaks down all grandeur.'* 

Beyond tTie vanities of science and the pride of the world, there is A\t 
«t)iil, whereby all are equal, and the broad and familiar Christian life 
opens at once its gates to all who would enter : 

* The sun is fixed, 

And the infinite magnificenco of heaven 

Fixed within reach of every human eye. 

The sleepless Ocean murmurs for all ears, 

The vernal field infuses fresh dehght 

Into all hearts. . . . 

The primal duties shine aloft like stars. 

The charities that soothe and heal and bless 

Are scattered at the feet of man — like flowers.' 

So, at the end of all agitation and all search appears the great trntiSi, 
vrhich is the abstract of the rest : 

* Life, I repeat, is energy of love 
Divine or human ; exercised in pain, 
In strife and tribulation ; and ordained. 
If so approved and sanctified, to pass. 
Through shades and silent rest, to endless joy.** 

The verses sustain these serious thoughts by their grave harmony, as it 
were a motet accompanying a meditation or a prayer. They resemble 
the grand and monotonous music of the organ, which in the eventide, at 
the close of the service, rolls slowly in the twilight of arches and pillars. 
When a certain phasis of the human intelligence comes to light, 
it does so from all sides ; there is no part where it does not appear, 
no instincts which it does not renew. It enters simultaneously the two 
opposite camps, and seems to undo with one hand what it has made 
with the other. If it is, as it was formerly, the oratorical style, we 
fend it at the same time in the service of cynical misanthropy, and in 
that of decorous humanity, in Swift and in Addison. If it is, as now, 
the philosophical spirit, it produces at once conservative harangues 
and socialistic Utopias, Wordsworth md Shelley.* The latter, one of 
the greatest poets of the age, son of a rich baronet, beautiful as an 
angel, of extraordinary precocity, sweet, generous, tender, overflowing 
with all the gifts of heart, mind, birth, and fortune, marred his life, 

^ Wordsworth's Works, 7 vols. 1849, vM. ; The Excursion, book 4 ; Dm 
pondency Corrected, 137. 

« Ibid. 149. ' Md. last lines of book 5, The Pastor, 30. 

* See also the novels of Goodwin, Caleb Williams. 



MODERN LIFE L^OOK I^ 

as it were, wantonly, by introducing into his conduct the enthusiastic 
imagination which he should have kept for his verses. From hia 
birth he had * the vision ' of sublime beauty and happiness, and the 
contemplation of the ideal world set him in arms against the actual 
Having refused at Eton to be the fag of the big boys, he was treated 
by the boys and the masters with a revolting cruelty ; suffered himself 
to be made a martyr, refused to obey, and, falling back into foibidder 
studies, began to form the most immoderate and most poetical dreams. 
He judged society by the oppression which he underwent, and man by 
the generosity which he felt in himself ; thought that man was good, 
and society bad, and that it was only necessary to suppress established 
institutions to make earth ' a paradise.' He became a republican, a 
communist, preached fraternity, love, even abstinence from flesh, and 
&s a means the abolition of kings, priests, and God.^ Fancy the indig- 
nation which such ideas roused in a society so obstinately attached to 
established order — so intolerant, in which, above the conservative and 
religious instincts. Cant spoke like a master. He was expelled from the 
university ; his father refused to see him ; the Lord Chancellor, by a 
decree, took from him, as being unworthy, the custody of his two 
children ; finally, he was obliged to quit England. I forgot to say that 
at eighteen he married a girl of mean birth, that they had been sepa- 
rated, that she committed suicide, that he had undermined his health 
by his excitement and sufferings,^ and that to the end of his life he was 
nervous or sick. Is not this the life of a genuine poet ? Eyes fixed 
on the splendid apparitions with which he peopled space, he went 
through the world not seeing the high road, stumbling over the stones 
of the roadside. 'r\\at knowledge of life which most poets have in 
common with novelists, he had not. Seldom has a mind been seen in 
which thought soared in loftier regions, and more far from actual things. 
When he tried to create characters and events — in Queen Mab, in 
Alastor, in The Revolt of Islam, in Prometheus — he only produced un- 
substantial phantoms. Once only, in the Cenci, did he inspire a living 
figure worthy of Webster or old Ford; but in some sort in spite of him- 
self, and because in it the sentiments were so unheard of and so strained 
that they suited superhuman conceptions. Elsewhere his world is 
throughout beyond our own. The laws of life are suspended or trans- 
formed. We move in this world between heaven and earth, in abstrac- 
tion, dreamland, symbolism : the beings float in it like those fantastic 
figures which we see in the clouds, and which alternately undulate and 
change form capriciously, in their robes of snow and gold. 

For soulc thus constituted, the great consolation is nature. They 
are too fairly sensitive to find a distraction in the spectacle and pic- 

* Qmen Mah, and notes. At Oxford Shelley issued a kind of thesis, calling it 
* On the Necessity of Atheisin.' 

» Some time before his death, when he was twenty-nine, he said, 'If [ di« 

now, I shall have lived as long as my father.' 



CHAP. I] IPEAS AND PRODUCTIONS. 267 

tiire of hu.nan passions. Shelley instinctively avoided it ; this sight 
re-ojjened his own wounds. He was happier in the woods, at the sea- 
side, in contemplation of grand landscapes. The rocks, clouds, and 
meadows, which to ordinary eyes seem dull and insensible, are, to a 
wide sympathy, living and divine existences, which are an agreeable 
change from men. No virgin smile is so charming as that' of the dawn^ 
noi any joy more triumphant than that of the ocean when its waves 
tie^p and tremble, as far as the eye can see, under the prodigal splen* 
dour :)f heaven. At this sight the heart rises unwittingly to the senti- 
ments of ancient legends, and the poet perceives in the inexhaustible 
bloom of things the peaceful soul of the great mother by whom every- 
thing grows and is supported. Shelley spent most of his life in the 
open air, especially in his boat ; first on the Thames, then on the Lake 
of Geneva, then on the Arno, and in the Italian waters. He loved desert 
and solitary places, where man enjoys the pleasure of be'ieving infinite 
what he sees, infinite as his soul. And such was this wide ocean, and 
this shore more barren than its waves. This love was a deep Germanic 
instinct, which, allied to pagan emotions, produced his poetry, pantheistic 
and yet pensive, almost Greek and yet English, in which fancy plays 
like a foolish, dreamy child, with the splendid skein of forms and colours. 
A cloud, a plant, a sunrise, — these are his characters : they were those 
of the primitive poets, when they took the lightning for a bird of fire, 
and the clouds for the flocks of heaven. But what a secret ardour 
beyond these splendid images, and how we feel the heat of the furnace 
beyond the coloured phantoms, which it sets afloat over the horizon I ^ 
Has any one since Shakspeare and Spenser lighted on such tender and 
such grand ecstasies ? Has any one painted so magnificently the cloud 
which watches by night in the sky, enveloping in its net th^ fiwarm of 
golden bees, the stars : 

* The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyea, 
And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 
"When the morning star shines dead . . .* 
That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, 
Whom^ior-^dls call the moon, 
Glides glimmering o'ei' my fleece-like floor, 
By the midnight breezes strewn. ' ^ 

Read again those verses on the garden, in which the sensitive piant 
dreams. Alas 1 they are the dreams of the poet, and the happy visions 
which floated in his *viigm heart up to the, moment when it opened out 
and withered. I will pause in time ; I will not proceed, like him, beyond 
the recollections of his spring-time : 

» See in Shelley's Works, 1853, The Witch of Atlas, The Cloud, To a 8k^ 
iark, the end of T7ie Revolt of Islam, A lastor, and the whole of Prometheus. 
'' The Cloud, c. iii. 502. s j^^^^^ c. iv. 503. 



j|68 MODERN LIFE. VBOOK DF 

• The snowdrop, and then tlie violet, 
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour sent 
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall. 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all. 
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness. 

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, 
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so p&le. 
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 
Through their pavilions of tender green ; 

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue 
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 
Of music so delicate, soft and intense. 
It was felt like an odour within the sense ; 

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest. 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breasti 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare ; 

And the wand-like lily which, lifted up. 
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, • 
Till the fiery star, which is its eye. 
Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky. . , ♦ 
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom • 
Was prankt, under boughs of embowering blossom. 
With golden and green light, slanting through 
Their heaven of many a tangled hue. 

Broad water-lilj js lay tremulously. 

And starry river-buds glimmered by. 

And around them the soft stream did glide and danes 

With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss. 
Which led through the garden along and across, 
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze. 
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees. 

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells. 

As fair as the fabulous asphodels. 

And flowerets which drooping as day drooped too. 

Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue. 

To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.' ' 

Everything lives here, eve^j^thing breathes and yearns. This poem, 
the story of a plant, is also the story of a soul — Shelley's soul, the 
iensitive. Is it not natural to confound them ? Is there not a com 

» Shelley's Works, 1853, The Sensitive Plant, 490. 



(HAP. I.] IDEAiS AND PPtODLCTIONS. gf,'^ 

munity of nature amongst all the dwellers in this world ? Verily 
there is a soul in everything ; in the universe is a soul : be the exist- 
ence what it will, unhewn or rational, defined or vague, ever beyond 
its sensible form shines a secret essence and something divine, which 
we catch sight of by sublime illuminations, never reaching or pene- 
trating it. It is this presentiment and yearning which raises all modern 
poetry, — now in Christian meditations, as with Campbell and Words- 
worth, now in pagan visions, as with Keats and Shelley. They hear 
tije great heart of nature beat ; they would reach it; they assay all 
spiritual and sensible approaches, through Judea and through Greece, 
by consecrated dogmas and by proscribed dogmas. In this splendid 
and senseless effort the greatest are exhausted and die. Their poetry, 
which they drag with them over these sublime tracks, is rent thereby. 
One alone, Byron, attains the summit ; and of all these grand poetic 
draperies, which float like standards, and seem to summon men to the 
conquest of supreme truth, we see now but tatters scattered by tho 
wayside. 

Yet they did their work. Under their multiplied efforts, and by 
their involuntary concert, the idea of the beautiful is changed, and 
other ideas change by contagion. Conservatives contribute to it like 
revolutionaries, and the new spirit breathes through the poems which 
bless and those which curse Church and State. We learn from Words- 
worth and Byron, by profound Protestantism^ and confirmed scepti- 
cism, that in this sacred cant-defended establishment there is matter 
for reform or for revolt ; that we may discover moral merits other than 
those which the law tickets and opinion accepts ; that beyond conven- 
tional confessions there are truths ; that beyond respected conditions 
there are greatnesses ; that beyond regular positions there are virtues ; 
that greatness is in the heart and the genius ; and all the rest, actions 
and beliefs, are subaltern. We have just seen that beyond literary 
conventionalities there is a pofecry, and consequently we are disposed 
to feel that beyond religious dogmas there may be a faith, and beyond 
.social institutions a justice. The old edifice totters, and the Revolu- 
iiQn enters, not by a sudden inundation, as in France, but by slow 
infiltration. The wall built up against it by public intolerance cracks 
and opens : the war waged against Jacobinism, republican and im- 
perial, ends in victory ; and henceforth we may regard opposing 
ideaa, not as opposing enemies, but as ideas. We regard them, 
and, accommodating them to the different countries, we impoit them. 
Catholics are enfranchised, rotten boroughs abolished, the electoi-al 

' * Our life is turned 

Out of her course, whenever man is made 
An oflferiug, a sacrifice, a tool. 
Or implement, a passive thing employed 
[As a brute mean.' — Wordsworth, The Excursi<m. 



270 MODERN LIFE, [BOOK IV 

franchise lowered ; unjust taxes, which kept up the price of corn, wert 
repealed ; ecclesiastical tithes changed into rent charges ; the terrible 
laws protecting property were modified, the incidence of taxation 
brought more and more on the rich classes ; old institutions, formerly? 
established for the advantage of a race, and in this race of a class, are only 
maintained when for the advantage of all classes ; privileges becon)«i 
functions ; and in this triumph of the middle class, which shapes 
opinion and assumes the ascendency, the aristocracy, passing from 
sinecures to services, seems now legitimate only as a national nursery, 
kept up to furnish public men. At the same time narrow ortho- 
doxy is enlarged. Zoology, astronomy, geology, botany, anthropology, 
all the sciences of observation, so much cultivated and so popular, 
forcibly introduce their dissolvent discoveries. Criticism comes in 
from Germany, re-handles the Bible, re-writes the history of dogma, 
attacks dogma itself. Meanwhile poor Scotch philosophy is dried 
up. Amidst the agitations of sects, endeavouring to transform each 
other, and the rising Unitarianism, we hear at the gates of the sacred 
ark the Continental philosophy roaring like a wave. Now already 
has it encroached upon literature : for fifty years all great writers 
have plunged into it, — Sidney Smith, by his sarcasms against the 
numbness of the clergy and the oppression of the Catholics ; Arnold, 
by his protests against the religious monopoly of the clergy and the 
ecclesiastical monopoly of the Anglicans ; Macaulay, by his history 
and panegyric of the liberal revolution ; Thackeray, by attacking the 
nobles, in the interests of the middle class ; Dickens, by attacking 
dignitaries and wealthy men, in the interests of the lowly and poor ; 
Currer Bell and Mrs. Browning, by defending the initiative and inde- 
pendence of women ; Stanley and Jowett, by introducing the German 
exegesis, and by fixing biblical criticism ; Carlyle, by importing Ger- 
man metaphysics in an English form ; Stuart Mill, by importing French 
positivism in an English form ; Tennyson himself, by extending over 
the beauties of all lands and all ages the protection of his amiable 
dilettantism and his poetical sympathies, — each according to his pattern 
and his position, with various profundity ; all restrained v/ithin reach 
of the shore by their practical prejudices, all strengthened against 
falling by their moral prejudices ; all bent, some with more of eager- 
ness, others with more of distrust, in welcoming or giving entrance ta 
the j^rowing tide of modern democracy and philosophy in constitution 
and church, without doing damage, and gradually so as to destroy 
nothing, and to make everything bear fruit. 



(JHAP. ILl LORD BYRON. 271 



CHAPTER IT. 

Lord Byron. 

I The Man— Family— Impassioned character— Precocious loves- -Life of «x- 
cess — Combative character — Revolt against opinion — English Bards and 
Scotch Heviewers—Bv&y&do and rashness— Marriage— Extravagance of ad- 
verse opinion — Departure — Political life in Italy — Sorrows and violence. 
fl The poet — Pieasons for writing — Manner of writing — How his poetry ia 
personal— Classical taste— How this gift served him.— Childe Haroldr— 
The hero— The scenery— The style. 

III. His short poems — Oratorical manner — Melodramatic effects — Trath of hia 

descriptions of scenery — Sincerity of sentiments — Pictures of sad and 
extreme emotions — Dominant idea of death and despair — Mazeppa, The 
Prismer of Chilhn, The Siege of Corinth, The Corsair, Zaro— Analogy 
of this conception with the Edda and Shakspeare. 

IV. Manfred — Comparison of Manfred and Faust — Conception of legend and 

life in Goethe — Symbolical and philosophical character of Faust — 
Wherein Byron is inferior to Goethe — Wherein he is superior — Concep- 
tion of character and action in Byron — Dramatic character of his poem — 
Contrast between the universal and the personal poet. 
V, Scandal in England — Constraint and hypocrisy of manners — How and by 
what law moral conceptions vary — Life and morals of the south — Beppo 
— Don Juan — Transformation of Byron's talent and style — Pictui'c of 
sensuous beauty and happiness — Haidee — How he combats British cant 
— Human hypocrisy— His idea of man — Of woman — Donna Julia — The 
ghipwreck— The capture of Ismail— Naturalness and variety of his style 
—Excess and wearing out of his poetic vein — His drama — Departurfl 
for Greece, and death. 
TL Position of Byron in his age — Disease of the age — Divine conceptions ol 
happiness and life — The conception of such happiness by literature— Bj 
the sciences — Future stability of reason — Modern conception of nature. 

L 

I HAVE reserved for the last the greatest and most English of these 
artists ; he is so great and so English that from him alone we shall 
lea/D more truths of his country and of his age than from all the rest 
together. His ideas were banned during his life ; it has been attempted 
to depreciate his genius since his death. To this day English critics 
are unjust to him. He fought all his life against the society from 
which he came ; and during his life, as after his death, he suffered the 
pain of the resentment which he provoked, and the repugnance to 



272 MODERN LIFE [BOOK l\ 

which he gave rise. A foreign critic may be more impartial, and 
freely praise the powerful hand whose blows he has Dot felt. 

If ever there was a violent and madly sensitive soul, bnt incapable 
of being otherwise ; ever agitated, but in an enclosure without issue; 
predisposed to poetry by its innate fire, but limited by its natural 
barriers to a single kind of poetry — it was Byron's. 

This promptitude to extreme emotions was with him a family 
legacy, and the result of education. His great-uncle, a sort of raving 
and misanthropical maniac, had slain in a tavern brawl, by candle- 
light, Mr. Chaworth, his relative, and had been tried before the House 
of Lords. His father, a brutal roysterer, had eloped with the wife of 
Lord Carmarthen, ruined and ill-treated Miss Gordon, his second wife; 
and, after living like a madman and dishonest fellow, had gone, with 
the last of the family property, to die abroad. His mother, in her 
mcraents of fury, would tear to pieces her dresses and her bonnets. 
When her wretched husband died she almost lost her reason, and her 
cries were heard in the street. What a childhood Byron passed iu 
the care of 'this lioness;' in what storms of insults, interspersed with 
softer moods, he himself lived, just as passionate and more bitter, it 
would take a long story to tell. She ran after him, called him a * lame 
brat,' shouted at him, and threw fire-shovel and tongs at his head. He 
held his tongue, bowed, and none the less felt the outrage. One day, 
when he was * in one of his silent rages,' they had to take out of his 
hand a knife which he had taken from the table, and which he waa 
already raising to his throat. Another time the quarrel was so terrible, 
that son and mother, each privately, went to ' the apothecary's, in- 
quiring anxiously whether the other had been to purchase poison, and 
cautioning the vendor of drugs not to attend to such an application, 
if made.'* When he went to school, 'his friendships were passions.' 
Many years afterwards, he never heard the name of Lord Clare, one of 
his old schoolfellows, pronounced, without ' a beating of the heart.' * 
A score of times he got himself into trouble for his friends, offering 
them his time, his pen, his purse. One day, at Harrow, a big boy 
claimed the right to fag his friend, little Peel, and finding him refrac- 
tory, gave him a beating on the inner fleshy side of his arm, which he 
had twisted round to make it more sensitive. Byron, too small to fight 
the rascal, came up to him, ' blushing with rage,' tears in his eyes, and 
afked with a trembling voice how many stripes he meant to inflict. 

* Why,' returned the executioner, * you little rascal, what is that to you ?'' 

* Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding out his arm. ' I would 
take halr.'^ He never met an object of distress without affording him 
Buccour.'* Later, in Italy, he gave away a thousand pounds out of every 
four thousand he spent. The sources of life in this heart were too fullj 



' Byron's Works, ed. Moore, 17 vols. 1822 ; Life '. 103. » Ibid. i. 63, 

» Ibid. i. 69 * ^^id, 137. 



CHAP II.] LORF BYRON. 273 

and flooded forth good and evil impetuously, at the least shock. Like 
Dante, at the age of eight he fell in love with a child named Mary 
Duff. 

* How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, 
at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word ! 
... I recollect all our caresses, . . . my restlessness, my sleeplessness. My misery, 
my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been 
really attached since, "When 1 hwird of her being married, ... it nearly threw ma 
into convulsions. ' * 

* My passion had its usual effects upon me. I could not sleep — I could net 
eat — 1 could not rest ; and although I had reason to know that she loved me, it 
was the texture of my life to think of the time which must elapse before we could 
meet again, being usually about twelve hours of separation. But I was a fool 
then, and am not much wiser now. ' * 

At twelve years he fell in love mth his cousin, Margaret Parker. 

He never was wiser. Hard reading at school ; vehement exercise, 
later on, at Cambridge, Newstead, and London; prolonged watches, 
debauches, long fasts, a destructive way of living, — he rushed to the 
extreme of every taste and every excess. As he was a dandy, and one 
of the most brilliant, he nearly let himself die of hunger for fear of 
becoming fat, then drank and ate greedily during his nights of reck- 
lessness. Moore said : 

* Lord Byron, for the last two days, had done nothing towards sustenance 
beyond eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic. .• . . He 
confined himself to lobsters, and of these finished two or three to his own share, — 
interposing, sometimes, a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a 
tumbler of very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near 
half a dozen small glasses of the latter. . . . After this we had claret, of which 
having despatched two bottles between us, at about four o'clock in the morning 
we parted. ' ^ 

Another day we find in Byron's journal the following words : 

* Yesterday, dined tete-d-tete at the " Cocoa " with Scrope Da vies — sat from 
six till midnight — drank between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret, 
neither of which wines ever affect me ' ^ 

Later, at Venice : 

* I have hardly had a wink of sleep this week past. I have had some curious 
masking adventures this carnival. ... I will work the mine of my youth to 
Uie last vein of the ore, and then — good night. I have lived, and am contet.L, * 

At this rate the organs wear out, and intervals oi temperance are 
not sufficient to repair them. The stomach does not continue to 
act, the nerves get out of order, and the soul undermines the body, 
and the body the soul. 

' I always wake in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of 
that which pleased me over-night. In England, five years ago, I Aad the sam< 

' Byron's Works, Life, i. 26. « jj^^^^ i 53^ 3 75^-^ ^^ 33 
« Md. ii. 20, March 28, 1814. ^ Ibid. iv. 81 ; Letter to Moore, Feb. 12, 18ia 
VOL. II. S 



274 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst that I have dranli 

as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night after going to bed, and Veea 
rtill thirsty, . . . striking off the necks of bottles from mere thirsty impatience.' * 

Much less is necessary to ruin mind and body wholly. Thus these 
vehement minds live, ever driven and broken by their own energy, like 
a cannon ball, which, when arrested, turns and seems motionless, so 
quickly it goes flying, but at the smallest obstacle leaps up, rebounds, 
raises a cloud of dust, and ends by burying itself in the earth. Beyle, 
a most shrewd observer, who lived with Byron for several weeks, 
eays that on lertain days he was mad ; at other times, in presence of 
beautiful things, he became sublime. Though reserved and so proud, 
music made him weep. The rest of his time, petty English passions, 
pride of rank, for instance, a vain dandyism, unhinged him : he spoke 
of Brummel with a shudder of jealousy and admiration. But, small or 
great, the present passion swept down upon his mind like a tempest, 
roused him, transported him either into imprudence or genius. His 
journal, his familiar letters, all his unstudied prose, is, as it were, 
trembling with wit, anger, enthusiasm : since Saint Simon we have not 
seen more lifelike confidences. All styles appear dull, and all souls 
sluggish by the side of his. 

In this splendid rush of unbridled and disbanded faculties, which 
leaped up at random, and seemed to drive him without option to the 
four quarters of the globe, one took the reins, and cast him on the 
wall against which he was broken. 

* Sir "Walter Scott describes Lord Byron as being a man of real goodness of 
heart, and the kindest and best feelings, miserably thrown away by his foolish 
contempt of public opinion. Instead of being warned or checked by public oppo- 
sition, it roused him to go on in a worse strain, as if he said, *' Ay, you don't likt 
it ; well, you shall have something worse for your pains. " ' ^ 

This rebellious instinct is inherent in the race; there was a whole 
cluster of wild passions, born of the climate,^ which nourished him; 
a gloomy humour, violent imagination, indomitable pride, a relish 
of danger, a craving for strife, the inner exaltation, only satiated by 
destruction, and that sombre madness which urged forward the Scandi- 
navian Bierserkers, when, in an open bark, under a sky cloven with the 
lightning, they launched out upon the tempest, whose fury they had 
breathed. This instinct is in the blood : people are born so, as they 

» Byron's Works, Life, v. 96. Feb. 3, 1821. 
« Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, vii. 323. 

* * If I was born, as the nurses say, with a " silver spoon in my mouth,'' 
It has stuck in my throat, and spoiled palate, so that nothing put into it hi 
swallowed with much relish, — unless it be cayenne. . . I see no such horror in 
a dreamless sleep, and I have no conception of any existence which duration 
would not make tiresome.' 



xmAP. 11 .J LORD BYRON. 27f 

are born lions or bulldogs.* Byron was still a little boy in petticoats 
when his nurse scolded him rudely for having soiled or torn a new 
frock which he had just put on. He got into one of his silent rages, 
seized the garment with his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and 
stood erect, motionless, and gloomy before the storming nurse, so as 
to set more effectually her wrath at defiance. His pride overflowed. 
When at ten he inherited the title of lord, and his name was first called 
Bt school, preceded by the title dominus^ he could not answer the 
customary adsum^ stood silent amidst the general stare of his school- 
fellows, and at last burst into tears. Another time, at Harrow, in a 
dispute which was dividing the school, a boy said, ' Byron won't join 
us, for he never likes to be second anywhere.' He was offered the 
command, and then only would he condescend to take part with them. 
Never to submit to a master ; to rise with his whole soul against every 
semblance of encroachment or rule ; to keep his person intact and 
inviolate at all cost, and to the end against all ; to dare everything 
rather than give sign of submission, — such was his character. This is 
why he was disposed to undergo anything rather than give signs of 
weakness. At ten he was a stoic from pride. His foot was painfully 
stretched in a wooden contrivance whilst he was taking his Latin 
lesson, and his master pitied him, saying * he must be suffering.* 
* Never mind, Mr. Rogers,' he said, * you shall not see any signs of it 
in me.' * Such as he was as a child, he continued as a man. In mind 
and body he strove, or prepared himself for strife.* Every day, fox 
hours at a time, he boxed, fired pistols, practised the sabre, ran and 
leaped, rode, overcame obstacles. These were the exploits of his hands 
and muscles ; but he needed others. For lack of enemies he found 
fault with society, and made war upon it. We know to what excesses 
the dominant opinions then ran. England was at the height of the 
war with France, and thought it was fighting for morality and liberty. 
In their eyes, at this time, church and constitution were holy things : 
beware how you touch them, if you would not become a public enemy 1 
In this fit of national passion and Protestant severity, whosoever pub- 
licly avowed liberal ideas and manners seemed an incendiary, and stirred 
up against himself the instincts of property, the doctrines of moralists, 
the interests of politicians, and the prejudices of the people. Byron 
chose this moment to praise Voltaire and Rousseau, to admire Napoleon, 
to avow himself a sceptic, to plead for nature and pleasure against cant 
and rule, to say that high English society, debauched and hypocritical, 
made phrases and killed men, to preserve their sine<iures and rotten 



' •! like Junius: he was a good hater. — I don't understand yielding sensi 
Sivenesa. What I feel is an immense rage for forty-eight hours.* 

' Byron's Works, Life, i. 41. 

' ' 1 like energy— even mental energy— of all kinds, and have need of both 
mental and corporeal.' — Ibid. ii. 



B76 MODERN LIFE. fBOOK IV 

boroughs. As though political hatred was not enough, he contiacted, 
in addition, literary animosities, attacked the whole body of critics,^ 
ran down the new poetry, declared that the most celebrated wer« 
' Claudians,' men of the later empire, raged against the Lake school, 
and in consequence had in Southey a bitter and unwearied enemy 
Thus provided with enemies, he laid himself open to attack on all sides. 
He decried himself through his hatred of cant, his bravado, his boasting 
about his vices. He depicted himself in his heroes, but for the worse ; 
in such a way tlat no one could fail to recognise him, and think him 
much worse than he was. Walter Scott wrote, immediately after 
seeing Childe Harold: 

* Ghilde-Harold is, I think, a very clever poem, but gives no good symptom ci 
the wiiter's heart or morals. . . , Vice ought to be a little more modest, and it 
must require impudence almost equal to the noble Lord's other powers, to claim 
sympathy gi'avely for the ennui arising from his being tired of his wassailers and 
his paramours. There is a monstrous deal of conceit in it, too, for it is informing 
the inferior part of the world that their little old-fashioned scruples of limitation 
are not worthy of his regard. ' ^ . . . 

* My noble friend is something like my old peacock, who chooses to bivouac 
apart from his lady, and sit below my bedroom window, to keep me awake with his 
Bcrecching lamentation. Only, I own he is not equal in melody to Lord Byron. ' * 

Such were the sentiments which he called forth in all respectable 
classes. He was pleased thereat, and did worse — giving out that in 
his adventures in the East he had dared a good many things ; and he 
was not indignant when confounded with his heroes. Once he said 
he should like to feel for once the sensations of a man who had com- 
mitted a murder. Another time he wrote in his Diary : 

* Hobhouse told me an odd report, — that I am the actual Conrad, the veritab'e 
Corsair, and that part of my travels are supposed to have passed in privacy. Urn ! 
people sometimes hit near the truth, but never the whole truth. He don't knew 
what I was about the year after he left the Levant ; nor does any one — nor — nor — • 
nor — however, it is a lie — ** but I doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies lik« 
truth."'* 

Dangerous words, which were turned against him like a dagger ; but 
he loved danger, mortal danger, and was only at ease when he saw tha 
points of all angers bristling against him. Alone against all, against an 
armed society; erect, invincible, even against common sense, even against 
conscience, — it was then he felt in all his strained nerves the great and 
teirible oensation, to which his whole being involuntarily inclined. 

A last imprudence brought down the attack. As long as he was 
an unmarried man, his excesses might be excused by the over-strong 
fire of a temperament which often causes youth in this land to revolt 

' In English Bards and Scotch Bemeioers. 

* Lockhfc rt's Life of Sir Walter Scott, iii. 389. » j^i^i ^ i^^ 

* Moore's Life of Byron, iii. 12, March 10, Thor's Day. The last pirt of tL« 
seuteiico is a quotation from Macbeth, v. 5. 



CHAP. II.J LORD BYRON. 271 

against good taste and rule; but marriage settles them, and it was 
marriage which in him completed his unsettling. He found that his 
wife was a kind of model-virtue, mentioned as such, ' a creature of rule, 
correct and dry, incapable of committing a fault herself, and of for- 
giving. His servant Fletcher observed, that he never knew a lady whc^ 
could not govern his master, except his wife. Lady Byron thought her 
husband mad, and had him examined by physicians. Having learned 
that he was in his right mind, she left him, returned to her father, and 
refused ever to see liim again. Thereupon he passed for a monster. 
The papers covered him with opprobrium ; his friends induced him not 
to go to a theatre or to Parliament, fearing that he would be hooted or 
insulted. The fury and torture which so violent a soul, precociously 
a;customed to brilliant glory, felt in this universal storm of outrage, 
can only be learned from his verses. He grew stubborn, went to 
Venice, and steeped himself in the voluptuous Italian life, even in low 
debauchery, the better to insult the Puritan prudery Avhich had con- 
demned him, and left it only through an offence still more blamed, his 
public intimacy with the young Countess Guiccioli. Meanwhile he 
showed himself as bitterly republican in politics as in morality. He 
wrote in 1813 : * I have simphfied my politics into an utter detestation 
of all existing governments.' This time, at Ravenna, his house was the 
centre and storehouse of conspirators, and he generously and im^ 
prudently prepared to take arms with them, to strike for the deliver- 
ance of Italy : 

* They mean tc insurrect here, and are to honour me with a call thereupon. I 
shall not fall back ; though I don't think them in force and heart sufficient to 
make much of it. But, onward. . . . What signifies self .? ... It is not one man 
nor a million, hut the spirit of liberty which must be spread. . . . The mere selfish 
calculation ought never to be made on such occasions ; and, at present, it shall 
not be computed by me. ... I should almost regret that my own affairs went 
well, when those of nations are in peril.' * 

In the meantime he had quarrels with the police : his house was watched, 
he was threatened with assassination, and yet he rode out daily, and 
went into the neighbouring pine-forest to practise pistol-shooting, 
Tiiese are the sentiments of a man at the muzzle of a loaded cannon, 
waiting for it to go off. The emotion is great, nay, heroic, but it is 
Qot sweet ; and certainly, even at this season of great emotion, he was 
wnhappy. Nothing is more likely to poison happiness than a combativ*? 
spirit. He writes : 

* What is the reason that I have beer, all my lifetime, more or less ennuy6 f 
, . e I do not know how to answer this, but presume that it is constitutional, — aa 
well as the waking in low spirits, which I have invariably done for many years. 
Temperance and exercise, which I have practised at times, and for a long time 
togetlier vigorously and violently, made little or no difference. Violent paasioni 

» Moore, Byron's Works ; Life, v. 67, Jan. 9, I82t 



^ijb MODERN LIFE. [i^^'OK l\ 

di! : vrhen nnder their immediate influence — it is odd, "but — I was in agitated, 
but not in depressed spirits. . . . Wine and spirits make me sullen and savage U 
ferocity — silent, however, and retiring, and not quarrelsome, if not spoken to. 
Swimming also raises my spirits ; but in general tliey are low, and get daily lower. 
That is hojyeless ; for I do not think I am so much ennuy4 as I was at nineteen, 
The proof is, that then I must game, or drink, or be in motion of some kind, or I 
was miserable. ' ^ 

* Wliat I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful 
than indifference. If I rouse, it is into fury. I presume that I shall end (if not 
earlier by accident, or some such termination) like Swift, ** dying at top." ' Lega 
(his servant) came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice which I thought 
paid months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint. 
I liave always had une dme, which not only tormented itself, but everybody else 
in contact with it, and an esprit violent, which has almost left me without any 
esprit at all. ' ' 

A horrible foreboding, which haunted him to the end I On his death- 
bed, in Greece, he refused, I know not why, to be bled, and preferred 
to die at once. They threatened that the uncontrolled disease might 
end in madness. He sprang up : ' There 1 you are, 1 see, a d — d set 
of butchers 1 Take away as much blood as you like, but have done with 
it,' * and stretched out his arm. Amidst such splendours and anxieties 
he passed his life. Anguish endured, danger braved, resistance over- 
come, grief relished, all the greatness and sadness of the black warlike 
madness, — such are the images which he needs must let pass before 
him. In default of action he had dreams, and he only betook himself 
to dreams for want of action. He said, when embarking for Greece, 
that he had taken poetry for lack of better, and that it was not his fit 
work. * What is a poet ? what is he worth ? what does he do ? He is 
a babbler.' He augured ill of the poetry of his age, even of his oAvn ; 
saying that, if he lived ten years more, they should see something else 
from him but verses. In fact, he would have been more at home as a 
sea-king, or a captain of a band of troopers during the Middle-ages. 
Except two or three gleams of Italian sunshine, his poetry and life arn 
those of a Scald transplanted into modern life, who in this over-well 
regulated world did not find his vocation. 

XL 

Byrcn was a poet, then, but in his own fashion — a strange fashion, 
like that in which he lived. There were internal tempests within him, 
avalanches of ideas, which found issue only in writing. He wrote f 

' I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, froa 
many motives, but not " for their rA^eet voices." To withdraw myself from mysell 
has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all — and 
publishing also the continuance of the same object, by tlie action it affords to tha 
mind, which else recoils upon itself. ' 

' Moore, Byron's Works ; Life, v. CO, Jan. 6, 1821. 

» Ibid, V. 97, Feb. 2, 1821. ? Ibid. 95. * Ibid. vi. 206. 



CHAP. Jfl.] LORD BYKON. 27 fi 

He wrote almost always with astonishing rapidity, The Corsair in ten 
days, The Bride of Abydos in four days. While it was printing he 
idded and corrected, but without recasting : 

* I told you before that I can never recast anything. I am like the tiger. It 
I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again ; but if I do it, it 
is crushing. ' ^ 

Doubtless be sprang, but he had a chain : never, in the freest flight 
of his thoughts, did he liberate himself from himself. He dreams of 
himself, and sees himself throughout. It is a boiling torrent, but 
hedged in with rocks. No such great poet has had so narrow au 
imagination ; he could not metaniorpliose himself into another. They 
are his own sorrows, his own revolts, his own travels, which, hardly 
transformed and modified, he introduces into his verses. He does not 
invent, he observes ; he does not create, he transcribes. His copy is 
darkly exaggerated, but it is a copy. ' I could not write upon any- 
thing,' says he, * without some personal experience and foundation.' 
You will find in his letters and notebook, almost feature for feature, 
the most striking of his descriptions. The capture of Ismail, the ship- 
wreck of Don Juan, are, almost word for word, like two accounts of it 
in prose. If none but cockneys could attribute to him the crimes of his 
heroes, none but blind men could fail to see in him the sentiments of 
his characters. This is so true, that he has not~ created more than one. 
Childe Harold, Lara, the Giaour, the Corsair, Manfred, Sardanapalus, 
Cain, Tasso, Dante, and the rest, are always the same — one man repre- 
gented under various costumes, in several lands, with different expies- 
Bions; but just as painters do, when, by change of garments, decorations, 
and attitudes, they draw fifty portraits from the same model. He 
meditated too much upon himself to be enamoured of anything else. 
The habitual sternness of his will prevented his mind from being 
flexible ; his force, always concentrated for effort and strained for 
strife, shut him up in self-contemplation, and reduced him never to 
make a poem, save of his own heart. 

In what style would he write ! With these concentrated and 
tragic sentiments he had a classical mind. By the strangest mixture, the 
books, which he preferred, were at once the most violent or the most 
regular, the Bible above all ; 

* I am a great reader and admirer of those books (the Bible), and had read them 
through and through before I was eight years old ; that is to say, the Old Testa- 
ment, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. ' ^ 

Observe this word : he did not relish the tender and self-denying 
mysticism of the gospel, but the cruel sternness and lyrical outcries o/ 
the old Hebrews. Next to the Bible he loved Pope, the most correct 
and formal of men : 

' Moore, Byron's Works ; Life, v. 23, Ravenna, Nov. 13, 1820. 
» Ihid. V. 265, 



MODERN LIFE. [BOOK 1? 

* As to Toi,e, I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry. 

Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek Temple, with a Gothic 
Cath&lral on one hand, and a Turkish Mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodui 
and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, 
but I prefer the Temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a mountain cf buinii 
brickwork. . . . The grand distinction of the underforms of the new schoo? 
of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean they are coarse, but shabbv 
genteel. ' * 

And he presently wrote two letters with incomparable vivacity an(J 
spirit, to defend Pope against the scorn of modern writers. These 
writers, according to him, have spoiled the public taste. The only 
ones who were worth anything — Crabbe, Campbell, Rogers — imitate 
the style of Pope. A few others had talent ; but, take them all toge- 
ther, the newest ones had perverted literature : they did not know their 
language ; their expressions are only approximate, above or below the 
true tone, forced or dull. He ranges himself amongst the corrupters,* 
and we soon see that this theory is not an invention, springing from bad 
temper and polemics ; he returns to it. In his two first attempts — Hours 
of Idleness, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers — he tried to follow it up. 
Later, and in almost all his works, we find its effect. He recommends 
and practises the rule of unity in tragedy. He loves oratorical form, 
symmetrical phrase, condensed style. He likes to plead his passions. 
Sheridan tried to induce Byron to devote himself to eloquence ; and 
the vigour, piercing logic, wonderful vivacity, close argument of his 
prose, prove that he would have had the first rank amongst pam- 
phleteers.' If he attains to it amongst the poets, it is partly due to his 
classical system. This oratorical form, in which Pope compresses his 
thought like La Bruyere, magnifies the force and swing of vehement 
ideas ; like a narrow and straight canal, it collects and dashes them down 
its slope : there is then nothing which their impetus does not carry 
away ; and it is thus Lord Byron from the first, through restless criti- 
cisms, over jealous reputations, has made his way to the public* 

Thus Childe Harold made its way. At the first onset every one 
was agitated. It was more than an author who spoke ; it was a maiv 
[n spite of his disavowals, it was well seen that the author was but one 
with his hero : he calumniated himself, but he imitated himsfelf. lis 
was recognised in that young voluptuous and disgusted man, ready to 
weep amidst his orgies, who 

' Sore sick at heart, 
And from his fellow bacchanals would flee ; 
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start. 
But Pride congeal'd the drop within his ee : 

* Moore, Byron's Works ; Life, v. 150, Ravenna, May 3, 1821. 

^ ' All the styles of the day are bombastic. I don't except my own ; no Qn% 
has done more through negligence to corrupt the language.' 
8 See his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

* Thirty thousand copies jf the Corsair were sold in one day. 



CUAP. ll.J LOKD BYKON. 281 

Apart lie stalk'd in joyless reverie, 

And from his native land resolved to go, 

And visit scorching climes beyond the sea ; 

With pleasure drugg'd, he almost long'd for woe.'^ 

Fleeing from his native land, he carried, amongst the splendours and 
cheerfulness of the south, his unwearying persecutor, ' demon thought,' 
implacable behind him. The scenery was recognised : it had been 
copied on the spot. And what was the whole book but a diary of 
travel ? He said in it what he had seen and thought. What poelio 
fiction is as valuable as genuine sensation ? What is more penetrating 
than confidence, voluntary or involuntary? Truly, every word here 
noted an emotion of eye or heart : 

* The tender azure of the unruffled deep. . . . 

The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrown'd. . . . 
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough.' . . .^ 

All these beauties, calm or imposing, he had enjoyed, and sometimea 
suffered through them; and hence we see them through his verse. 
Whatever he touched, he made palpitate and live ; because, when he 
saw it, his heart had beaten and he had lived. He himself, a little later, 
quitting the mask of Harold, took up the parable in his own name ; and 
who would not be touched by avowals so passionate and completo ? 

* Yet must I think less wildly : I have thought 
Too long and darkly, till my brain became, 
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought, 

A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame : 
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame, 
My springs of life were poison'd. 'Tis too late ! 
Yet am I changed ; though still enough the same 
In strength to bear what time can not abate. 
And feed on bitter fruits without accusing Fate. . 

But soon he knew himself the most unfit 

Of men to hi-rd with Man ; with whom he held 

Little in common ; untaught to submit 

His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd 

In youth by his own thoughts ; still uncompell'd, 

He would not yield dominion of his mind 

To spirits against whom his own rebell'd ; 

Proud though in desolation, which could find, 

A life within itself to breathe without mankind. . . 

Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars. 
Till he had peopled them with beings bright 
As their own beams ; and earth, and earth-born jars. 
And human frailties were forgotten quite : 



Byron's Works, viii. ; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, c. i. i. 



' Ibid. c. 1 19. 



^3 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK l^ 

Could he have kept his spirit to that flight 

He had been happy but this clay will sink 

Its spark immortal, envying it the light 

To which it mounts, as if to break the link 

That keeps us from yon heaven which woos us to its brink. 

But in Man's dwellings he became a thing 

Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, 

Droop'd as a wdld-born falcon with dipt wing, 

To whom the boundless air alone were home • 

Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome, 

As eagerly the barr'd-up bird will beat 

His breast and beak against his wiry dome 

Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat 

Of his impeded soul Avould through his bosom eat. ' 

Such are the sentiments wherewith he surveyed nature an'^ history, 
not to comprehend them and forget himself before them, but to seek in 
them and impress upon them the image of his own passions. He does 
not let objects speak, but forces them to answer him. Amidst their 
peace, he is only occupied by his own emotion. He raises them to the 
tone of his soul, and compels them to repeat his own cries. All is 
inflated here, as in himself ; the vast strophe rolls along, carrying in its 
overflowing bed the flood of vehement ideas ; declamation unfolds itself, 
pompous, and at times artificial (it was his first work), but potent, and 
so often sublime that the rhetorical dotings, which he yet preserved, 
disappeared under the afflux of splendours, with which it is loaded. 
Wordsworth, Walter Scott, by the side of this prodigality of accumu- 
lated splendours, seemed poor and gloomy ; never since ^schylus was 
seen so tragic a pomp ; and men followed, with a sort of pang, the train 
of gigantic figures, whom he brought in mournful ranks before our eyes, 
from the far pust : "^ 

* I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; 
A palace and a prison on each hand : 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
Around me, 'and a dying Glory smiles 
O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
Look'd to the wing'd Lion's marble piles, 
Whe-i Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred islea ! 

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, 
Rising with her tiara of proud towers 
At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
A ruler of the w^aters and their powers : 



Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, c. iii. 7-15; 



CHAP. U. J LORD BYRON, JlvS3 

And sucli she was ;— lier daughters had their dowers 

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 

Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. 

In purple was she robed, and of her feast 

Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased. . .' 

Lo I where the giant on the mountain stands, 

His hlood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun, 

With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands. 

And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon ; 

Restless it rolls, now fix'd, and now anon 

Flashing afar, — and at his iron feet 

Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done ; 

For on this morn three potent nations meet, 

To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most swee* 

By Heaven ! it is a splendid sight to see 

(For one who hath no friend, no brother there) 

Their rival scarfs of mix'd embroidery. 

Their various arms that glitter in the air ! 

What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair 

And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey ! 

All join the chase, but few the triumphs sliare ; 

The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away, 

And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array. . » 

What from this barren being do we reap ? 

Our senses narrow, and our reason frail. 

Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, 

And all things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale ; 

Opinion an omnipotence,— whose veil 

Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 

And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 

Lest their own judgments should become too bright. 

And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much light 

And thus they plod in sluggish misery. 

Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, 

Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, 

Bequeathing their hereditary rage 

To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage 

War for their chains, and rather than be free, 

Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage 

Within the same arena where they see 

Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree,' • 

Has ever style better expressed a soul? It is seen here labo-uring 
«nd expanding. Long and stormily the ideas boiled like metal heaped 
in the furnace. They melted there before the strain of the intense 
heat; they mingled therein their lava amidst shocks and explosiona, 

* Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, c. iv. 1 and 2. 

9 Ibid c. i. 39 and 40 s Ibid. c. iv. 93 and 94 



284 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK 1? 

and then at last the door is opened : a dull stream of fire descendg 
into the trough prepared beforehand, heating the circumambient 
air, and its glittering hues scorch the eyes which persist in looking 
upoD it. 

m. 

Description and monologue did not sufSce Byron ; and he needed, 
to express his ideal, events and actions. Only events put to proof the 
force and spring of the soul ; only actions manifest and measure this 
force and spring. Amidst events he sought for the most powerful, 
amidst actions the strongest ; and we see appear successively 'Tin 
Bride of Ahydos, The Giaour, The Corsair, Lara, Parisina, The Siege 
of Corinth, Mazeppa, and The Prisoner of Chillon. 

I know that these sparkling poems have grown dull in forty years. 
In their necklace of oriental pearls have been discovered beads of glass; 
and Byron, who only half loved them, judged better than his judges. 
Yet he had judged amiss ; those which he preferred are the most false. 
His Corsair is marred by classic elegancies : the pirates' song at the 
beginning is no truer than a chorus at the Italian opera ; his scamp*^ 
propound philosophical antitheses as balanced as those of Pope. A 
hundred times ambition, glory, envy, despair, and the other abstract 
personages, whose images in the time of the Empire the French used 
to set upon their drawing-room clocks, break in amidst living passions.^ 
The noblest passages are disfigured by pedantic apostrophes, and the 
pretentious poetic diction sets up its threadbare frippery and conven- 
tional ornaments.^ Far worse, he studies effect and follows the fashion. 
Melodramatic strings pull his characters, so as to obtain the grimac« 
"which shall make his public shudder : 

* "WTio thundering comes on blackest steed. 
With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed ? 
• . . Approach, thou craven crouching slavey 
Say, is not this Thermopylae ? ' 

Wretched fashions, emphatic and vulgar, imitated from Lucan and oni 
modern Lucans, but which produce their effect during a first perusal, 
and on the herd of readers. There is an infallible means of attract- 
ing a mob, which is, to shout out loud ; with shipwrecks, sieges, 
murders, and combats, we shall always interest them ; show them 



* For example, ' as weeping Beauty's cheek at Sorrow's tale. 

• Here are verses like Pope, very beautiful and false : 

* And liavock loath so much the waste of time. 
She scarce had left an uncommitted- crime. 
One hour beheld him since the tide he stemm'd. 
Disguised, discover'd, conquering, ta'en, condemn'd 
A chief on laud, an outlaw on the deep. 
Destroying, saving, prison'd, and asleep I ' 



CHAP. iL] LORD BYRON. 285 

pirates, desperate adventurers, — these distorted or furious faces will 
draw them out of their regular and monotonous existence ; they will 
go to see them as they go to the melodramas, and through the same in- 
stinct which induces them to read novels in penny numbers. Add, by 
way of contrast, angelic women, lender and submissive, all beautiful 
a3 angels. Byron describes this, and adds to all these seductions a 
panoramic scenery, oriental or picturesque adornments; old Alpine 
castles, the Mediterranean Avaves, the setting suns of Greece, the whole 
in high relief, with marked shadows and brilliant colours. We are all 
of the people, as regards emotions ; and the great lady, like the waiting- 
woman, sheds tears at once, without cavilling with the author as to the 
means he uses. 

And yet truth flows through it all. No ; this man is not an 
arranger of effects or an inventor of phrases. He has lived amidst 
the spectacles he describes ; he has experienced the emotions he relates. 
He has been in the tent of Ali Pacha, and relished the strong savour of 
ocean adventure and savage manners. He has been a score of times 
near death, — in the Morea, in the anguish and the solitude of fever ; 
at Suli, in a shipwreck; at Malta, in England, and in Italy, in the 
dangers of a duel, plots of insurrection, commencements of sudden 
attacks, at sea, in arms, on horseback, having seen assassination, wounds, 
agonies close to him, and that more than once. 

* I am living here exposed to it (assassination) daily, for I have happened to 
make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy ; and I never sleep the worse 
for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks 
of it as of a disease which may or may not strike. ' ^ 

He spoke the truth ; no one ever held himself more erect and firm 
in danger. One day, near the Gulf of San Fiorenzo, his yacht was 
thrown on the coast ; the sea Avas terrific, and the rocks in sight ; the 
passengers kissed their rosaries, or fainted with horror ; and the two 
captains being consulted, declared shipwreck inevitable. * Well,' said 
Lord Byron, ' we are all born to die ; I shall go with regret, but cer- 
tainly not with fear.' And he took off his clothes, begging the others 
tc do the same, not that they could save themselves amidst such wave?. 

' It is evexy man's duty to endeavour to preserve the life God has given him ; 
K i advise you all to strip : swimming, indeed, can be of little use in these 
bilbws ; but as children, when tired with crying, sink placidly to repose, we, 
wh:D exhausted with struggling, shall die the easier. . . .' 

He then 2tt down, folding his arms, very calm ; he even joked with 
th( captain J who was putting his dollars into his waistcoat pocket. . . . 
The ship approached the rocks. All this time Byron was not seen tc 
change countenance. A man thus tried and moulded could paint ex- 
treme situations and sentiments. Alter all, they are never painted 

^ Moore's Life, iv, 345. 



286 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK H 

otherwise than thus, by experience. The most inventive— Dante and 
Shakspeare — though quite different, yet do the same thing. Howevei 
high their genius rose, it always had its feet in observation ; and their 
most foolish, like their most splendid pictures, never offer to the 
world more than an image of their age, or of their own heart. At 
most, they deduce ; that is, having derived from two or three features 
the inward qualities of the man and of the men around them, they 
draw thence, by a sudden ratiocination of which they have no con- 
sciousness, the varied skein of actions and sentiments. They may be 
artists, but they are observers. They may invent, but they describe. 
Their glory does not consist in the display of a phantasmagoria, but in 
the discovery of a truth. They are the first to enter some unexplored 
province of humanity, which becomes their domain, and thenceforth 
supports their name like an appanage. Byron found his domain, which 
is that of sad and tender sentiments : it is a wild heath, and full of 
ruins ; but he is at home there, and he is alone. 

What an abode I And it is on this desolation that he dwells. He 
muses on it. See the brothers of Childe Harold pass — the characters 
who people it. One in his prison, chained up with the two brothers 
remaining to him. Three others, with their father, perished fighting, 
or were burnt for their faith. One by one, before the eyes of the 
eldest, the last two languish and fade : a silent and slow agony in the 
damp darkness, into which a beam of the sickly sun pierces through 
a crevice. After the death of the first, the survivors demand that he 
shall at least be buried on a spot ' whereon the day might shine.' The 
jailers 

* Coldly laugh, and laid him there : 

The flat and turfless earth above 

The being we so much did love ; 

His empty chain above it leant. 
... He faded. . . . 

"With all the while a cheek whose bloom 

Was as mockery of the tomb, 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray. ' ^ 

The pillars are too far apart, — the brother cannot approach the dying 
man ; he listens and hears the failing sighs ; he cries for succour, and 
none comes. He breaks his chain with a vast effort : all is over. He 
takes that cold hand, and then, before the motionless body, his senses 
are stopped up, his thoughts arrested, he is like a drowning man, who, 
after passing through anguish, lets /limself sink down like a stone, and 
no longer feels existence but by a complete petrifaction of horror. 
Here is another brother of Childe Harold, Mazeppa, bound naked, 
and on a wild horse rushing over the steppes. He writhes, and his 

* Byron's Works, x., The Prisoner uf Chillon, c. vii. and viii. 



<?HAP. 11.] I^ORD BYRON. 287 

swollen limbs, cut by the cords, are bleeding. A whole day the course 
continues, and behind him the wolves are howling. The night through 
he hears their long monotonous chase, and at the end his eaergy fails. 

* . . . The earth gave way, the skies roll'd round, 
I seem'd to sink upon the ground ; 
But err'd, for I was fastly bound. 
My heart turn'd sick, my brain grew sore 
And throbb'd awhile, then beat no more ; 
The skies spun like a mighty wheel ; 
I saw the trees like drunkards reel. 
And a slight flash sprang o'er my eyes. 
Which saw no further : he who dies 
Can die no more than then I died. . 
I felt the blackness come and go, 
And strove to wake ; but could not make 
My senses climb up from below : 
I felt as on a plank at sea. 
When all the waves that dash o'er thee. 
At the same time upheave and whelm. 
And hurl thee towards a desert realm.' * 

Should I enumerate them all? Hugo, Parislna, the Foscari, the 
Giaour, the Corsair. His hero is always a man striving with the worst 
anguish, face to face with shipwreck, torture, death, — his own painful 
and prolonged death, the bitter death of his well-beloved, remorse for 
his companion, amidst the gloomy prospects of a threatening eternity, 
with no support but native energy and hardened pride. They have 
desired too much, too impetuously, with a senseless swing, like a horse 
which does not feel the bit, and thenceforth their inner doom drives 
them to the abyss which they see, and cannot escape. What a night 
was that of Alp before Corinth I He is a renegade, and comes with 
the Mussulmans to besiege the Christians, his old friends — Minottl, the 
father of the girl he loves. Next day he is to lead the assault, and he 
thinks of his death, which he forebodes, the carnage of his own people, 
which he is preparing. There is no inner support but rooted resent- 
ment and the fixity of stern will. The Mussulmans despise him, the 
Christians execrate him, and his glory only publishes his treason. 
Oppressed and fevered, he passes through the sleeping camp, and 
wanders on the shore : 

' Tis midnight : on the mountains brown 
The cold, round moon shines deeply down ; 
Blue roll the waters, blue the «ky 
Spreads like an ocean hung on high, 
Bespangled with those isles of light. . . . 
The waves on either shore lay there 
Calm, clear and azure as the air ; 

' Byron's Works, si,, Mazeppa, c. xiii. 167. 



fi8S MODERN LIFE. [BOOK 1^ 

And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, 
But murmur'd meekly as the brook. 
The winds were pillow'd on the waves ; 
The banners droop'd along their staves. . 
And that deep silence was unbroke, 
Save where the watch his signal spoke, 
Save Avhere the steed neigh'd oft and shrill, 
And the wide hum of that wild host 
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast.' , 

How the heart sickens before such spectacles 1 What a contrast bn • 
tween his agony and the peace of immortal nature I How man 
stretches then his arms towards ideal beauty, and how impotently they 
fall back at the contact of our clay and immortality 1 Alp advpnces 
over the sandy shore to the foot of the bastion, under the fire of ^he 
sentinels ; and he hardly thinks of it : 

' And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wal) 
Hold o'er the dead their carnival. 
Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb 
They were too busy to bark at him ! 
From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the lie?ii, 
As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh ; 
And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skuU, 
As it slipp'd through their jaws, when their edge gre«^ 4ull 
As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, 
When they scarce could rise from the spot where they £«d ; 
So well had they broken a lingering fast 
With those who had fallen for that night's repast. 
And Alp knew, by the turbans that roll'd on the sand. 
The foremost of these were the best of his band : 
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear. 
And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, 
All the rest was shaven and bare. 
The scalps were in the wild dog's maw, 
The hair was tangled round his jaw. 
But close by the sJiore, on the edge of ths gulf. 
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, 
Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away. 
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey ; 
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, 
Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay.* ' 

Such is the goal of man ; the hot frenzy of life ends here ; buried oF 
not, it matters little : vultures or jackals, his gravediggers know their 
work. The storm of his rages and his efforts have only served to cast 
him to these for their food, and to their beaks and jaws he comes only 
with the sentiment of frustrated hopes and insatiate desires. Could 
any of us forget the death of Lara after once reading it ? Has any 

• Byron's Works, x.. The. Siege of Corinth, e. xi. 116. * Ibid. c. xvi. 133. 



l-flAP. II.] LORD BYRON. 289 

owe elsewhere seep, save in Shakspeare, a sadder picture of the destiny 
of a man vainly rearing against inevitable fate? Though generous, 
like Macbeth, he has, like Macbeth, dared everything against law and 
conscience, even against pity and the commonest honour. Crime? 
committed have forced him into other crimes, and blood poured out 
has made him glide into a pool of blood. As a corsair, he has slain ; 
as a cut-throat, he assassinates ; and the old murders which haunt his 
drea'.ns come with their bat's-wings beating against the doors of hii 
brain He does not drive them away, these black visitors ; though 
the mouth remains silent, the pallid brow and »trange smile bear wit- 
ness to their approach. And yet it is a noble spectacle to see man 
standing with calm countenance even under their touch. The last day 
comes, and six inches of iron suffice for all this energy and fury. I^ara 
is lying beneath a lime tree, and his wound * is bleeding fast from life 
away.' With each convulsion the stream gushes blacker, then stops ; 
the blood flows drop by drop, and his brow is already moist, his eye 
d^m. The victors arrive — he does not deign to answer them ; the priest 
brings near the absolving cross, *but he look'd upon it with an eye 
profane.* What remains to him of life is for his poor page, the only 
being who has loved him, who has followed him to the end, who now 
tries to standi the blood from his wound : 

* He scarce can speak, but motions him 'tis vain. 
He clasps the hand that pang which woukl assuage, 
Ancl sadly smiles his thanks to that dark page. . 
His dying tones are in that other tongue, 
To which some strange remembrance wildly clung. . . 
And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceased, 
Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the East : 
Whether (as then the breaking sun from high 
Koll'd back the clouds) the morrow caught his eye, 
Or that 'twas chance, or some remembcr'd scene, 
That raised his arm to point where such had been. 
Scarce Kaled seem'd to know, but turn'd away. 
As if his heart abhorr'd that coming day, 
And shrunk his glance before that morning light, 
To look on Lara's brow — Avhere all grew night. . . '• 
But from his visage little could we guess. 
So unrepentant, dark, and passionless. . . 
But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew, 
And dull the film along his dim eye grew ; 
His limbs stretch'd fluttering, and his head droop'd o'er.* * 

All is tiJrre?, and of this haughty spirit there remains but a poor piece 
of clay. After all, it is the desirable lot of such hearts ; they have 
spent life amiss, and rest well only in the tomb. 

A strange and altogether northern poetry, with its root in the Edda 

^ Byron's Works, x. ; Lara, c. 2, st. 17-30 60. 
VOL. IL T 



290 MODERN LIFE. ^BOOK 17 

and its riower in Shakspeare, born long no-o under an inclement sky, 
on the shores of a stormy ocean, — the work of a too wilful, too strong, 
too sombre race, — and which, after lavishing its images of desolatioB 
and heroism, ends by stretching like a black veil over the whole of 
living nature the dream of universal destruction : this dream i» her* 
AB in the Edda, almost equally grand : 

* 1 had a dream, which was not all a dream. 
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars 
Did wander darkling in the eternal space, 
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth 
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air ; 
Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day. . • 
Forests were set on fire — but hour by hojr 
They fell and faded — and the crackling trunks 
Extinguish'd with a crash — and ail was black. . . . 
And they did live by watchfires — and the thrones, 
The palaces of crowned kings — the huts, 
The habitations of all things v/hich dwell, 
Were burnt for beacons ; cities were consumed, 
And men were gathered round their blazing homes 
To look once more into each other's face. . 
The brows of men by the despairing light 
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits 
The flashes fell upon them ; some lay down 
And hid their eyes and wept ; and some did rest 
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled ; 
And others hurried to and fro, and fed 
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up 
With mad disquietude on the dull sky. 
The pall of a past world ; and then again 
With curses cast them down upon the dust. 
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd : the wild birds shri^'ii, 
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, 
And flap their useless wings ; the wildest brutes 
Came tame and tremulous ; and vipers crawl'd 
And twined themselves among the multitude, 
Hissing, but stingless — they were slain for food 
And War, which for a moment was no more. 
Did glut himself again ; — a meal was bought 
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart 
Gorging himself in gloom : no love was left ; 
All earth was but one thought — and that was destfej 
Immediate and inglorious ; and the pang 
Of famine fed upon all entrails — men 
Died, and their bones were tombless as their fieshj 
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd. 
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one. 
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept 
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay. 
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead 



OHAR Jl.j LORD BYRON. ^ 99 1 

Lured their lank jaws ; himself sought out no food. 

But witli a piteous and perpetual moan, 

And a quick desolate cry, licking the haad 

Which answer'd not with a caress — he died. 

The crowd was famish'd by degrees ; but two 

Of an enormous city did survive. 

An I they were enemies : they niet beside 

The dying embers of an altar-place 

Where had been beap'd a mass of holy things 

For an unholy usage; they raked up. 

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hnndd 

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath 

Blew for a little life, and made a flame 

Which was a mockery ; then they lifted up 

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld 

Each other's aspects — saw, and shriek'd, and died — 

Even of their mutual hideousness they died.' ^ . 

IV. 

Amongst these immoderate and funereal poems, which incessantly 
return and insist upon the same subject, there is one more imposing 
and lofty, Manfred^ twin-brother of the greatest poem of the age, 
Goethe's Faust. Goethe says of Byron : ' This singular intellectual poet 
has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest 
nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the 
impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no 
one of them remains the same ; and it is particularly on this account 
that I cannot enough admire his genius.' The play is indeed original. 
Byron writes : 

* His (Goethe's) Faust I never read, for I don't know German ; but Matthew 
Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me vivd voce, and I was 
naturally nmch struck vidth it ; but it was the Steinhach and the Jungfrau, and 
something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. ' * 

Goethe adds : ' The whole is so completely formed anew, that it would 
be an interesting task for the critic to point out not only the alterations 
he (Byron) has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimi- 
larity to, the original.' Let us speak of it, then, quite at leisure : the 
rtibject here is the dominant idea of the age, expressed so as to display 
the contrast of two masters and of two nations. 

What constitutes Goethe's glory is, that in the nineteenth century 
he could produce an epic poem — I mean a poem in which genuine 
gods act and speak. This appeared impossible in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, since the special work of our age is the refined consideration of 
CJeative ideas, and the suppression of the poetic characters by which 
other ages have never failed to represent them. Of the two divine 

> Byron's Works, x. ; Darkness, 283. 

' Ibid. iv. 331 ; Letter to Mr. Murray, Raven ua, June 1, i.820. 



*292 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK TT 

families, the Greek and the Christian, neither seemed capable of te- 
entering the epic world. Classic literature had dragged down in \U 
fall I'he mythological puppets, and the old gods clept on their old 
Olympus, whither history and archaeology alone might go and arcuse 
them. The angels and saints of the Middle-age, as strange and almost 
as distant, were asleep on febe 7ellam of their missals and in the niches 
f their cathedrals ; and if ^ poet, like Chateaubriand, tried to make 
?bsm enter the modern world,' he succeeded only in degrading them 
IQ the functions of vestry decorations and operatic machinery. The 
mythic credtdity had disappeared in the growth of experience, the 
aiystic in the growth of prosperity. Paganism, at the contact of 
ftcience, was reduced to the recognition of natural forces ; Christianity, 
at the contact of morality, was reduced to the adoration of the ideal. 
In order again to deify physical powers, man should have become once 
more a healthy child, as in Homer's time. In order again to deify 
spiritual powers, man must have become once more a sickly child, as 
in Dante's time. But he was an adult, and could not remount to the 
civilisations, or the epics, from which the current of his thought and 
his existence had withdrawn him for ever. How show him his gods, 
the modern gods ? how reclothe them for him in a personal and sensible 
form, since it was precisely of all personal and sensible form that he 
had toiled and succeeded in despoiling them ? Instead of rejecting 
legend, Goethe resumed it. He chose a mediasval story for his theme. 
Carefully, scrupulously he followed the track of the old manners and 
the old beliefs: an alchemist's laboratory, a sorcerer's conjuring-book, 
coarse villagers, students' or drunkards' gaiety, a witches' meeting on 
the Brocken, mass in the church ; you might fancy you saw an engrav- 
ing of Luther's time, conscientious and minute : nothing is omitted. 
Heavenly characters appear in consecrated attitudes, after the text of 
Scripture, like the old mysteries : the Lord with his angels, then with 
the devil, who comes to ask permission to tempt Faust, as formerly he 
tempted Job ; heaven, as St. Francis imagined it and Van Eyck painted 
it, with anchorites, holy women and doctors — some in a landscape with 
blue-grey rocks, others above in the sublime air, about the glorious 
Virgin, region beyond region, hovering in choirs. Goethe pushes the 
affectation of orthodoxy so far as to write under each his Latin name, 
and his due niche in the Vulgate.^ And this very fidelity proclaims him 
a sceptic. We see that if he resuscitates the ancient world, it is as a 
historian, not as a believer. He is only a Christian through remem- 
brance and poetic feeling. In him the modern spirit overflows de- 
signedly the narrow vessel into which he designedly seems to enclose it. 

* The angel of holy loves, the angel of the ocean, the choirs of happy spir- 
Its. See this at length in the Martyrs. 

' Magna peccatrix, S. Lucae, vii. 36 ; Mulier Samaritana, S. Johannls, iv 
Maria ^gyptiaca (Acta Sanctorum), etc. 



CHAP. ]L] LORD BYRON. 293 

The thinker penetrates through the narrator. At every instant a cal- 
culated word, which seems involuntary, opens up beyond the veils of 
tradition, glimpses of philosophy. Who are they, these supernaturals, 
— this god, this Mephistopheles, these angels ? Their substance in- 
ces«antiy dissolves and re-forms, to show or hide alternately the idea 
which fills it. Are they abstractions or characters ? Mephistopheles, 
revolutionary and philosopher, who has read Candide, and cynicall^y 
jeers at the Powers, — is he anything but the ' spirit of negation ?* 
The angels 

* Rejoice to share 

The wealth exuberant of all that's fair. 

Which lives, and has its being everywhere I 

And the creative essence which surrounds, 

And lives in all, and worketh evermore, 

Encompass . . . within love's gracious bounds ; 

And all the world of things, which flit before 

The gaze in seeming litful and obscure, 

Do ... in lasting thoughts embody and secure.'* 

Are these angels, for an instant at least, anything else than the ideal 
intelligence which comes, through sympathy, to love all, and through 
ideas to comprehend all ? What shall we say of this Deity, at first 
biblical and individual, who little by little is unshaped, vanishes, and, 
sinking to the depths, behind the splendours of living nature and mystic 
reverie, is confused with the inaccessible absolute? Thus is the whole 
poem unfolded, action and characters, men and gods, antiquity and 
Middle-age, aggregate and details, always on the limits of two worlds — 
one sensitive and figurative, the other intelligible and formless ; one com- 
prehending the moving externals of history or of life, and all that hued 
and perfumed bloom which nature lavishes on the surface of existence, 
the other containing the profound generative powers and invisible fixed 
laws by which all these living beings come to the fight of day.^ At 
last see them, our gods : we no longer parody them, like our ancestors, 
by idols or persons ; we perceive them as they are in themselves, and 
we need not for this renounce poetry, nor break with the past. We 
remain on our knees before the shrines where men have prayed for 
thrue thousand years ; we do not tear a single rose from the chaplets 
with which they have crowned their divine Madonnas ; we do not ex- 
tinguish a single candle which they have crowded on the altar steps ; 
we behold with an artist's pleasure the precious shrines where, amidst 
the wrought candlesticks, the suns of diamonds, the gorgeous copes, 
they have scattered the purest treasures of their genius and their heart. 
But our thought pierces further than our eyes. For us, at certain 
moments, these draperies, this marble, all this pomp vacillates ; it ia 

' Goethe's Faust, translated by Theodore Martin. Prorogue in Heavev.. 
* Goethe sings : ' Wer ruft das Einselne zur allgemeinen Weihe 
Wc es in herrlichen Accorden schlagt ? ' 



294 MODERN LIFE. 1 BCOK IV 

no longer anght but beautiful phantoms; it is dispersed in the smoke, 
and we discover through it and behind it the impalpable ideal, which 
has set up these pillars, lighted these roofs, and hovered for centuriei 
over the kneeling multitude. 

To understand the legend and also to understand life, is the object 
of this work, and of the whole work of Goethe. Everything, brute 
or rational, vile or sublime, fantastic or tangible, is a group of powers, 
of which our mind, through study and sympathy, may reproduce in 
itself the elements and the disposition. Let us reproduce it, and give 
it in our thought a new existence. Is a gossip like Martha, babbling 
and foolish — a drunkard like Frosch, brawling and dirty, and the rest of 
the Dutch boors — unworthy to enter a picture ? Even the female apes, 
and the apes who sit beside the cauldron, watching that it does not boil 
over, with their hoarse cries and disordered fancies, may repay the 
trouble of art in restoring them. Wherever there is life, even bestial 
or maniacal, there is beauty. The more we look upon nature, the more 
we find it divini>: — divine even in rocks and plants. Consider these 
forests, they seem r otionless ; but the leaves breathe, and the sap 
mounts insensibly through the massive trunks and branches, to the 
slender shoots stretched like fingers at the end of the twigs ; it fills 
the swollen ducts, leaks out in living forms, loads the frail aments 
with fecund dust, spreads profusely through the air which ferments the 
vapours and odours : this luminous air, this dome of verdure, this long 
colonnade of trunks of trees, this silent soil, labour and are transformed ; 
they accomplish a work, and the poet's heart has but to listen to them 
to find a voice for their obscure instincts. They speak in his heart; 
still better, they sing, and other beings do the same ; each, by its dis- 
tinct melody, short or long, strange or simple, alone adapted to its 
nature, capable of manifesting it fully, like a sound, by its pitch, its 
height, its force, manifests the inner bodily structure, which has pro- 
duced it. This melody the poet respects ; he avoids altering it by the 
confusion of its ideas or accent ; his whole care is to keep it intact and 
pure. Thus is his work produced, an echo of universal nature, a vast 
chorus in which gods, men, past, present, all periods of history, all 
conditions of life, all orders of existence agree without confusion, and 
in which the flexible genius of the musician, who is alternately trans- 
formed into each one of them to interpret and comprehend them, 
only bears witness to his own thought in giving an insight, beyond this 
immense harmony, into the group of ideal laws whence it is derived, 
and the inner reason which sustains it. 

Beside this lofty conception, Avhat is the supernatural part of Man- 
fred ? Doubtless Byron is moved by the great things of nature ; he 
leaves the Alps ; he has seen those glaciers Avhich are like 'a frozen hur- 
ricane,' — those * torrents which roll the sheeted silver's waving column 
o'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, like the pale courser's tail, as 
told in the Apocalypse,' — but he has brought nothing from them bul 



CHAP. II.1 LORD BYRON. 29,^ 

images. His witch, his spirits, his Arimanes, are but stage gods. He 
believes in them na more than we do. It is wholly otherwise with 
genuine gods : we must beheve them ; we must, Uke Goethe, have 
assisted long at their birth, like philosophers and scholars ; we must 
have seen of them more than their externals. He who, whilst con- 
tinuing a poet, becomes a naturalist and geologist, who has followed in 
the fissures of the rocks the tortuous waters slowly distilled, and driven 
ftt length by their own weight to the light, may ask himself, as the 
Greeks did formerly, when they saw them roll and sparkle in their 
emerald tints, what they might be thinking, whether they thought. 
What a strange life is theirs, alternately at rest and in violence ! How 
far removed from ours! With what effort must we tear ourselves 
from our old and complicated passions, to comprehend the divine youth 
and simplicity of a being enfranchised from rellection and form ! How 
difficult is such a work for a modern man ! How impossible for an 
Englishman ! Shelley, Keats approached it, — thanks to the nervous 
delicacy of their sickly or overflowing imagination ; but how partial 
still was this approach I And how we feel, on reading them, that they 
would have needed the aid of public culture, and the aptitude of 
natioial genius, which Goethe possessed! That which the whole of 
civilisation has alone developed in the Englishman, is energetic will 
and practical faculties. Here man has braced himself up in his efforts, 
become concentrated in resistance, fond of action, and hence shut out 
from pure speculation, from wavering sympathy, and from disinterested 
art. In him metaphysical liberty has perished under utilitarian pre- 
occupation, and pantheistic reverie under moral prejudices. How 
would he frame to bend his imagination so as to pursue the number- 
less and fugitive outlines of existences, especially of vague existences ? 
How would he frame to leave his religion so as to reproduce indiffer- 
ently the powers of indifferent nature? And who is further from 
flexibility and indifference than he ? The flowing water, which in 
Goethe takes the mould of all the contours of the earth, and which we 
perceive in the sinuous and luminous distance beneath the golden mist 
which it exhales, was in Byron suddenly struck into a mass of ice, and 
makes but a rigid block of crystal. Here, as elsewhere, there is but 
one character, the same as before. Men, gods, nature, all the chang- 
iug and multiplex world of Goethe, has vanished. The poet alone 
subsists, as expressed in his character. Inevitably imprisoned within 
himself, he could see nothing but himself; if he must come to other 
existences, it is that they may reply to him ; and through this pre- 
tended epic he persisted in his eternal monologue. 

But again, how all these powers, assembled in a single being, make 
him great I Into what mediocrity and platitude sinks the Faust oi 
Goethe, compared to Manfred! As soon as we cease to see humanity 
in this Faust, what does he become ? Is he a hero ? A sad hero, who 
has no other task but to speak, to fear, to study the shades of his sen 



296 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IT 

aations, and to walk abont ! His worst action is to seduce a grisette, and 
to go and dance by night in bad company — two exploits which many a 
German student has accomplished. His wilfulness is whims, his ideas 
are longings and dreams. A poet's soul in a scholar's head, both unfit 
for action, and according ill together; discord within, and weaknes? 
wilhjut; in short, character is wanting: it is the German character 
By his side, what a man is Manfred ! He is a man ; there is no finei 
Word^ Dr one which cculd depict him better. He will not, at the sight) 
of a spirit; ' quake like a crawling, cowering, timorous worm.* He will 
not regret that *he has neither land, nor pence, nor worldly honours, 
nor influence.' He will not let himself be duped by the devil like a 
schoolboy, or go and amuse himself like a cockney with the phantas- 
magoria of the Brocken. He has lived like a feudal chief, not like a 
scholar who has taken his degree ; he has fought, mastered others ; he 
knows how to master himself. If he is forced into magic arts, it if 
not from an alchemist's curiosity, but from a spirit of revolt : 

* From my youth upwards 
My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, 
Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes ; 
The thirst of their ambition was not mine. 
The aim of their existence was not mine ; 
¥^y joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers 
Made me a stranger ; though I wore the form, 
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh. . . . 
My joy was in the Wilderness, to breathe. 
The difficult air of the iced mountain's top, 
Where the birds dare not build, nor insects wing 
Flit o'er the herbless granite, or to plunge 
Into the torrent, and to roll along 
On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave. , . 
To follow through the night the moving moon, 
The stars and their development ; or catch 
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim 
Or to look, list'ning, on the scatter'd leaves. 
While Autumn winds were at their evening song. 
These were my pastimes, and to be alone ; 
For if the beings, of whom I was one, — 
Hating to be so, — cross'd me in my path, 
I felt myself degraded back to them, 
And was all clay again. . . .^ 
I could not tame my nature down ; for he 
Must serve who fain M^ould sway — and soothe — and sue- 
And watch all time — and pry into all place — 
And be a living lie — who would become 
A mighty thing amongst the mean, and such 
.The mags are ; I disdain'd to mingle with 
A herd, though to be leader — and of wolves. . . .' 

* Byron's Works, xi. ; Manfred, ii. 3. 33. ' lUd, ; Mai f red, iii. 1. 58. 



CHAP. 11.J LORD BYRON. 291 

He lives alone, and lie cannot live alone. The deep source of love, 1 

cut oflf from its natural issues, then overflows and lays waste the heart J 
which refused to expand. He has loved, too well, too near to him, his 

Bister it may be ; she has died of it, and impotent remorse has come to „ 

fill the soul which no human occupation could satisfy: j 

• . . , My solitude is solitude no more. 
But peopled with the Furies ; — I have gnash'd 
My teeth in darkness tUI returning morn, 
Then cursed myself till sunset ; — I have pray'd 
For madness as a blessing — 'tis denied me, 
I have affronted death — but in the war 
Of elements the waters shrunk from me, 
And fatal things pass'd harmless — the cold hand 
Of an all-pitiless demon held me back. 
Back by a single hair, which would not break. 
In fantasy, imagination, all 
The affluence of my soul. ... I plunged deep, 
But, like an ebbing wave, it dashed me back 
Into the gulf of my unfathom'd thought. • • • 
I dwell in my despair, 
And live, and live for ever.' * 

Let him see her once more : to this sole and all-powerful desire flow 
all the energies of his souL He calls her up in the midst of spirits ; 
she appears, but answers not. He prays to her — with what cries, what 
grievous cries of deep anguish I How he loves 1 With what yearning 
and effort all his downtrodden and outcrushed tenderness gushes out 
and escapes at the sight of those well-beloved eyes, which he sees for 
the last time I With what enthusiasm his convulsive arms are stretched 
towards that frail form which, shuddering, has quitted the tomb I 
— towards those cheeks in which the blood, forcibly recalled, plants * a 
strange hectic — like the unnatural red which Autumn plants upon the 
perish'd leaf.* 

• . . . Hear me, hear me — 

Astarte I my beloved ! speak to me : 

I have so much endured — so much endure — 

Look on me ! the grave hath not changed thee mora 

Than I am changed for thee, Thou lovedst me 

Too much, as I loved thee : we were not made 

To torture thus each other, though it were 

The deadliest sin to love as we have loved. 

Say that thou loath'st me not — that I do bear 

This punishment for both — that thou wilt be 

One of the blessed — and that T shall die ; 

For hitherto all hateful things conspire 

To bind me in existence — in a life 

Which makes me shrink from immortality — 

A future like the past. I cannot rest. 

I ■ — — ■ — — — ma 

' Byron's Works, xi. ; Manfred, ii. 2. 35, 



298 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

I know not what I ask, nor what I seek : 
I feel but A\hat thou art — and what I am ; 
And I would hear yet once before I perish 
The voice which was my music — Speak to me! 
For I have call'd on thee in the still night. 
Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd bougha, 
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves 
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name, 
Which answer'd me — many things answer'd me— 
Spirits and men — but thou wert silent all. . . • 
Speak to me ! I have wander'd o er the earth, 
And never found thy likeness — Speak to me I 
Look on the fiends around — they feel for me : 
I fear them not, and feel for thee alone — 
Speak to me ! though it be in wrath ; — but say— 
I reck not what — but let me hear thee once — 
This once — once more ! ' * 

She speaks. What a sad and doubtful reply 1 and convulsions spread 
through Manfred's limbs when she disappears. But an instant after the 
ipirits see that 

• ... He mastereth himself, and makes 
His torture tributary to his will. 
Had he been one of us, he would have made 
An awful spirit. ' ' 

Will is the unshaken basis of this soul. He did not bend before the 
chief of the spirits ; he stood firm and calm before the infernal throne, 
under the rage of all the demons who would tear him to pieces : non 
that he dies, and they assail him, he still strives and conquers : 

* . . . Thou hast no power upon me, tliat I feel ; 
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know : 
What I have done is done ; I bear within 
A torture which could nothing gain from thine : 
The mind which is immortal makes itself 
Requital for its good or evil thoughts — 
Is its own origin of ill and end — 
And its own place and time — its innate sense, 
When stripp'd of this mortality, derives 
Ko colour from the fleeting tnings without ; 
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy, 
Bom from the knowledge of its own desert. 
Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me ; 
I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey — 
But was my own destroyer, and wiU be 
My own hereafter. — Back, ye baffled fiends! 
The hand of death is on me — but not yours ! * ' 

This * I,' the invincible I, who suffices to himself, whom nothing can 
Byron's Works, xi. ; Manfred, ii. 4. 47. ^ Ibid. ii. 4. 49. ' Ibid. in. 4. 70 



CH/iP. li.j LORD BYRON. 299 

hold, demons nor men, the sole author of his OAvn good and ill, a sort 
of suffering or fallen god, but god always, even in its torn flesh, through 
the mire and bruises of all his destinies, — such is the hero and the work 
of this mind, and of the men of his race. If Goethe was the poet of 
the universe^ Byron was the poet of the individual; and if in one the 
German genius found its interpreter, the English genius found it# 
interpreter in the other. 

V. 

We can well imagine that Englishmen clamoured, and repudiated th« 
monster. Southey, poet-laureate, said of him, in a fine biblical style, 
that he savoured of Moloch and Belial — most of all, of Satan ; and, with 
the generosity of a fellow-literary man, called the attention of Govern- 
ment to him. We should fill many pages, if we were to copy the 
reproaches of the respectable reviews against these * men of diseased 
hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions 
to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the 
holiest ordinances of human society ; and, hating that revealed religion 
which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to 
disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by in- 
fecting them with a moral virus that eats into the soul* ^ This sounds 
like the emphasis of an episcopal charge and of scholastic pedantry : in 
England the press does the duty of the police, and it never did it more 
violently than at that time. Opinion backed the press. Several times, 
in Italy, Lord Byron saw gentlemen leave a drawing-room with their 
wives, when he was announced. Owing to his title and celebrity, the 
scandal which he caused was more prominent than any other: he was 
a public sinner. One day an obscure parson sent him a prayer which 
he had found amongst the papers of his wife — a charming and pious 
lady, recently dead, and who had secretly prayed to God for the con- 
version of the great sinner. Conservative and Protestant England, after 
a quarter of a century of moral wars, and two centuries of moral educa- 
tion, had pushed its severity and rigour to extremes ; and Puritan 
intolerance, like Catholic intolerance previously in Spain, put recusants 
out of the pale of the law. The proscription of voluptuous or aban- 
doned life, the narrow observation of order and decency, the respect :f 
all police, human and divine ; the necessary bows at the' mere name of 
Pitt, of the king, the church, the God of the Bible ; the attitude of the 
gentleman in a white tie, conventional, inflexible, implacable, — -such 
were the customs then met with across the Channel, a hundred times 
more tyrannical than now-a-days : at that time, as Stendhal says, 
a peer at his fireside dared not cross his legs, for fear of its being im- 
proper. England held herself stiff, uncomfortably laced in her stay£ 
of decorum. Hence arose two sources of misery : a man suffers, and 

' Southey, Preface to A Vision of Judgment 



500 MODERN LIFE [BOOK H 

is tempted to throw down the ugly choking apparatus, when convinced 
he is alone. On one side constraint, on the other hypocrisy — these are 
the two vices of English civilisation ; and it was these which Byron, 
with his poet's discernment and his combative instincts, attacked. 

He had seen them from the first ; true artists are perspicacious ! 
it is in Vlis that they outstrip us ; we judge from hearsay and formulas, 
like cockneys ; they, like eccentric beings, from accomplished facts, and 
things: at twenty-two he perceived the tedium born of constraiaS 
desolating all high life : 

* There stands the noble hostess, nor shall sink 

"With the three-thousandth curtsy ; . . . 

Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink, 

And long the latest of arrivals halts, 

'Midst royal dukes and dames condemn'd to climb, 

And gain an inch of staircase at a time.' * 

He also sneered in his letters at the distinguished company in the 
country, and at the conduct of gentlemen after dinner — above all, on 
hunting days. Most of them fall asleep. As for the morals of the 
upper classes, this is what he says : 

* "Went to my box at Covent Garden to-night. . . . Casting my eyes round the 
house, in the next box to me, and the next, and the next, were the most distin- 
guished old and young Babylonians of quality. ... It was as if the house had 
been divided between your public and your understood com-tesans ; — but the in- 
triguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. Now, where lay the differ- 
ence between Pauline and her mother, . . . and Lady ♦ * and daughter ? except 
that the two last may enter Carlton and any other house, and the two first are 
limited to the Opera and b — house. How I do delight in observing life as it really 
is ! — and myself, after all, the worst of any ! ' * 

Decorum and debauchery ; moral hypocrites, * qui mettent leurs vertus 
en mettant leurs gants blancs ; ' ^ an oligarchy which, to preserve its 
dignities and its sinecures, ravages Europe, preys on Ireland, and holds 
in the mob by high words of virtue, Christianity, and libterty : there 
was truth in all these invectives.* It is only thirty years since the 
ascendency of the middle class has diminished the privileges and cor- 
ruptions of the great; but at that time rude words could be thrown al 
their heads. Byron said, quoting from Voltaire : 

* " LaPudeur s'est enfuie des coeurs, et s'est refugiee sur les Ifevrea." , , . "Plus 
les ttCBurs sont depravees, plus les expressions deviennent mesurees ; on croit 
regagner en Ian gage ce qu'on a perdu en vertu." This is the real fact, as applicabln 
to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English genera- 
tion ; and it is the only answer they deserve. . . . Cant is the crying sin of thii 
double-dealing and false-speaking time of selfish spoilers. * * 

* Byron's "Works, xvii. ; Don Juan, c. 11, st. Ixvii, 

« Ihid. iii. 304 ; Journal, Dec. 17, 1813. » Alfred de Muss it. 

* See his terrible satirical poem, T]^e Vision of Judgment^ against Southey, 
Scorge IV., and official pomp. 

* Byron's Works, xvi. 131 ; Preface to Don Juan, cantos vi vii. and viiL 



<IHAP. II.J LORD BYRON. 301 

And then he wrote his masterpiece, Don Juan} 

All here was new, form and foundation ; for he had entered intc 
a new world. The Englishman, the Northman, transplanted amongst 
scuthern manners and into Italian life, had become imbued with a new 
sap, which made him bear new fruit. He had been induced to read* 
the rather free satires of Buratti, and the still more voluptuous sonnets 
of Baffo. He lived in the happy Venetian society, still exempt from 
political animosities, where care seemed a folly, where life was looked 
U]>on as a carnival, pleasure ran through the streets, not timid and 
hypocritical, but loosely arrayed and commended. He had amused 
himself here, hotly at first, more than sufficient, and even more than too 
much, almost with the effect of killing himself; but after vulgar gal- 
lantries, having entered upon a genuine love, he had become a cavaliei' 
servente, after the fashion of the land, with the consent of the family, 
offering his arm, carrying a shawl, a little awkwardly at first, and won- 
deringly, but on the whole happier than he had ever been, and fanned 
by a warm breath of pleasure and abandon. He had seen the overthrow 
of all English morality, conjugal infidelity established as a rule, amor- 
ous fidelity raised to a duty : 

* There is no convincing a woman here that she is in the smallest degree devi- 
ating from the rale of right or the fitness of things in having an amoroso.^ . . . 
Love (the sentiment of love) is not merely an excuse for it, but makes it an actual 
virtue, provided it is disinterested, and not a caprice, and is confined to one ob- 
ject.'* 
A little later he translated the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, to show 

* What was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to a church- 
man on the score of religion, and to silence those buffoons who accuse me of 
attacking the Liturgy. ' ' 

He rejoiced in this liberty and this ease, and resolved never to fall 
again nnder the pedantic inquisition, which in his country had con- 
demn ;d and damned him past forgiveness. He wrote his Beppo like an 
improvisatore, with a charming freedom, a flowing and fantastic light- 
ness of mood, and contrasted in it the recklessness and happiness of 
Italy with the prejudices and repulsiveness of England : 

* I like ... to see the Sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow. 
Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as 
A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow, 
But with all Heaven t' himself ; that day will break aa 
Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow 
That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers 
Where reeking London's smoky caldron simmers. 

* Don Juan is a satire on the abuses in the present state of society, and not t 
f ulogy of vice. 

2 Stendhal, M^moires sur Lord Byron. 

* Byron's Works, iii. 333 ; Letter to Murray, Venice, Jan. 2, 1817« 
*Ibid. iii. 363 ; Letter to Mooro, Venice. Mnrch 25, 1817. 

» Ibid. iv. 279 ; Letter to Murray, Ravenna, Feb. 7, 1820. 



302 MODERN LIFE. [BOOR IV 

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, 
Which melts like kisses from a female month. 
Which sounds as if it should be writ on satin, 
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, 
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, 
That not a single accent seems uncouth, 
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting gi tturtd, 
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter alL 

I like the women too (forgive my folly). 
From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze, 
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley 
Of rays that say a thousand things at once, 
To the high dama's brow, more melancholy, 
But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance, 
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes, 
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies. ' ^ 

With other manners there was here another morality ; there is one for 
every age, race, and sky — I mean that the ideal model varies with the 
circumstances which fashion it. In England the severity of the cli- 
mate, the warlike energy of the race, and the liberty of the institutions 
prescribe an active life, strict manners, Puritan religion, the mar- 
riage bond, the sentiment of duty and self-command. In Italy the 
beauty of the climate, the innate sense of the beautiful, and the despot- 
ism of the government induced a leisurely life, relaxed manners, 
imaginative religion, the culture of the arts, and the study of happiness. 
Each model has its beauties and its blots, — the epicurean artist like the 
political moralist ; ^ each shows by its greatnesses the littlenesses of the 
other, and, to set in relief the disadvantages of the second, Lord Byron 
had only to set in relief the seductions of the first. 

Thereupon he went in search of a hero, and did not find one, which, 
in this age of heroes, is *an uncommon want.' For lack of a better he 
chose * our ancient friend Don Juan,' — a scandalous choice : what an 
outcry the English moralists will make ! But, to cap the horror, this 
Df;n Juan is not wicked, selfish, odious, like his fellows ; he does not 
soiuce, he is no corrupter. When the occasion rises, he lets himself 
drift ; he has a heart and senses, and, under a beautiful sun, all this 
feels itself drawn out : at sixteen a youth cannot help himself, nor at 
twenty, nor perhaps at thirty. Lay it to the charge of human nature, 
my dear moralists ; it is not I who made it as it is. If you will grumble, 
address yourselves higher : here we are painters, not makers of human 
puppets, and we do not answer for the structure of our dancing-dolls. 
Look, then, at our Juan as he goes along ; he goes about in many places, 
and in all he is young ; ws will not strike him with thunder, therefore ; 



» Byron's Works, xi. ; Beppo, c. xliii.-xlv. 131. 

2 See Stendhal, Vie de Giacomo Rossi ii, and Stanley's Life of D' Arnold 

The contrast is complete. See also in Corinne, where this opposition is ver^ 
ck'arly grasped. 



OHAP. II.j LORD BYKOiS. 393 

that fashion is past . the green devils and their capers only come on 
the stage in the last act of Mozart. And, moreover, Juan is so amiable ! 
After all, what has he done that others don't do? If he has been a 
lover of Catherine 11., he only followed the lead of the diplomatic corps 
arsd the whole Russian army. Let him sow his wild oats ; the good 
grain will spring up in its time. Once in England, he will behave him- 
Belf decently. I confess that he may even there, when provoked, go « 
gleaning in the conjugal gardens of the aristocracy ; but in the end he 
will settle, go and pronounce moral speeches in Parliament, become a 
member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. If you wish ab- 
solutely to have him punished, we will make him end in hell, or in an 
unhappy marriage, not knowing which would be the severest. The 
Spanish tradition says hell ; but it probably is only an allegory of the 
other state. ^ 

At all events, married or damned, the good folk at the end of the 
piece will have the pleasure of knowing that he is burning all alive. 

Is it not a singular apology ? Would it not aggravate the fault ? 
"Wait; you know not yet the whole venom of the book: together with 
Juan there are Donna Julia, Haidee, Gulbeyaz, Dudu, and the rest. 
It is here the diabolical poet digs in his sharpest claw, and he takes care 
to dig it into our foibles. What will the clergymen and white-chokered 
reviewers say ? For, in short, there is no preventing it : we must read, 
in spite of ourselves. Twice or three times following we meet here with 
happiness ; and when I say happiness, I mean profound and complete 
happiness — not mere voluptuousness, not obscene gaiety : we are miles 
away from tlie pretty rascalities of Dorat, and the unbridled licence of 
Rochester. Beauty is here, southern beauty, sparkling and harmoni- 
ous, spread over everything, over the luminous sky, the calm scenery, 
corporal nudity, freshness of heart. Is there a thing it does not deify ? 
All sentiments are exalted under his hands. What was gross becomes 
noble ; even in the nocturnal adventure in the seraglio, which seems 
worthy of Faublas, poetry embellishes licentiousness. The girls are 
lying in the large silent apartment, like precious flowers brought from 
all climates into a conservatory : 

* One with her fiush'd cheek laid on her whit« arm, 
And raven ringlets gather'd in dark crowd 
Above her brow, lay dreaming soft and warm ; . . . 
One with her auburn tresses lightly bound. 
And fair brows gently drooping, as the fruit 
Nods from the tree, was slumbering with soft breath, 
And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath. . . . 
A fourth as marble, statue-like and still, 
Lay in a breathless, hush'd, and stony sleep ; 
White, cold, and pure . . a carved lady on a monument.* * 

' Byron's Works, v. 127 ; Letter to Mr. Murray, Ravenna, Feb. 1(5, 182"i, 

Ihid. xvi. ; Don Juan, c. vi. st. Ixvi. Ixviii. 



504 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK I? 

However, < the fading lamps waned dim and blue ; * Diidu is asleep^ 
the innocent girl ; and if she has cast a glance on her glass, 

* 'Twas like the fawn, which, in the lake display'd. 
Beholds her own shy, shadowy image pass, 
When first she starts, and then returns to peep, 
Admiring this new native of the deep.' * 

What will become now of Puritan prudery ? Can the proprietiei 
prevent beauty from being beautiful? Will you condemn a Titian 
for its nudity? What gives a value to human life, and a nobility to 
human nature, if not the power of attaining delicious and sublime 
emotions ? You have just had one — one worthy of a painter ; is it 
not worth that of an alderman ? Will you refuse to acknowledge 
the divine because it appears in art and enjoyment, and not only 
in conscience and action? There is a world beside yours, and a 
civilisation beside yours ; your rules are narrow, and your pedantry 
pedantic ; the human plant can be otherwise developed than in your 
compartments and under your snows, and the fruits it will then bear 
will not be less precious. You must confess it, since you relish them 
when they are offered you. Who has read the love of Haidee, and 
has had any other thought than to envy and pity her ? She is a 
wild child who has picked up Juan — another child cast ashore senseless 
by the waves. She has preserved him, nursed him like a mother, and 
now she loves him : who can blame her for loving him ? Who, in 
presence of the splendid nature which smiles on and protects them, 
can imagine for them anything else than the all-powerful feeling whisb 
unites them • 

* It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, 
"With cliffs above, and a broad sandy shore, 
Guarded by shoals and rocks as by an host, . • , 
And rarely ceased the haughty billow's roar, 
Save on the dead long summer days, which make 
The outstretch'd ocean glitter like a lake. . • • 

Ani. all was stillness, save the sea-bird's cry, 
And dolphin's leap, and little billow crost 
By some low rock or shelve, that made it fret 
Against the boundary it scarcely wet. . . . 

And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hacd, 

Over the shining pebbles and the shells. 

Glided along the smooth and harden'd aand. 

And in the worn and wild receptacles 

"Work'd by the storms, yet work'd as it were plann'd. 

In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells, 

Thej tum'd to rest ; and, each clasp'd by an arm, 

Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm. 



Byron's Works, Don Juan^ c. vi. st. Is. 



CHAP. II.] LORD BYROl^. 305 

They look'd np to the sky whose floating glow 
Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright j 
They gazed upon the glittering sea below, 
Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight ; 
They heard the wave's splash, and the wind so low, 
And saw each other's dark eyes darting light 
Into each other — and, beholding this, 
Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss. . . • 

They were alone, but not alone as they 

Who shut in chambers think it loneliness ; 

The silent ocean, and the starlight bay 

The twilight glow, which momently grew less, 

The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, that lay 

Around them, made them to each other press, 

As if there were no life beneath the sky 

Save theirs, and that their life could never die.' * 

An excellent opportunity to introduce here your formularies and 
catechisms : 

* Haid^e spoke not of scruples, ask'd no vows, 
Nor ofFer'd any ... 
She was all which pure ignorance allows. 
And flew to her young mate like a young bird.' * 

Nature suddenly expands, for she is ripe, like a bud bursting into 
bloom, nature in her fulness, instinct, and heart : 

* Alas ! they were so young, so beautiful. 
So lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour 
Was that in which the heart is always full. 
And, having o'er itself no further power, 
Prompts deeds eternity can not annul.' ^ , • • 

O admirable moralists, you stand before these two flowers like patented 
gardeners, holding in your hands the model of bloom sanctioned by 
your society of horticulture, proving that the model has not been 
followed, and decidmg that the two weeds must be cast into the fire, 
which you keep burning to consume irregular growths. Well judged : 
you know your art. 

Beyond British cant, there is universal hypocrisy ; beyond English 
pedantry, Byron wars against human roguery. Here is the general 
aim of the poem, and to this his character and genius tended. His 
great and gloomy dreams of juvenile imagination have vanished ; ex- 
perience has come ; he knows man now; and what is man, once known? 
Does the sublime abound in him ? Do you think that the great senti- 
ments — those of Childe Harold, for instance — are the c rdinary course of 

* Byron's Works, xv. j Don Juan, c. li, st. clxxvii-clxxxviii, 

* Ihid. St. cxc. '^ Ibid, c. ii. st. cxcU 
VOL. II. U 



806 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IT 

his life ? * The truth is, that he employs most of his time in sleepingj 
dining, yawninr working like a horse, amusing himself like an apa 
According to P jron, he is an animal ; except for a few minutes, hi* 
nerves, his blood, his instincts lead him. Routine works over it all, 
necessity whips him on, the animal advances. As the animal is proud, 
and. moreover imaginative, it pretends to be marching for its own 
pleasure, that there is no whip, that at all events this whip rarely 
touches its flanks, that at least his stoic back can make as if it did not 
feel it. It is harnessed in imagination with the most splendid trap- 
pings, and thus struts on with measured steps, fancying that it carries 
relics and treads on carpets and flowers, whilst in reality it tramples in 
the mud, and carries with it the stains and stinks of every dunghill. 
What a pastime to touch its mangy back, to set before its eyes the 
sacks full of flour which load it, and the goad which makes it go ! * 
What a pretty farce ! It is the eternal farce ; and not a sentiment 
thereof but provides him with an act: love in the first place. Certainly 
Donna Julia is very lovable, and Byron loves her ; but she comes out 
of his hands, as rumpled as any other. Slie has virtue, of course ; and 
better, she desires to have it. She plies herself, in connection with 
Don Juan, with the finest arguments ; a fine thing are arguments, 
and how proper they are to check passion ! Nothing can be more 
solid than a firm purpose, propped up by logic, resting on the fear of 
the world, the thought of God, the recollection of duty; nothing 
can prevail against it, except a tete-a-tete in June, on a moonlight 
evening. At last the deed is done, and the poor timid lady is sur- 
prised by her outraged husband ; in what a situation ! There anent 
read the book. Of course she will be speechless, ashamed and full of 
tears, and the moral reader duly reckons on her remorse. My dear 
reader, you have not reckoned on impulse and nerves. To-morrow 
she will feel shame ; the business is now to overwhelm the husband, 
to deafen him, to confound him, to save Juan, to save herself, to fight. 
The war having begun, it is waged with all kinds of weapons, firstly 
with audacity and insults. The single idea, the present need, absorbs 
all others : it is in this that woman is a woman. This Julia cries lustily. 
It is a regular storm : hard words and recriminations, mockery and 
defiance, fainting and tears. In a quarter of an hour she has gained 
twenty years' experience. You did not know, nor she either, what an » 
actress can emerge, all on a sudden, unforeseen, out of a simple woman. 
Do you know what can emerge from yourself? You think yourself 
rational, human ; I admit it for to-day ; you have dined, and you are 



' Byron says (v., Oct. 12, 1820), * Don Juan is too true, and would, I suspect, 
live longer than Childe Harold. The women hate many things which strip off thi 
tinsel of sentiment.' 

^ Don Jucm, c, vii. st. 2. I hope it is no crime to laugh nt all thii)ga. Foj 
1 wish to know ichat, after all, are all things— but a i<?i<no i 



o'flAP. II,] LORD BYRON. 3()'3 

at ease lu a pleasant room. Your machine does its duty without dis- 
order, because the wheels are oiled and well regulated ; but place it in 
a shipwreck, a battle, let the failing or the plethora of blood for an 
instant derange the chief pieces, and we shall see you howling or 
drivelling like a madman or an idiot. Civilisation, education, reason, 
health, cloak us in their smooth and polished cases ; let us tear them 
away one by one, or all together, and we laugh to see the brute, who 
is lying at the bottom. Here is our friend Juan reading Julia's last 
letter, and swearing in a transport never to forget the beautiful eyei 
which he caused to weep so much. Was ever feeling more tender 
or sincere? But unfortunately Juan is at sea, and sickness sets in. 
He cries out: 

* Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea, 

Than I resign thine image, oh, my fair ! . , , 

(Here the ship gave a lui'ch, and he grew sea-sick.) . . • 

Sooner shaU heaven kiss earth — (here he fell sicker.) 

Oh Julia ! what is every other woe ? 

(For God's sake let me have a glass of liquor ; 

Pedro, Battista, help me down below). 

Julia, my love ! — (You rascal, Pedio, quicker)— 

Oh, Juha ! —(this curst vessel pitches so) 

Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching ! 

(Here he grew inarticulate with retching.) . . • 

Loves a capricious power . . . 

Against all noble maladies he's bold. 

But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet J . . • 

Shrinks from the application of hot towels, 

And purgatives are dangerous to his reign. 

Sea-sickness death. '^ . , . 

Many other things cause the death of Love : 

* 'Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign 
Of human frailty, folly, also crime, 

That love and marriage rarely can combine, 

Although they both are born in the same chme ; 

Maniage from love, like vinegar from wine — 

A sad, sour, sober beverage. ^ . . . 

An honest gentleman, at his return. 

May not have the good fortune of Ulysses ; . • . 

The odds are that he finds a handsome urn 

To his memory — and two or three young misses 

Born to some friend, who holds his wife and riches, — 

And that his Argus bites him by — the breeches.'' 

These are the words of a sceptic, even of a cynic. Sceptic and cjmlc, 
it is in this he ends. Sceptic through misanthropy, cynic through 
bravado, a sad and combative humour always impels him ; southern 

' Byron's Works, xv. ; l)o}i Juan, c. ii. st. xix.-xxiii, 

* Ihid. c. iii. st. v. " JMd. c. iii. st. ^ixiii. 



308 MODERN LIFE [BOOK IV 

voluptuousness has not conquered him ; he is only an epicurean thioagk 
contradiction and for a moment : 

* Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter. 
Sermons and soda-water the day after. 

Man, heing reasonable, must get drunk ; 
The best of life is but intoxication.' * 

Tou see clearly that he is always the same, in excess and unhappy, befW 
on destroying himself. His Don Juan, also, is a debauchery ; in it he 
diverts himself outrageously at the expense of all respectable things, 
as a bull in a china shop. He is always violent, and often ferocious ; 
black imagination brings into his stories horrors leisurely enjoyed, 
—despair and famine of shipwrecked men, and the emaciation of the 
raging skeletons feeding on each other. He laughs at it horribly, lik* 
Swift ; more, h^plays the buffoon over it, like Voltaire : 

* And next they thought upon the master's mate, 
As fattest ; but he saved himself, because, 
Besides being much averse from such a fate, 
There were some other reasons : the first was, 
He had been rather indisposed of late ; 

And that which chiefly proved his saving clause, 
Was a small present made to him at Cadiz, 
By general subscription of the ladies.' * 

With his specimens in hand,^ Byron follows with a surgeon's exactness 
all the stages of death, satiation, rage, madness, howling, exhaustion, 
stupor ; he wishes to touch and exhibit the Qaked and ascertained 
truth, the last grotesque and hideous element of humanity. Look again 
at the assault on Ismail, — the grape-shot and the bayonet, the street 
massacres, the corpses used as fascines, and the thirty-eight thousand 
slaughtered Turks. There is blood enough to satiate a tiger, and this 
blood flows amidst an accompaniment of jests ; it is in order to rail at 
war, and the butcheries dignified with the name of exploits. In this 
pitiless and universal demolition of all human vanities, what subsists ? 
What do we know except that life is * a scene of all-confesa'd iiaauity,' 
and that men are, 

* Dogs, or men !— for I flatter you in saying 
That ye are dogs — your betters far — ye may 
Read, or read not, what I am now essaying 
To show ye what ye are in eveiy way ? ' * 

What does he find in science but deficiencies, and in religion bat 
mummeries?* Does he so much as preserve poetry? Of the divine 

1 Byron's Works, xv. ; Bon Juan, c. ii. st. clxxvii (jlxxix 
' Ibid. 0. ii. Bt. Ixxxi. 

' Byron had before him a dozen authentic descriptions. 
* Byron's Works, xvi. ; Bon Juan, c. vii. et. 7. 

5 S<ee his Vision of Judgm&nt 



CHAP, 11.] LORD BYRON. 3Qg 

mantle, the last garment which a poet respects, he makes a rag to 
stamp upon, to wring, to make holes in, out of sheer wantonness. At 
the most touching moment of Haidee's love, he vents a buffoonery. 
He tjoncludes an ode with caricatures. He is Faust in the lirst verse, 
and Mephistopheles in the second. He employs, in the midst of tender- 
ness or of murder, penny-print witticisms, trivialities, gossip, with a 
pampliieteer's vilification and a buffoon's whimsicalities. He lays bare 
the poetic method, asks himself where he has got to, counts the stanzas 
already done, jokes the Muse, Pegasus, and the whole epic stud, as 
though he wouldn't give twopence for them. Again, what remains ? 
Himself, he alone, standing amidst all this ruin. It is he who speaks 
here; his characters are but screens; half the time even he pushes 
them aside, to occupy the stage. He lavishes upon us his opinions, 
recollections, angers, tastes ; his poem is a conversation, a confidence, 
with the ups and downs, the rudeness and freedom of a conversation 
and a confidence, almost like the olographic journal, in which, by night, 
at his writing-table, he opened his heart and discharged his feelings. 
Never was seen in such a clear glass the birth of a lively thought, 
the tumult of a great genius, the inner life of a genuine poet, always 
impassioned, inexhaustibly fertile and creative, in whom suddenly, 
successively, finished and adorned, bloomed all human emotions and 
ideas, — sad, gay, lofty, low, hustling one another, mutually impeded like 
swarms of insects who go humming and feeding on flowers and in the 
mud. He may say what he will ; willingly or unwillingly we listen to 
him ; let him leap from sublime to burlesque, we leap then with him. 
He has so much wit, so fresh a wit, so sudden, so biting, such a pro- 
digality of knowledge, ideas, images picked up from the four corners of 
the horizon, in heaps and masses, that we are captivated, transported 
beyond limits ; we cannot dream of resisting. Too vigorous, and hence 
unbridled, — that is the word which ever recurs when we speak of Byron ; 
too vigorous against others and himself, and so unbridled, that after 
spending his life in braving the world, and his poetry in depicting re- 
volt, he can only find the fulfilment of his talent and the satisfaction of 
his heart, in a poem in arms against all human and poetic conventitcs. 
To live so, a man must be great, but he must also become deranged. 
TJiere is a derangement of heart and mind in the style of Don Juan, as 
in Swifl, When a man jests amidst his tears, it is because he has a 
poisoned imagination. This kind of laughter is a spasm, and you see 
in one man a hardening of the heart, or madness ; in another, excite- 
ment or disgust. Byron was exhausted, at least the poet was ex- 
hausted in him. The last cantos of Don Juan drag : the gaiety became 
forced, the escapades became digressions ; the reader began to be bored. 
A new kind of poetry, which he had attempted, had given way in his 
hands : in the drama he only attained to powerful declamation, his 
characters had no life ; when he forsook poetry, poetry forsook him ; 
he went to Greece in search of action, and only found death. 



.^10 MODERJS LIFE. [BOOK \V 



VI. 

So lived and so ended this unhappy great man ; the malady of th< 
age had no more distinguished prey. Around him, like a hecatomb, 
lie the rest, wounded also by the greatness of their faculties and their 
immoderate desires, — some extinguished in stupor cr drunkenness, 
others worn out by pleasure or work ; these driven to madness or 
suicide ; those beaten down by impotence, or lying on a sick-bed ; all 
agitated by their toe acute or aching nerves; the strongest carrying 
their bleeding wound to old age, the happiest having suffered as much 
as the rest, and preserving their scars, though healed. The concert 
of their lamentations has filled their age, and we stood around them, 
hearing in our hearts the low echo of their cries. We were sad like 
them, and like them inclined to revolt. The institution of democracy 
excited «ur ambitions without satisfying them ; the proclamation of 
philosophy kindled our curiosity without contenting it. In this wide- 
open career, the plebeian suffered for his mediocrity, and tlie sceptic 
for his doubt. The plebeian, like the sceptic, attacked by a precocious 
melancholy, and withered by a premature experience, delivered hia 
sympathies and his conduct to the poets, who declared happiness im- 
possible, truth unattainable, society ill -arranged, man abortive or 
marred. From this unison of voices an idea sj^rang, the centre of the 
literature, the arts, the religion of the age, — that there is, namely, a 
monstrous disproportion between tlie different parts of our social struc- 
ture, and that human destiny is vitiated by this disagreement. 

What advice have they given us for its remedy ? They were great ; 
were they wise ? ' Let deep and strong sensations rain upon you ; if 
your machine breaks, so much the worse !' * Cultivate your garden, 
bury yourself in a little circle, re-enter the flock, be a beast of burden. 
* Turn believer again, take holy water, abandon your mind to dogmas, 
and your conduct to handbooks.' ' Make your way ; aspire to power, 
honours, wealth.' Such are the various replies of artists and citizens. 
Christians, and men of the world. Are they replies ? And what do 
i\iey propose but to satiate one's self, to become beasts, to turn out of the 
way, to foi'get ? There is another and a deeper answer, which Goethe 
was the first to give, which we begin to conceive, in which issue all 
the labour and experience of the age, and which may perhaps be the 
subject -matter of future literature : * Try to understand yourself, and 
things in general.' A strange reply, seeming barely new, whose scope 
we shall only hereafter discover. For a long time yet men will feel 
their sympathies thrill at the sound of the sobs of their great poets. 
For a long time they will rage against a destiny which opens to their 
aspuations the career of limitless space, to shatter them, within two 
steps of the goal, against a wretched post which they had not seen- 
For a long time they will bear like fetters the necessities which they 
must embrace as laws. Our generation, like the preceding, has been 



CHAP. II.] LORD BYRO^. 311 

tainted by the malady of the age, and will never nL"vre than half be 
quit of it. We shall arrive at truth, not at calm. All we can heal at 
present is our intellect ; we have no hold upon our sentiments. But 
we have a right to conceive for others the hopes which we no longer 
entertain for ourselves, and to prepare for our descendants the happi 
ness which we shall never enjoy. Brought up in a more wholesome 
air, they mayhap will have a wholesomer heart. The reformation of 
ideas ends by reforming the rest, and the light of the mind produces 
Kerenity of heart. Hitherto, in our judgments on men, we have taken 
for our masters the oracles and poets, and like them we have received 
for certain truths the noble dreams of our imagination and the im- 
perious suggestions of our heart. We have bound ourselves to the 
partiality of religious divinations, and the inexactness of literary divi- 
nations, and we have shaped our doctrines by our instincts and oui 
vexations. Science at last approaches, and approaches man ; it has 
gone beyond the visible and palpable world of stars, stones, plants, 
amongst which man disdainfully confined her. It reaches the heart, 
provided with exact and penc^tratin^ implements, whose justness has 
been proved, and their reach measured by three hundred years of 
experience. Thought, with its development and rank, its structure 
and relations, its deep material roots, its infinite growth through his- 
tory, its lofty bloom at the summit of things, becomes the object of 
loience, — an object which, sixty years ago, it foresaw in Germany, and 
which, slowly and surely probed, by the same methods as the physical 
world, will be transformed before our eyes, as the physical world has 
been transformed. It is already being transformed, and we have left 
behind us the point of view of Byron and our poets. No, man is not 
an abortion or a monster ; no, the business of poetry is not to revolt 
or defame him. He is in his place, and completes a chain. Let us 
watch him grow and increase, and we shall cease to rail at or curse 
him. He, like everything else, is a product, and as such it is right 
he should be what he is. His innate imperfection is <i order, like the 
constant abortion of a stamen in a plant, like the fundamental iriegu- 
larity of four facets in a crystal. What we took for a deforirity. if a 
form ; what seemed to us the contradiction, is the accomplishmeDt of 
a law. Human reason and virtue have as their elements animal in- 
stincts and images, as living forms have for theirs physical laws, as 
organic matters have for theirs mineral substances. What wonder if 
virtue or reason, like living form or organic matter, sometimes fails 
or decomposes, since like them, and like every superior and complex 
existence, they have for support and control inferior and simple forces, 
which, according to circumstances, now maintain it by their harmony, 
now mar it by their discord ? What wonder if the elements of ex« 
istence, like those of quantity, receive, from their very nature, the 
irresistible laws which constrain and reduce them to a certain speciei 
and order of formation ? Who will rise up against geometry ? Who, 



319 MODERN LIFE [BOOK r> 

'especially, will rise ap against a living geometry ? Who will not, on 
the other hand, feel moved with admiration at the sight of those grand 
powers which, situated at the heart of things, incessantly urge the blood 
through the limbs of the old world, disperse the showers in the infinite 
network of arteries, and spread over the whole surface the eternal 
flower of youth and beauty ? Who, in short, will not feel himself en- 
nobled, when he finds that this pile of laws results in a regular series of 
forms, that matter has thought for its goal, and that this ideal from 
which, through so many errors, all the aspirations of men depend, is also 
the centre whereto converge, through so many obstacles, all the forces of 
the universe ? In this employment of science, and in this conception 
of things, there is a new art, a new morality, a new polity, a new 
reiigion, and it is in the present time our ta»k to discover ttiem. 



CflAP. III.l THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 31J 



CHAPTER m. 
The Past and the Present. 

L The past — The Saxon invasion — How it established the race and detef 

mined the character — The Norman Conquest — How it modified the 
character and established the Constitution — The Renaissance — How it 
manifested the national mind — The Reformation — How it fixed the 
Ideal — The Restoration— Ho wit imported classical culture and diverted 
the national mind — The Revolution — How it developed classical cul- 
ture and restored the national mind — The modern age — How Euro^ 
pean ideas widened the national mould, 
II. The present — Concordances of observation and history — Sky — Soil — Pro- 
ducts — Man — Commerce — Industry — Agriculture — Society — Family — 
Arts — Philosophy — Religion — What forces have produced the present 
civilization, and are working out the future civilization. 



HAVING reached th^* limits of this long review, we can now 
embrace in one prospect the aggregate of English civilisation; 
everything is connected there : a few powers and a few primitive cir- 
cumstances have produced the rest, and we have only to pursue their 
continue us action in order to comprehend the nation and its history, its 
past and its present. At the beginning, and furthest removed in the 
region of causes, comes the race. A whole people, Angles and Saxons, 
destroyed, hunted out, or enslaved the old inhabitants, wiped out the 
Roman culture, settled themselves alone and pure, and, amongst the 
later Danish ravagers, only encountered a new reinforcement of the 
same blood. This is the primitive stock : of its substance and innate 
properties is to spring almost the whole future growth. At this time, 
and as they then were, alone in their island, the Angles and Saxona 
attained a development such as it was, defaced, brutal, and yet solid. 
They ate and drank, built and cleared ground, and, in particular, multi- 
plied : the scattered tribes who crossed the sea in leather boats, became 
a strong compact nation, — three hundred thousand families, rich, with 
store of cattle, abundantly provided with corporal subsistence, partly 
ni rest in the security of social hfe, with a king, respected and frei^uent 



314 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK Vi 

assemblies, good judicial customs: here, amidst the fire and vehemence 
of barbarian temperament, the old Germanic fidelity held men in 
unison, whilst the old Germanic independence held them upright. In 
all else they barely advanced. A few fragmentary songs, an epic in 
which still is faintly heard the Avarlike exaltation of ancient barbarism, 
gloomy hymns, a harsh and furious poetry, sometimes sublime and 
always rude, — this is all that remains of them. In six centuries they 
had scarcely gone one step beyond the manners and sentiments of iheif 
uncivilised Germany : Christianity, which obtained a hold on them by 
the greatness of its biblical tragedies and the troubled sadness of its 
aspirations, did not bring to them the Latin civilisation : this remained 
st the door, hardly accepted by a few great men, deformed, when it 
did enter, by the disproportion of the Roman and Saxon genius — always 
altered and reduced ; so much so, that for the men of the Continent 
these islanders were but illiterate dullards, drunkards, and gluttons ; at 
all events, savage and slow by mood and nature, rebellious against 
culture, and sluggish in development. 

The empire of this world belongs to force. These people were con- 
quered for ever and permanently, — conquered by Normans, that is, by 
Frenchmen more clever, more quickly cultivated and organised than 
they. This is the great event which was to complete their character, 
decide their history, and impress upon character and history the poli- 
tical and practical spirit which separates them from other German 
nations. Oppressed, constrained in the stiff net of Norman organisa- 
tion, although they were conquered, they were not destroyed ; they 
were on their own soil, each with his friends and in his tithings ; they 
formed a body ; they were yet twenty times more numerous than theii 
conquerors. Their situation and their necessities will create their 
habits and their aptitudes. They will endure, protest, struggle, resist 
together and unanimously ; strive to-day, to-morrow, daily, not to be 
slain or plundered, to restore their old laws, to obtain or extort guaran- 
tees ; and they will gradually acquire patience, judgment, all the 
faculties and inclinations by which liberties are maintained and states 
are founded. By a singular good fortune, the Norman lords assist them 
in this ; for the king has secured to himself so much, and is found sc% 
formidable, that, in order to repress the great pillager, the lesser ones 
are forced to make use of their Saxon subjects, to ally themselves with 
them, to give them a share in their charters, to become their repre- 
sentatives, to admit them into Parliament, to leave them to labour 
freely, to grow rich, to acquire pride, force authority, to interfere with 
themselves in public aSairs. Thus, then, gradually the English nation, 
buried by the Conquest under ground, as if with a sledge-hammer, 
extricates and raises itself ; five hundred years and more being occupiecj 
in this re-elevation. But, during all this time, leisure failed for fine 
and lofty culture: it was needful to live and defend themselves, to 
dig the ground, spin wool, bend the bow, attend meetings, juries, to 



cmAP. III. THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 3I3 

contribute and argue for common interests : the important and respected 
man is he who knows well how to fight and get much gain. It was the 
energetic and warlike manners which were developed, the active and 
positive spirit which predominated ; they left le&rning and elegance to 
the Gallicised nobles of the court. When the valiant Saxon townsfolk 
quitted bow and plough, it was to feast copiously, or to sing the ballad 
of • Robin Hood.' They lived and acted ; they did not reflect or write ; 
ihc'vc national literature was reduced to fragments and rudiments, 
harpers' songs, tavern epics, a religious poem, a few books on religious 
reformation. At the same time Norman literature faded ; separated 
from the stem, and on a foreign soil, it languished in imitations j 
only one great poet, almost French in mind, quite French in style, 
appeared, and, after him, as before him, spread an incurable drivel of 
words. For the second time, a civilisation of five centuries was found 
sterile of great ideas and works ; this still more so than its neighbours, 
and for a twofold reason, — because to the universal impotence of the 
Middle-age was added the impoverishment of the Conquest, and because 
of the two component literatures, one, transplanted, became abortive, 
and the other, mutilated, ceased to expand. 

II. 

But amongst so many rough draughts and attempts, a character 
was formed, and the rest was to spring from it. The barbarous age 
had established on the soil a German race, phlegmatic and grave, 
capable of spiritual emotions and moral discipline. The feudal age 
had imposed on this race habits of resistance and association, political 
and utilitarian prejudices. Fancy a German from Hamburg or Bre- 
men confined for five hundred years in the iron corslet of William 
the Conqueror: these two natures, one innate, the other acquired, 
constitute all the springs of his conduct. So it was in other nations. 
Like runners drawn up in line at the stait of the lace, wt, se« at the 
epoch of the Renaissance the five great peoples of Europe let k>ose, 
though we are unable at first to foresee anythmg of their career. At 
first sight it seems as if accidents or circumstances will govern their 
pace, their fall, and their success. It is not so : from them alone their 
history depends : each will be the artisan of its fortune ; chance has 
no influence over events so vast ; and it is national inclinations and 
faculties which, overturning or raising obstacles, will lead them, ac- 
cording to their fate, each one to its goal, — some to the extreme 
of decadence, others to the height of prosperity. After all, man is 
ever his own master and his own slave. At the outset of every age 
he in a certain fashion is: his body, heart, mind have a distinct 
structure and disposition ; and from this enduring arrangement, which 
all preceding centuries have contributed to consolidate or to construct, 
spring permanent desires or aptitudes, by which he determines and 
acts. Thus is formed in him the ideal model, which, obscure or dia^ 



316 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV. 

tinct, complete or rough -hewn, will thenceforth float before his eyes, 
rally all his aspirations, efforts, forces, and will occupy him for centuriei 
in one aim, until at length, renewed by impotence or success, he con- 
ceives a new end, and assumes a new energy. The Catholic and exalted 
Spaniard figures life like the Crusaders, lovers, knights, and, abandon- 
ing labour, liberty, and science, casts himself, at the head of his in- 
quisition and his king, into fanatical war, romanesque slothfulness, 
superstitious and impassioned obedience, voluntary and irresistible 
ignorance.^ The theological and feudal German settles in his district 
docilely and faithfully under his petty chiefs, through natural patience 
and hereditary loyalty, engrossed by his wife and household, content 
to have conquered religious liberty, clogged by the dulness of his tern • 
perament in gross physical existence, and in sluggish respect for estab- 
lished order. The Italian, the most richly gifted and precocious of 
all, but, of all, the most incapable of voluntary discipline and moral 
austerity, turns towards the fine arts and voluptuousness, declines, 
deteriorates beneath foreign dominion, takes life at its easiest, for- 
getting to think, and satisfied to enjoy. The sociable and levelling 
Frenchman rallies round his king, who secures for him public peace, 
external glory, the splendid display of a sumptuous court, a regular 
administration, a uniform discipline, European predominance, and uni- 
versal literature. So, if you regard the Englishman in the sixteenth 
century, you will find in him the inclinations and the powers which 
for three centuries are to govern his culture and shape his constitution. 
In this European expansion of natural existence and pagan literature 
we find at first in Shakspeare, Jonson, and the tragic poets, in Spenser, 
Sidney, and the lyric poets, the national features, all Avith incomparable 
depth and splendour, and such as race and history have impressed and 
implanted on them for a thousand years. Not in vain did invasion 
settle here so serious a race, capable of reflection. Not in vain the 
Conquest turned this race toward warlike life and practical preoccupa- 
tions. From the first rise of original invention, its work displays the 
tragir; energy, the intense and shapeless passion, the disdain of regu- 
larity, the knowledge of the real, the sentiment of inner things, the 
natural melancholy, the anxious divination of the obscure beyond, — all 
the instincts which, forcing man upon himself, and concentrating him 
within himself, prepare him for Protestantism and combat. What is 
this Protestantism which is being founded ? What is this ideal model 
which it presents ; and what original conception is to furnish to this 
people its permanent and dominant poem? The harshest and most 



* See the Travels of Madame d'Aulnay in Spain, at the end of the seventeenth 
century. Nothing is more striking than this revolution, if we compare it with 
the times before Ferdinand the Catholic, namely, the reign of Henry iv., the 
great power of the nobles, and tlie independence of the towns. See about 
aU this history, Buckle, History of Cmlisation, 1867, 3 vols., ii. ch. viii. 



CHAP. III.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 317 

practical of all, — -that of the Pnritnns, which, neglecting speculation, 
falls back upon action, binds human life in a rigid discipline, imposes on 
the soul continuous effort, prescribes to society a cloistral austerity, 
forbids pleasure, commands action, exacts sacrifice, and forms the 
moralist, the labourer, the citizen. Thus is it implanted, the great 
English idea — I mean the conviction that man is before all a free and 
moral personage, and that, having conceived alon-"* in his conscience 
and before God the rule of his conduct, he must employ himself com- 
pletely in applying it within himself, beyond himself, obstinately, in- 
flexibly, by a perpetual resistance opposed to others, and a perpetual 
restraint imposed upon himself. In vain will it at first discredit 
itself by its transports and its tyranny ; attenuated by the trial, it will 
gradually accommodate itself to humanity, and, carried from Puritan 
fanaticism to laic morality, it will win all public sympathy, because it 
answers to all the national instincts. In vain it will vanish from high 
society, under the scorn of the Restoration, and the importation of 
French culture ; it subsists underground. For French culture did not 
come to a head : on this too alien soil it produced only sickly, coarse, 
or imperfect fruit. Fine elegance became low debauchery ; moderate 
doubt became brutal atheism ; tragedy failed, and was but declama- 
tion ; comedy grew shameless, and was but a school of vice ; of this 
literature, there endured only the studies of close reasoning and good 
style ; it was driven from the public stage, together with the Stuarts, 
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and liberal and moral 
maxims resumed the ascendency, which they will not again lose. For, 
with ideas, events have followed their course : national incHnations 
have done their work in society as in literature ; and the English in- 
stincts have transformed the constitution and politics at the same time 
as the talents and minds. These rich tithings, these valiant yeomen, 
these rude, well-armed citizens, well nourished, protected by their 
juries, wont to reckon on themselves, obstinate, combative, sensible, 
such as the English Middle-age bequeathed them to modern Eng- 
land, were able to suffer the king to display above them his temporary 
tyianny, and weigh down the nobility with the rigour of a despot, 
which the recollection of the Civil War and the danger of high treason 
justified. But Henry viii., and Elizabeth herself, must follow in great 
interests the current of public opinion : if they were strong, it was 
because they were popular ; the people only supported their desigits, 
and authorised their violences, because they found in them defenders A 
their religion, and protectors of their labour.^ The people themselves 
immersed themselves in this religion, and, beyond the legal establish- 
ment, attained to personal belief. They grew rich by tcil, and under 
the first Stuart already occupied the highest place in the nation. At 
this moment all was decided : be events what they might, they must 

* Buckle. History of Civilisation, 1. ch. vii. 



318 MODERN LIFE. [BOJK I\ 

one day become master. Social situations create political situations ; 
legal constitutions always accommodate themselves to real things; and 
acquired preponderance infallibly results in written rights, lien so 
numerous, so active, so resolute, so capable of sufficing for themseh'ea, 
so disposed to draw their opinions from their own reflection, and their 
subsistence from their own efforts, will end at all hazards in seizing 
the guarantees which they need. At the first onset, and in the h»at 
of primitive faith, they overturn the throne, and the current whicb 
bears them is so strong, that, in spite of their excess and their failur^ij 
the Revolution is accomplished by the abolition of feudal tenures, and 
the institution of Habeas Corpus^ under Charles ii. ; by the universal 
restoration of the liberal and Protestant spirit, under James ii. ; by the 
establishment of the constitution, the act of toleration, the liberation 
of the press, under William in. From that moment England had 
found her proper place ; her two interior and hereditary forces — moral 
and religious instinct, practical and political aptitude — had done their 
work, and were thenceforth to build, without impediment or destrua- 
tion, on the foundation which they had laid. 

m. 

• Thus was the literature of the eighteenth century born, altogether 
conservative, useful, moral, and limited. Two powers direct it, one 
European, the other English: on one side the talent of oratorical 
analysis and the habits of literary dignity, which are proper to the 
classical age; on the other, the relish of application and energy of 
precise observation, which are proper to the national mind. Hence 
that excellence and originality of political satire, parliamentary dis- 
course, solid energy, moral novels, and all the kinds of literature which 
demand an attentive good sense, a correct good style, and a talent for 
advising, convincing, or wounding others. Hence that weakness or 
impotence of speculative thought, of genuine poetry, of original drama, 
and of all the kinds which require a wide, free curiosity, or a wide» 
disinterested imagination. The English did not attain complete ele- 
gance, nor superior philosophy; they dulled the French refinements 
which they copied, and were terrified by the French boldness which 
they suggested ; they remained half cockneys and half barbarians ; they 
only invented insular ideas and English ameliorations, and were con- 
firmed in their respect for their constitution and their tradition. But, 
at the same time, they were cultivated and reformed : their wealth and 
comfort increased enormously ; literature and opinion became with 
tli^m severe even to intolerance ; and their long war against the French 
Revolution pushed to excess the rigour of their morality, at tlie same 
time as the invention of machinery developed a hundredfold their 
comfort and prosperity. A salutary and despotic code of approved 
maxims, established proprieties, and unassailable beliefs, which fortifies, 



UHAP. III.l THE PAST ASD THE PRESENT. 311* 

Strengthens, curbs, and emp]o3'S man usefully and painfully, without 
permitting him even to deviate or grow weak ; a minute apparatus, 
and an admirable provision of commodious inventions, associations, 
institutions, mechanisms, implements, methods, which incessantly co- 
operate to furnish body and mind with all which they need, — such 
are thenceforth the leading and special features of this people. To 
constrain themselves and to provide for themselves, to assume self- 
command and command of nature, to consider life as moralists and 
economists, like a close garment, in which people must walk becomingly, 
and like a good garment, the best to be had, to be at once respectable 
and comfortable : these two words embrace all the springs of humar 
actions. Against this limited good sense, and this pedantic austerity, 
a revolt breaks out. With the universal renewal of thought and 
imagination, the deep poetic source, which had flowed in the sixteenth 
century, expands anew in the nineteenth, and a new literature springs 
to light; philosophy and history infiltrate their doctrines in the old 
establishment ; the greatest poet of the time shocks it incessantly with 
his curses and sarcasms ; from all sides, to this day, in science and 
letters, in practice and theory, in private and in public life, the most 
powerful minds endeavour to open a new door to the stream of con- 
tinental ideas. But they are patriots as well as innovators, conservative 
as well as revolutionary ; if they touch religion and constitution, man- 
ners and doctrines, it is to widen, not to destroy them : England is 
made ; she knows it, and they know it. Such as this country is, based 
on the whole national history and on the whole national instincts, it is 
more capable than any other people in Europe of transforming itself 
•without recasting, and of devoting itself to its future without re- 
nouncing its past. 



§2. 
L 

I began to perceive these ideas when I first landed in England, 
find I was singularly. struck with the mutual confirmations afforded by 
observation and history ; it seemed to me that the present was com- 
pleting t]ie past, and the past explained the present. 

At first the sea troubles and strikes a man with wonder; not in 
vain is a people insular and oceanic, especially with this sea and these 
coasts; their painters, so ill endowed, perceive, in spite of all, its 
alarming and gloomy aspect; up to the eighteenth century, amidst the 
elegance of French culture, and under the joviality of Flemish tradi- 
tion, you will find in Gainsborough the ineffaceable stamp of this 
great sentiment. In pleasant moments, in the fine calm summer days, 
the moist fog stretches over the horizon its greyish veil ; the sea ha« 
the colour of a pale slate ; and the ships, spreading their canvas, ad- 



320 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK \1 

vance patiently through the mist. But look around yon, and you will 
soon see the signs of daily peril. The coast is eaten out, the waves 
have encroached, the trees have vanished, the earth is softened bj 
incessant showers, the ocean is here, ever intractable and fierce. Il 
growls and bellows eternally, that old hoarse monster ; and the barking 
pack of its waves advance like an endless army, before which all human 
force must give way. Think of the winter months, the storms, the long 
hours of the tempest-tossed sailor, whirled about blindly by the squalls 1 
Now, and in this fine season, over the whole circle ( f the horizon, rise 
the gloomy, wan, clouds, like the smoke of a coal-fire, some of a frail 
and dazzling white, so swollen that they seem ready to burst. Theii 
heavy masses creep slowly along ; they are gorged, and already here 
and there on "the limitless plain a patch of sky is shrouded in a sudden 
shower. After an instant, the sea becomes dirty and cadaverous ; its 
waves leap with strange gambollings, and their sides take an oily and 
livid tint. The vast grey dome has drowned and hidden the whole 
horizon ; the rain falls, close and pitiless. You cannot have an idea of 
it, until you have seen it. When the southern men, the Romans, came 
here for the first time, they must have thought themselves in hell. 
The wide space stretching between earth and sky, and on which our 
eyes dwell as their domain, suddenly fails; there is no more air, we 
see but a flowing mist. No more colours or forms. In this yellowish 
smoke, objects look like fading ghosts; nature seems a bad crayon- 
drawing, over which a child has awkwardly smeared his sleeve. Here 
you are at Newhaven, then at London; the sky disgorges rain, the 
earth returns her mist, the mist floats in the rain ; all is swamped : 
looking round you, you see no reason why it should ever end. Here, 
truly, is Homer's Cimmerian land : your feet splash, you have no use 
left for your eyes ; you feel all your organs stopped up, rusted by the 
mounting damp ; you think yourself banished from the breathing 
world, reduced to the condition of marsliy beings dwelling in dirty 
pools : to live here is not life. You ask yourself if this vast town is 
not a cemetery, in which dabble busy and wretched ghosts. Amidst the 
delugf of moist soot, the muddy stream with its unwearying iron ships, 
black insects w^hich take and land shades, makes you think of the 
Styx. There being no more daylight, they create it. Lately, in a 
ihrge square in London, in the finest hotel, for five days at a time, it 
was necessary to leave the gas alight. Melancholy besets you; you 
are disgusted with others and with yourself. What can they do in 
this sepulchre? To remain here witliout working is to gnaw one's 
vitals, and end in suicide. To go out is to make an effort, to be above 
damp and cold, to brave discomfort and unpleasant sensations. Such 
a climate prescribes action, forbids sloth, develops energy, teaches* 
patience. I was looking just now at the sailors at the helm, — their tar- 
paulins, their great streaming boots, their sou'-westers, so attentive, so 
precise in their movements, so grave, so self-contained. I have siiic« 



CHAP. III. THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 321 

Been workmen at their cotton looms, — calm, grave, silent, economising 
their effort, and persevering all day, all the year, all their life, in the 
^ame regular and monotonous struggle of body and mind : their soul 
is suited to their climate. In fact, it must be so in order to live : aftei 
a week, we feel that here a man must renounce refined and heartfeU 
enjoyment, the happiness of careless life, the easy and harmcniotis 
expansion of artistic and animal nature ; that here he must marry, bring 
up a house-full of children, assume the cares and importance of a 
family man, grow rich, provide against the evil day, suiTonnd himself 
with comfort, become a Protestant, a manufacturer, a politician ; in 
short, capable of activity and resistance ; and in all the ways open to 
men, endure and strive. 

Yet here there are charming and always touching beauties — those, to 
wit, of a well-watered land. When, on a partly clear day, we take a 
drive into the country and reach an eminence, our eyes experience 
a unique sensation, and a pleasure hitherto unknown. In the far 
distance, at the four corners of the horizon, in the fields, on the hills, 
spreads the cool verdure, plants for fodder and food, clover, hops; lovely 
meadows overflowing with high thick grass ; here and there a grove of 
lofty trees ; pasture lands hemmed in with hedges, in which the heavy 
cows feed on their knees in peace. The mist rises insensibly between 
the trees, and the prospect swims in a luminous vapour. There is 
nothing sweeter in the world, nor more delicate, than these tints ; we 
might pause for hours together gazing on these pearly clouds, this fine 
aerial down, this soft transparent gauze which imprisons the rays of the 
sun, dulls them, and lets them reach the ground only to smile on it and 
caress it. On both sides of our carriage pass incessantly meadows each 
more lovely than the last, in which buttercups, meadow-sweet, Easter- 
daisies, are crowded in succession with their dissolving hues ; a sweetness 
almost painful, a strange charm, breathes from this inexhaustible and 
transient vegetation. It is too fresh, it cannot last ; nothing here is staid, 
stable, and firm, as in the South ; all is fleeting, in the stage of birth 
or death, hovering betwixt tears and joy. The rolling water-drops shine 
on the leaves like pearls ; the round tree-tops, the widespread foliage 
whispers in the feeble breeze^ and the sound of the falling tears left by 
the last shower never ceases. How well these plants thrive in the glades, 
spread out wantonly, ever renewed and watered by the moist air I How 
the sap mounts in these plants, refreshed and sheltered against the rays 
of the SL.n! And how sky and land seem made to cherish their tissue and 
refresh their hues I At the least glimpse of sun they smile with delicious 
charm ; you would call them frail and timid virgins under a veil about 
to be raised. Let the sun for an instant emerge, and you will see them 
grow resplendent as in a ball dress. The light falls in dazzhng sheets; 
the lustrous golden petals shine with a too vivid colour ; the most splen- 
did embroideries, velvet starred with diamonds, sparkling silk seamed 
?rith pearls, are not to be compared to this deep hue ; joy overflows 
VOL. II, X 



322 MODERN LIFE. [EOOK IV 

like a briminiTig cnp. In the strangeness, the rarity of this spectacle^ 
we understand for the first time the life of a humid land. The water 
muhiplies and softens the living tissues ; plants increase, and have no 
substance ; nourishment abounds, and has no savour ; moisture fructi- 
fies, but the sun does not fertilise. Much grass, much cattle, much 
meat ; large quantities of coarse food : thus an absorbing and phlegmatic 
temperament is supported ; the human growth, like the animal and 
vegetable, is powerful, but heavy ; man is amply but coarsely framed ; 
the machine is solid, but it rolls slowly on its hinges, and the hinges 
generally creak and are rusty. When we look at the people nearer, it 
seems that their various parts are independent, at least that they need 
time to let sensations pass through them. Their ideas do not at first 
break out in passions, gestures, actions. As in the Fleming and the 
German, they dwell first of all in the brain ; they expand there, they 
rest there ; man is not shaken by them, he has no trouble in standing 
still, he is not rapt : he can act Avisely, uniformly ; for his inner motive 
power is an idea or a watchword, not an emotion or an attraction. He 
can bear tedium, or rather he does not weary himself ; his ordinary 
course consists of dull sensations, and the insipid monotony of mechani- 
cal life has nothing which need repel him. He is made for it, his 
nature is suited for it. When a man has all his life eaten turnips, 
he does not wish for oranges. He will readily resign himself to heai 
fifteen discourses running on the same subject, demanding twenty con- 
secutive years the same reform, examining statistics, studying moral 
treatises, keeping Sunday schools, bringing up a dozen children. The 
piquant, the agreeable, are not a necessity to him. The weakness of 
his sensitive impulses contributes to the force of his moral impulses. 
His temperament makes him argumentative ; he can get on without 
policemen ; the shocks of man against man do not here end in explosions. 
He can discuss in the market-place, aloud, religion and politica, 
hold meetings, form associations, rudely attack men in office, say that 
the Constitution is violated, predict the ruin of the State : there is no 
objection to this ; his nerves are calm.; he will argue without cutting 
throats ; he will not raise revolutions ; and perhaps he will obtain a 
leform. Observe the passers-by in the streets: in three hours you will 
see all the sensible features of this temperament ; light hair, in children 
almost white ; pale eyes, often blue as Wedgwood-ware, red whiskers, 
a tall figure, the motions of an automaton ; and with these other still 
more striking features, those which strong food and combative life have 
added to this temperament. Here the enormous guardsman, with rosy 
complexion, majestic, erect, who twirls a little cane in his hand, dis- 
playing his chest, and showing a clear parting between his pomaded 
hair ; there the over-fed stout man, short, sanguine, like an animal fit 
for the shambles, with his alarmed, astounded, yet sluggish air ; a little 
further the country gentleman, six feet high, stout and tall, Hke the 
German who left his forest, with the muzzle and nose of a bull-dog. 



mAf. lll.j THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 323 

disproportionate and straggling whiskers, rolling eyes, apoplectic face : 
these are the excesses of coarse blood and food ; add to which, even iu 
the women, the white front of carnivorous teeth, and the great feet, 
lolidly shod, excellent for walking in the mud. Again, look at the 
young men in a cricket match or picnic party; doubtless mind does 
not sparkle in their eyes, but life abounds there : there is something of 
decision and energy in their whole being ; healthy and active, ready 
for molion, for enterprise, these are the words which rise involun* 
tarily to the lips when we speak of them. Many have the air of fine, 
slender liarriers, sniffing the air, and in full cry. A life passed in the 
gymnasium or in venturesome deeds is honoured in England ; they 
must move their body, swim, throw the ball, run in the damp meadow, 
row, breathe in their boats the briny sea vapour, feel on their fore- 
heads the raindrops falling from the oak trees, leap their horses over 
ditches and gates; the animal instincts are intact. They still relish 
natural pleasures ; precocity has not spoiled them. Nothing can be 
simpler than the young English girls ; amidst many beautiful things, 
there are few so beautiful girls in the world ; slim, strong, self-assured, 
80 fundamentally honest and loyal, so free from coquetry I A man can- 
not imagine, if he has not seen it, this freshness and innocence ; many 
of them are flowers, expanded flowers ; only a morning rose, with its 
transient and delicious colour, with its petals drenched in dew, can 
give us an idea of it ; it leaves far behind the beauty of the South, and 
its precise, stable, finished contours, its definitive outlines; here we 
perceive fragility, delicacy, the continual budding of life; candid eyes, 
blue as periwinkles, looking at you without thinking of your look. At 
the least motion of the soul, the blood rushes to these girls' cheeks, 
necks, shoulders, in waves of purple ; you see emotions pass over these 
transparent complexions, as the colours change in the meadows ; and 
their modesty is so virginal and sincere, that you are tempted to lower 
your eyes from respect. And yet, natural and frank as they are, they 
are not languishing or dreamy ; they love and endure exercise like their 
brothers ; with flowing locks, at six years they ride on horseback and 
take long walks. Active life in this country strengthens the phlegma- 
tic temperament, and the heart is kept more simple whilst the body 
grows lieallhier. Another observation : far above all these figures one 
type stands out, the most truly English, the most striking to a foreigner. 
Post yourself for an hour, early in the morning, at the terminus of a rail- 
way, and observe the men above thirty who come to London on business i 
the features are drawn, the faces pale, the eyes fixed, preoccupied ; the 
mouth open and, as it were, contracted ; the man is tired, worn out, 
and hardened by too much work ; he runs without looking round him. 
His whole existence is directed to a single end ; he must incessantly 
exert himself to the utmost, practise the same exertion, a profitable one ; 
he has become a machine. This is especially visible in workmen ; per- 
8(!verance, obstinacy, resignation, are depicted on their long bony and 



•Ji>4 MODERN LIFE. [BOOE. IT? 

dull faces. It is still more visible in women of the lower orders : manj^' 
are thin, consumptive, their eyes hollow, their nose sharp, their skin 
streaked with red patches ; they have suffered too much, have had too 
many children, have a worked-out, or oppressed, or submissive, or 
stoically impassive air ; we feel that they have endured much, and caa 
endure still more. Even in the middle or upper class this patience and 
sad hardening are frequent ; we think when we see them of those pocx 
beasts of burden, deformed by the harness, which remain motionless 
under the rain without thinking of shelter. Verily the battle of life is 
harsher and more obstinate here than elsewhere; whoever gives way, falls. 
Beneath the rigour of climate and competition, amidst the strik(is of 
industry, the weak, the improvident perish or are degraded ; then comes 
gin and does its work ; thence the long files of wretched women who 
sell themselves by night in the Strand to pay their rent; thence those 
shameful quarters of London, Liverpool, all the great towns, those halt- 
naked spectres, gloomy or drunk, who crowd the dram-shops, who fill 
the streets with their dirty linen, and their tatters hung out on ropes, 
who lie on a soot-heap, amidst troops of wan children ; horrible shoals, 
whither descend all whom their wounded, idle, or feeble arms could not 
keep on the surface of the great stream. The chances of life are tragic 
here, and the punishment of improvidence crueL Vie soon understand 
why, under this obligation to fight and grow hard, fine sensations dis- 
appear ; why taste is blunted, how man becomes ungraceful and stiff; 
how discords, exaggerations, mar the costume and the fashion ; why 
movements and forms end by being energetic and discordant, like the 
motions of a machine. If the man is German by race, temperament, 
and mind, he has been compelled in process of time to fortify, alter, 
altogether turn aside his original nature ; he is no longer a primitive 
animal, but a well-trained animal; his body and mind have been trans- 
formed by strong nourishment, by corporal exercise, by austere reli- 
gion, by public morality, by political strife, by perpetuity of effort ; he 
has become of all men the most capable of acting usefully and power- 
fully in all directions, the most productive and effectual labourer, as 
his ox has become the best animal for food, his sheep the best for WQQlf 
his horse the best for racing 

a 

In fact, there is no greater spectacle than his *vork ; in n« 
age or nation of the earth, I believe, has matter ever been bettei 
handled and utilised. Enter London by water, and you will see an 
accumulation of toil and work which has no equal on this planet. 
Paris, by comparison, is but an elegant city of pleasure ; the S(. ine, 
with its quays, a pretty serviceable plaything. Here all is vast. I 
have seen Marseilles, Bordeaux, Amsterdam, but I had no idea of such 
a mass. From Greenwich to London the two shores are a continuous 
wharf : merchandise is always being piled up, sacks hoisted, ships 



i;HAP. Ill j THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 32? 

moored ; ever new warehouses for copper, beer, ropework, tar, chemical* 
Docks, timber-yards, calking-basins, and dockyards multiply and en- 
croach on each othei. On the left there is the iron framework of a 
clmrGh being finished, to be sent to India. The Thames is a mile broad, 
and is but a populous street of vessels, a winding work-yard. Steam- 
hoats, sailing vessels, ascend and descend, come to anchor in groups oi 
tv I), three, ten, then in long files, then in dense rows ; there are five 
M six thousand oi them at anchor. On the right, the docks, like so 
irtXiD^ intricate, maritime streets, disgorge or store up the vessels. 
Ti' you get on a height, you see vessels in the distance by hundreds 
and thousands, fixed as if on the land ; their masts in a line, their 
slender rigging, make a spider-web which girdles the horizon. Yet on 
the river itself, to the west, we see an inextricable forest of masts, yards, 
and cables ; the ships are unloading, fastened to one another, mingled 
with chimneys, amongst the pulleys of the storehouses, cranes, cap- 
stans, and all the implements of the vast and ceaseless toil. A foggy 
smoke, penetrated by the sun, wraps them in its russet veil ; it is the 
heavy and smoky air of a great hot-house ; soil and man, light and 
air, all is transformed by work. If you enter one of these docks, the 
impression will be yet more overwhelming : each resembles a town ; 
always ships, still more ships, in a line, showing their heads; their 
hollowed sides, their copper chests, like monstrous fishes under their 
breastplate of scales. When we descend below, we see that this breast- 
plate is fifty feet high; many are of three thousand or four thousand 
tons. Long clippers of three hundred feet are on the point of sailing 
for Australia, Ceylon, America. A bridge is raised by machinery ; it 
weighs a hundred tons, and only one man is needed to raise it. Here 
are the wine stores — there are thirty thousand tuns of port in the 
cellars ; here the place for hides, here for tallow, here for ice. The 
universe tends to this centre. Like a heart, to which the blood flows, 
and from which it pours, money, goods, business arrive hither from the 
four quarters of the globe, and flow thence to all the quarters of the 
world. And this circulation seems natural, so well is it conducted. The 
cranes turn noiselessly ; the tuns seem to move of themselves ; a little 
ear rolls them at once, and without effort ; the bales descend by their 
own w .'ight on the inclined planes, which lead them to their place. 
Clerks, without flurry, call out the numbers; men push or pull without 
confusion, calmly husbanding their labour ; whilst the cool master, in hig 
bla:jk hat, gravely, with spare gestures, and without one word, directs. 
Now take rail and go to Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Man- 
chester, to see their industry. As you advance into the coal country, 
the air is darkened with smoke ; the chimneys, high as obelisks, are 
crowded by hundreds, and cover the plain as far as you can see ; mul- 
tiplied diagonal lines, lofty buildings, in red monotonous brick, pas« 
before the eyes, like rows of economical and busy beehives. Th« 
blast-furnaces flame through the smoke ; I counted sixteen in one group 



B26 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK l^ 

The lefuse of minerals is heaped up like mountains ; the engines run 
like black ants, with monotonous and violent motion, and suddenly wa 
find ourselves swallowed up in a monstrous town. This manufactory 
has five thousand hands, one mill 300,000 spindles. The Manchester 
»varehouses are Babylonian edifices, a hundred and twenty yards wide and 
long, in six storeys. In Liverpool there are 5000 ships along the Mersey, 
which choke one another up ; more wait to enter. The docks are six 
mih's long, and the cotton warehouses on the border extend their vast 
red rampart out of sight. All things here seem built in unmeasured 
proportions, and as though by colossal arms. You enter a mill ; nothing 
but iron pillars, thick as tree-trunks, cylinders as broad as a man ; loco- 
motive shafts like vast oaks, notching machines which send up iron chips, 
rollerswhich bend sheet-iron like paste, fly-wheels which become invisible 
by the swiftness of their revolution. Eight workmen, commanded by 
A kind of peaceful colossus, pushed into and pulled from the fire a tree 
of red iron as big as my body. Coal has produced all this growth. 
England has twice as much coal as the remainder of the w^orld. Add 
brick, the great schists, which are close to the surface, and the estuaries 
filled by the sea, so as to make natural ports. Liverpool and Man- 
chester, and about ten towns of 40,000 to 100,000 souls, are springing 
up like plants in the basin of Lancashire. Glance over the map, and you 
see the districts shaded with black — Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham, 
Wales, all Ireland, which is one block of coal. The old antediluvian 
forests, accumulating here their fuel, have stored up the power wdiich 
moves matter, and the sea furnishes the true road by which matter 
can be transported. Man himself, mind and body, seems made to 
profit by these advantages. His muscles are resistive, and his mind 
can support tedium. He is less subject to weariness and disgust than 
other men. He works as well in the tenth hour as in the first. No one 
handles machines better ; he has their regularity and precision. Two 
workmen in a cotton-mill do the work of three, or even four, French 
workmen. Look now in the statistics how many leagues of stuffs they 
fabricate every year, how many millions of tons they export and im- 
port, how many tens of millions they produce and consume ; add the 
industrial or commercial states they have founded, or are foundingj in 
America, China, India, Austraha; and then, perhaps, reckoning men 
and value, — considering that their capital is seven or eight limes 
greater than that of France, that their population has doubled in fifty 
years, that their colonies, wherever the climate is healthy, are becoming 
new Englands, — you will obtain some notion, very slight, very imper- 
fect, of a work whose magnitude the eyes alone can measure. 

There remains yet one of its parts to explore — cultivation. From 
the railway carriage we see quite enough to understand it : a field 
with a hedge, then another field with another hedge,^ and so on ; at 
times vast squares of radishes, all in line, clean, glossy; no forests, 
here and there only a grove. The country is a great kitchen-garden 



OHAP. Ill.j THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 32'i 

— a manufactory of grass and meat. Nothing is left to natxire and 
chance ; all is calculated, regulated, arranged to produce and to bring 
in profits. If you look at the peasants, you find no more genuine 
peasants ; nothing like French peasants, — a sort of fellahs, akin to th» 
soil, mistrustful and uncultivated, separated by a gulf from the citizens. 
The countryman here is like an artisan ; and, in fact, a field is a 
manufactory, with a farmer for a foreman. Proprietors and farmers, 
they lavish capital like great contractors. They have drained ; they 
have a rotation of crops ; they have produced a cattle, the richest in 
returns of any in the world; they have introduced steam-enginea into 
cultivation, and into the breeding of cattle ; they perfect already per- 
fect stables. The greatest of the aristocracy take a pride in it ; many 
country gentlemen have no other occupation. Prince Albert, near 
Windsor, had a model farm, and this farm brought in money. A few- 
years ago the papers announced that the Queen had discovered a cure 
for the turkey- disease. Under this universal effort,^ the products of 
agriculture have doubled in fifty years. The English acre receives 
eight or ten times more manure than the French hectare ; though of 
inferior quality, they have made it produce double. Thirty persons are 
enough for this work, when in France forty would be required for half 
thereo'; You come upon a farm, even a small one, say of a hundred 
acres ; you find respectable, worthy, well-clad men, who express them- 
selve-3 clearly and sensibly ; a large, wholesome, comfortable dwelling — 
often a little porch, with climbing plants — a well-kept garden, ornamental 
tree?, the inner walls whitewashed yearly, the floors washed weekly — an 
almost Dutch cleanness; therewith plenty of books — travels, treatises 
on agriculture, a few volumes of religion or history ; first of all, the 
great family Bible. Even in the poorest cottages we find a few objects 
of comfort and recreation : a large cast-iron stove, a carpet, nearly 
always a paper on the walls, one or two moral novels, and always thft 
Bible. The cottage is clean ; the habits are orderly ; the plates, with 
their blue pattern, regularly arranged, look well above the shining 
dresser ; the red floor-tiles have been swept ; there are no broken or 
dirty panes ; no doors off hinges, shutters unhung, stagnant poo^ 
straggling dunghills, as amongst the French villagers ; the little garden 
is kept free from weeds : frequently roses and honeysuckle round 
the door ; and on Sunday we can see the father, the mother, seated 
by a well-scrubbed table, with tea and butter, enjoy their home^ and 
the order they have established there. In France the peasant on 
Sunday leaves his hut to visit his land: what he aspires to is posses- 
sion ; what Englishmen love is comfort. There is no land in which 
they demand more in this respect. An Englishman said to me, not 
very long ago : 'Our great vice is the strong desire v.'e feel for all 
good and comfortable things. We have too many wants. As soon 



' iie<">nce de Lavergr<^, ICrviinnif' vh-rale en AngUterre, p'ta^on 



328 MOL>EKi\ LIFE. [BOOK IV 

as our peasants have a little money, they buy the best sherry and ^hi 
best clothes, instead of buying a bit of land.' ^ 

As we rise to the upper classes, this taste becomes stronger. Iq 
the middle ranks a man burdens himself with toil, to give his -wife 
gaudy dresses, and to fill his house with the hundred thousand 
baubles of qiiasi-luxury. Higher still, the inventions of comfort are so 
multiplied that people are bored by them ; there are too many newS" 
papers and reviews on your bed-table at night ; too many kinds of 
carpets, washstands, matches, towels in your dressing-room ; their re- 
finement is endless ; you would think, thrusting your feet in olippers, 
that twenty generations of inventors were required to bring sole and 
lining to this degree of perfection. You cannot conceive clubs better 
furnished with necessaries and superfluities, houses so well provided 
and managed, pleasure and abundance so cunningly understood, ser- 
vants so reliable, respectful, speedy. Servants in the last census were 
*the most numerous class of Her Majesty's subjects;' in England 
there are five where in France they have two. When I saw in Hyde 
Park the rich young ladies, the gentlemen riding and driving, when I 
reflected on their country houses, their dress, their parks and stables, 
I said to myself that verily this people is constituted after the heart of 
economists: I mean, that it is the greatest producer and the greatest 
consumer in the world ; that none is more apt at squeezing out and 
absorbing the quintessence of things ; that it has developed its wants 
at the same time as its resources ; and you involuntarily think of those 
insects which, after their metamorphosis, are suddenly provided with 
teeth, feelers, unwearying claws, admirable and terrible instruments, 
fitted to dig, saw, build, do everything, but furnished also with inces- 
sant hunger and four stomachs. 

HI. 
How is the ant-hill governed? As the train advances, you perceive, 
amidst farms and cultivation, the long wall of a park, the fa9ade i f a 
castle, more generally of some vast ornate mansion, a sort of couiitry 
town-house, of inferior architecture, Gothic or Italian pretensions, but 
surrounded by beautiful lawns, large trees scrupulously j)reserved. 
Here live the rich bourgeois ; I am wrong, the word is false — I must saj^ 
^jentlemen : bourgeois is a French word, and signifies the lazy rich, who 
devote themselves to rest, and take no part in public life ; here it ia 
quite different ; the hundred or hundred and twenty thousand families, 
who spend thousands and more annually, really govern the country. 
And this is no government imported, implanted artificially and from 

* De Foe w<as of the same opinion, and pretended that economy was not an 
English virtue, and that an Englishman can hardly live with twenty shillings a 
week, while a Dutchman with the same money becomes wealthy, and leaves his 
children very well off. An English labourer lives poor and wietchedly with niaa 
aliilliAigs a week, whilst a Dutchman lives very comfortably with the same salary. 



CJtiAP, HI] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 329 

with out ; it is a spontaneous and natural government. As soon ai 
men wish to act together, tliey need leaders ; every association, volun- 
tary or not, has one ; whatever it be, state, army, ship, or commonalty, 
it car^not do without a guide to find the road, enter it, call the rest, 
Bcold the laggards. In vain we call ourselves independent; as soon as 
we march in a body, we need a leader ; we look right and left expect- 
ing bim to show himself. The great thing is to pick him out, to have 
th'j best, and not to follow another in his stead ; it is a great advantage 
that there should be one, and that we should acknowledge him. These 
men, without popular election, or selection from above, find him ready 
made and recognised in the influential landholder, an old county matt, 
powerful through his connections, dependants, tenantry, interested above 
all else by his great possessions in the affairs of the neighbourhood, 
expert in the concerns which his family have managed for three gene- 
rations, most fitted by education to give good advice, and by his influ- 
ence to lead the common enterprise to a good result. In fact, it is 
thus that things falls out; rich men leave London by hundreds every 
day to spend a day in the country ; there is a meeting on the affairs oi 
the county or of the church ; they are magistrates, overseers, presidents 
of all kinds of societies, and this gratuitously. One has built a bridge 
at his own expense, another a church or a school; many establish 
public libraries, with warmed and lighted rooms, in which the villagers 
in the evening find the papers, games, tea, at low charges, — in a word, 
simple amusements which may keep them from the gin-shop. Many 
of them give lectures; their sisters or daughters teach in Sunday 
schools ; in fact, they give to the ignorant and poor, at their own ex- 
pense, justice, administration, civilisation. I have seen one, having 
an enormous fortune, who on Sunday in his school taught singing 
to little girls. Lord Palmerston offered his park for archery meet- 
ings; the Duke of Marlborough opens his daily to the public, 're- 
questing (this is the word used) the public not to destroy the grass.' 
A firm and proud sentiment of duty, a genuine public spirit, a 
liberal notion of what a gentleman owes to himself, gives them a 
moral superiority which sanctions their command; probably from the 
thno of the old Greek cities, no education or condition has been seen in 
which the innate nobility of man has received a more wholesome or 
Ck mpleter development. In short, they are magistrates and patrons 
from their birth, leaders of the great enterprises in which capital ia 
risked, promoters of all charities, all improvements, all reforms, and 
wJh the honours of command they accept its burdens. For observe, 
in contrast with other aristocracies, they are well educated, liberal, and 
maich in the van, not at the tail of public civilisation. They are not 
drawing-room exquisites, as our marquises of the eighteenth century: i 
lord visits his fisheries, studies the system of liquid manures, speaks to 
the purpose about cheese ; and his son is often a better rower, walker, 
Rnd boxer than the farmers. They are not malcontents, like the French 



a30 MODERN LIFE. [BOOK IV 

nobility, behind their age, devoted to whist, and regretting the middle* 
ages. They have travelled through Europe, and often farther; they knovf 
languages and literature; their daughters read Schiller, Manzoni, and 
Lamartine with ease. By means of reviews, newspapers, innumerat)? 
volumes of geography, statistics, and travels, they have the world at 
their fir ger- ends. They support and preside over scientific societies j 
if ths fixje inquirers of Oxford, amidst conventional rigour, have, been 
&):l- to give their explanations of the Bible, it is because they knew 
themselves to be backed by enlightened laymen of the highest rank* 
There is also no danger that this aristocracy of talent should become 
a set; it renews itself; a great physician, a profound lawyer, an 
illustrious general, become ennobled and found families. When a 
manufacturer or merchant has gained a large fortune, he first thinks of 
acquiring an estate ; after two or three generations his family has taken 
root, and shares in the government of the country : in this way the 
best saplings of the great popular forest come to recruit the aristocratic 
nursery. Mark, in the last place, that the institution is not isolated. 
Throughout there are leaders recognised, respected, followed with con- 
fidence and deference, Avho feel their responsibility, and carry the burden 
as well as the advantages of the dignity. There is such an institution 
in marriage, by which the man incontestably rules, followed by his 
wife to the end of the world, faithfully waited for in the evenings, un- 
shackled in his business, of which he does not speak. There is such in 
the family, when the father^ can disinherit his children, and keeps up 
with them, in the most petty circumstances of daily life, a degree of 
authority and dignity unknown in France : if in England a son, through 
ill-health, has been away for some time from his home, he dare not come 
into the county to see his father without leave ; a servant to whom I gave 
my card refused to take it, saying, * Oh I I dare not now. Master is 
dining.' There is n^spect in all ranks, in the workshops as in the fields, 
in the army as in the family. Throughout there are inferiors and 
superiors who feel themselves so ; if the mechanism of established power 
were thrown out of gear, we should behold it reconstructed of itself; 
below the legal constitution is the social, and human action is forced 
into a solid mould prepared for it. 

It is because this aristocratic network is strong that human action 
rar. be free ; for local and natural government being rooted through- 
out, like ivy, by a hundred small, ever-growing fibres, the sudden mo ve- 
meia'S violent as they are, are not capable of pulling it up altogether. Jn 
vain men speak, cry out, call meetings, hold processions, form leagues 
they will net demolish the state ; they have not to deal with a set of 
functionaries who have no real hold on the country, and who, like all 
external applications, can be replaced by another set : the thirty oi 

' In familiar language, tlie father is called in England the governor ; to 
France le hanqiiier. 



CHAP. III. I THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 331 

forty gentlemen of a district, rich, influential, trusted, useful as they 
are, will become the leaders of the district. * As we see in the papers, 
says Montesquieu, speaking of England, ' that they ar i playing the 
devil, we fancy that the people will revolt to-morrow.' Not at all, it is 
their way of speaking ; they only talk loudly and rudely. Two dayf 
after I arrived in London, I saw advertising men walking with a placard 
on their backs and their stomachs, bearing these words ; ' Great usurpa- 
tion! Outrage of the Lords, in their vote on the budget, against the right? 
of the people.' But then the placard added, * Fellow-countrymen, peti- 
tion!' Things end thus ; they argue in free terms, and if the reasoning 
is good it will spread. Another time in Hyde Park, orators were de- 
claiming in the open air against the Lords, who were called rogues - 
The audience applauded or hissed, as it pleased them. * After all,' said 
an Englishman to me, * this is how we manage our business. With ua, 
when a man has an idea, he writes it ; a dozen men think it good, 
and then all contribute money to publish it ; this creates a little associa- 
tion, which grows, prints cheap pamphlets, gives lectures, then petitions, 
calls forth public opinion, and at last takes the matter into Parliament ; 
Parliament refuses or delays it; yet the matter gains weight: the 
majority of the nation pushes, forces open the doors, and then you'll 
have a law passed.' It is open to every one to do this ; workmen can 
league against their masters ; in fact, their associations embrace all 
England ; at Preston I believe there was once a strike which lasted more 
than six months. They will sometimes mob, but never revolt ; they know 
political economy by this time, and understand that to do violence to 
capital is to suppress work. Above all, they are cool ; here, as elsewhere, 
temperament has great influence. Anger, blood does not rise at once 
to their eyes, as in the southern nations ; a long interval always separates 
idea from action, and wise arguments, repeated calculations, occupy 
the interval. Go to a meeting, consider men of every condition, the 
ladies who come for the thirtieth time to hear the same speech, full 
of figures, on education, cotton, wages. They do not seem to be 
wearied ; they can bring argument against argument, be patient, pro- 
test gravely, recommence their protest ; they are the same people who 
rait for the train on the platform, without getting crushed, and whc 
fjlay cricket for a couple of hours without raising their voices or 
quarrelling for an instant. Two coachmen, who run into one another, 
iet themselves free without storming or scolding. Thus their political 
association endures ; they can be free because they have natui-al leaders 
and patient nerves. After all, the state is a machine like other machines ; 
try to have good wheels, and take care you don't break them ; English- 
men have the double advantage of possessing very good ones, and oi 
aaanaging them coolly. 

IV. 
BxLch is our Englishman, with his provision and his administrati-on 



<532 MODERN LIFE. IBOOK IV 

Now fehat he has provided for private comfort and public security, 
what will he do, and how will he govern himself in this higher, nobler 
domain, to which man climbs to contemplate beauty and truth ? At 
all events, the arts do not lead him there. That vast London is monu- 
mental ; but, like the castle of a man who has become rich, everything 
there is well preserved and costly, but nothing more. Those loftj 
iiouses of massive stone, burdened with porches, short columns, GreeV 
lecorations, are generally gloomy ; the poor columns of the monu- 
ments seem washed with ink. On Sunday, in foggy weather, you 
would think yourself in a cemetery ; the perfect readable names on 
the houses, in brass letters, are like sepulchral inscriptions. There is 
nothing beautiful: at most, the varnished middle-class houses, witli 
their patch of green, are pleasant ; we feel that they are well kept, 
commodious, capital for a business man who wants to amuse himself 
and unbend after a hard day's work. But a finer and higher sentiment 
could relish nothing there. As to the statues, it is difficult not to laugh 
at them. You should see the Duke of Wellington, with his cocked hat 
with iron plumes ; Nelson, with a cable which serves him for a tail, 
planted on his column, and pierced by a lightning-conductor, like a 
rat impaled on the end of a pole ; or again, the half-dressed Waterloo 
Generals, crowned by Victory. The English, though flesh and bone, 
seem manufactured out of sheet-iron : how much more so will English 
statues look ? They pride themselves on their painting ; at least they 
study it with surprising minuteness, in the Chinese fashion ; they can 
paint a bottle of hay so exactly, that a botanist will tell the species of 
every stalk ; one artist lived three months under canvas on a heath, so 
that he might thoroughly know heath. Many are excellent observers, 
especially of moral expression, and succeed very well in showing you the 
soul in the face; we are instructed by looking at them ; we go through 
a course of psychology with them ; they can illustrate a novel ; you 
would be touched by the poetic and dreamy meaning of many of their 
landscapes. But in genuine painting, picturesque painting, they are 
revolting. I do not think there were ever laid upon canvas such crude 
colours, such stiff forms, stuffs so much like tin, such glaring contrast a 
Fancy an opera with nothing but false notes in it. You may see land* 
scapes painted blood -red, trees which split the canvas, trjrf vliich 
looks like a pot of overturned green, Christs looking as if ihey were 
baked and preserved in oil, expressive stags, sentimental dogs, ijji- 
dressed women, to whom we should like forthwith to offer a garment. 
In music, they import the Italian opera; it is an orange tree kept 
up at great cost in the midst of beetroots. The arts require idle, 
delicate minds, not stoics, especially not puritans, easily shocked by 
dissonance, inclined to sensuous pleasure, employing their long periods 
of leisure, their free reveries, in harmoniously arranging, and with no 
other object but enjoyment, forms, colours, and sounds. I need not 
Bay that hers the bent of mind is quite opposite ; and we see clearl;j 



CHAF 111.] THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 333 

enough wliy, amidst these combative politicians, these laborious tmlers, 
these men of energetic action, art can but produce exotic or ill-shaped 
truit. 

Not so in science ; but in science there are two divisions. It may 
be treated as a business, to glean and verify observations, to combine 
experiences, to arrange figures, to weigh proba'uilities, to discover facts, 
partial laws, to possess laboratories, libraries, societies charged with 
storing and increasing positive knowledge ; in all this Englishmen 
excel. They have even Lyells, Darwins, Owens, able to embrace and 
renew a science ; in the construction of the vast edifice, the industrious 
masons, masters of the second rank, are not lacking ; ,t is the great 
architects, the thinkers, the genuine speculative mind?, who fail them ; 
philosophy, especially metaphysics, is as little indigenous here as music 
and painting ; they import it, and yet they leave the best part on the 
road. Carlyle was obliged to transform it into a mystical poetry, 
humorous and prophetic fancies ; Hamilton touched upon it only, to de- 
clare it chimerical ; Stuart Mill, Buckle, only seized the most palpable 
part,— a heavy residuum, positivism. It is not in metaphysics that the 
English mind can find its vent. It is on other objects that the spirit 
of liberal inquiry — the sublime instincts of the mind, the craving for 
the universal and the infinite, the desire of ideal and perfect things — 
will fall back. Let us take the day on which the hush of business 
leaves a free field for disinterested aspirations. There is no more 
striking spectacle for a foreigner than Sunday in London. The streets 
are empty, and the churches full. An Act of Parliament forbids any 
playing to-day, public or private ; the public-houses are not allowed to 
harbour people during divine service. Moreover, all respectable people 
are at worship, the seats are full : it is not as in France, where there 
ftre none but servants, old women, a few sleepy people, of private means, 
and a sprinkling of elegant ladies ; but in England we see men well 
dressed, or at least decently clad, and as many gentlemen as ladies 
in church. Eeligion does not remain out of the pale, and below the 
standard of public culture ; the young, the learned, the best of the 
pation, all the upper and middle classes, continue attached to it. The 
clergyman, even in a village, is not a peasant's son with not much polish, 
k'l esh from college, shackled in a cloistral education, separated from society 
hy celibacy, half-buried in mediosvalism. He is a man of the times, often 
a man of the world, often of good family, with the interests, habits, 
liberties of other men ; keeping sometimes a carriage, several servants, 
having elegant manners, generally well informed, who has read and still 
reads. On ail these grounds he is able to be in his neighbourhood the 
leader of ideas, as his neighbour the squire is the leader of business. li 
he does not walk in the same path as the free-thinkers, he is not more 
than a step or two behind them ; a modern man, a Parisian, can talk with 
him on all lofty themes, and not perceive a gulf between his own mind 
and the clergyman's. Strictly speaking, he is a layman like you; the only 



334 MODERN l-IFE. FBOOR f* 

difference is. tliat lie is a superintendent of morality. Even in his exter- 
nals, except for occasional bands and the perpetual white tie, he is lilta 
you : at first sight, you would take him for a professor, a magistrate, ci 
a notary ; and his sermons agree with his person. He does not anathe- 
matise the world ; in this his doctrine is modern ; he follows the broad 
path in which the Renaissance and the Reformation have impelled religion. 
When Cliristianity arose, eigliteen centuries ago, it was in the East, in th? 
land of th: Essenes and Therapeutists, amid universal decay and despair, 
when the only deliverance seemed a renunciation of the woild, an aban- 
donment of civil life, destruction of the natural instincts, and a daily 
waiting for the kingdom of God. When it rose again, three centuri*"-* 
ago, it was in th§ West, amongst laborious and half-free peoples, amidst 
universal restoration and invention, when man, improving his condition, 
regained confidence in his worldly destiny, and widely expanded his 
faculties. No wonder if the new Protestantism differs from the ancient 
Christianity, if it enjoins action instead of preaching asceticism, if it 
authorises comforts in place of prescribing mortification, if it honours 
marriage, work, patriotism, inquiry, science, all natural affections and 
faculties, in place of praising celibacy, retreat, scorn of the age, ecstasy, 
captivity of mind, and mutilation of the heart. By this infusion of the 
modern spirit, Christianity has received new blood, and Protestantism 
now constitutes, with science, the two m.otive organs, and, as it were, 
the double heart of European life. For, in accepting the rehabilitation 
of the world, it has not renounced the purification of man's heart ; on 
the contrary, it is towards this that it has directed its whole effort. It 
has cut off from religion all the portions which are not this very purifi- 
cation, and, by reducing it, has strengthened it. An institution, like a 
machine, and like a man, is the more powerful for being more special : 
a work is done better because it is done singly, and because we con- 
centrate ourselves upon it. By the suppression of legends and religious 
practices, human thought in its entirety has been concentrated on a 
single object — moral amelioration. It is of this men speak in the 
churches, gravely and coldly, with a succession of sensible and solid 
arguments ; how a man ought to reflect on his duties, mark them one 
by one in his mind, make for himself principles, have a sort of inner 
code, freely accepted and firmly established, to which he may refer *11 
his actions without bias or hesitation ; how these principles may ha 
rooted by practice ; how unceasing examination, personal effort, the 
continual edification of himself by himself, ought slowly to confirm oui 
resolution in uprightness. These are the questions which, with a multi- 
tude of examples, proofs, appeals to daily experience,-" are brought forward 
in all the pulpits, to develop in man a voluntary reformation, a guard and 
empire over himself, the habit of self-restraint, and a kind of modsrn 

' Let the reader, amongst many others, perase the sermons of Dr. iii-nol4 
delivered in the School Chapel at Viugby. 



*;HAP lll.j THE PAST A>;D THE PRESENT. 335 

ntoicism, almost as noble as the ancient. On all hands laymen help in tliis; 
and moral warning, given by literature as well as by theology, unites in 
harmony, society, and the clergy. Hardly ever does a book paint a man 
in a disinterested manner : critics, philosophers, historians, novelists, poet4 
even, give a lesson, maintain a theory, unmask or punish a vice, repre- 
sent a temptation overcome, relate the history of a character becoming 
formed. Their exact and minute description of sentiments ends always 
in appnjbation or blame ; they are not artists, but moralists : it is onl^ 
in a Protestant country that you will find a novel entirely occupied in 
desr;ribing the progress of moral sentiment in a child of twelve.^ All 
co-operate in this direction in reHgion, and even in the mystic part of it. 
Byzantine distinctions and subtleties have been allowed to fall away ; 
Germanic curiosities and speculations have not been introduced ; the 
God of conscience reigns alone ; feminine sweetness has been cut off; we 
do not find the husband of souls, the lovable consoler, whom the Imita- 
tion of Jesus Christ follows even in his tender dreams ; something manly 
breathes from religion in England ; we find that the Old Testament, 
the severe Hebrew Psalms, have left their imprint here. It is no longer 
an mtimate friend to Avhom a man confides his petty desires, his small 
troubles, a sort of affectionate and quite human priestly guide ; it is no 
longer a king whose relations and courtiers he tries to gain over, and from 
whom he looks for favours or places ; we see in him only a guardian of 
duty, and we speak to him of nothing else. What we ask of him ig 
the strength to be virtuous, the inner renewal by which we become 
capable of always doing good ; and such a prayer is in itself a sufficient 
lever to tear a man from his weaknesses. What we know of the Deity 
is that he is perfectly just ; and such a reliance suffices to represent all 
the events of life as an approach to the reign of justice. Strictly 
speaking, justice alone exists ; the world is a figure which conceals it, 
but heart and conscience sustain it, and there is nothing important or 
true in man but the embrace by which he holds it. So speak the old 
grave prayers, the severe hymns which are sung in the church, ac- 
companied by the organ. Though a Frenchman, and brought up in a 
different religion, I heard them with sincere admiration and emotion. 
Serious and grand poems, which, opening a path to the Infinite, let a 
ray ot light into the limitless darkness, and satisfy the deep poetic 
instincts, the vague desire of sublimity and melancholy, which this race 
bas manifested from its origin, and which it has preserved U the end. 



At the basis of the present as of the past ever reappears an Innei 
and persistent cause, the character of the race ; transmission and climat€ 
have maintained it ; a violent perturbation — the Norman Conquest — ■ 

* 27^6 Wide, Wide World, by Elizabutli W'etlicrcU (an American book) 
Sec also the novels of Miss Yonge, and, above all, those of Georo-o Eliot 



33b MODERN JiFK [BOOK l^ 

warped it ; finally, after various oscillatior/s, it was mariifested by tl e 
conception of a special ideal, which gradually fashioned or pioduzed 
religion, literature, institutions. Thus fixed and expressed, it vrm 
thenceforth the mover of the rest ; it explains the present, on it de- 
pends the future ; its force and direction will produce the present and 
future civilisation. Now that great historic violences — I mean the 
destructions and enslavements of peoples — have become almost im« 
practicable, each nation can develop its life according to its own c( :n» 
ception of life ; the chances of a war, a discovery, have no hold but on 
details ; national inclinations and aptitudes alone now draw the great 
features of a national history ; when twenty-five million men conceive 
the good and useful after a certain type, they will seek and end by 
attaining this kind of the good and useful. The Englishman has 
henceforth his priest, his gentleman, his manufacture, his comfort, and 
his novel. If you wish to seek in what sense this work will alter, 
you must seek in what sense the central conception will alter. A 
vast revolution has taken place during the last three centuries in 
human intelligence, — like those regular and vast uprisings which, di* 
placing a continent, displace all the prospects. We know that positive 
discoveries go on increasing day by day, that they will increase daily 
more and more, that from object to object they reach the most lofty, 
that they begin by renewing the science of man, that their usefu. 
application and their philosophical consequences are ceaselessly un- 
folded ; in short, that their universal encroachment will at last com- 
prise the whole human mind. From this body of invading truths 
springs in addition an original conception of the good and the useful, 
and, moreover, a new idea of state and church, art and industry, 
philosophy and religion. This has its power, as the old idea had ; it 
is scientific, if the other was national ; it is supported on proved facts, 
if the other was upon established things. Already their opposition ia 
being manifested ; already their results begin ; and we may affiim 
beforehand, tliat the proximate condition of English civilisatiaa will 
depend upon their divergence and their agreement. 



BOOK V. 

MODERN AUTHORS, 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Tht! translator thinks it due to M. Taine to state, that the fifth book, on thi 
Modern Authors, was written whilst Dickens, Thackeray, and Macaulay were stiU 
ftlive. He also gives the original preface of that book : — 

'This fifth book is the sequel to the History of English Literature; it is 
written on another plan, because the subject is different. The present period is 
not yet completed, and the ideas which govern it are in process of formation, that 
is, in the rough. We caanot therefore as yet systematically arrange them. \S hen 
slocu'-nents are still mere indications, history is necessarily reduced to studies ; 
Bjience is moulded on existence ; and our conclusions cannot be other than incom- 
plete, so long as the facts which suggest them are unfinished. Fifty years hence 
the history of this age may be written ; in the meantime we can but sketch it. 
I have selected from contemporary English writers the most original minds, the 
most consistent, and the most contrasted ; they may be regarded as specimens, 
representing the common features, the opposite tendencies, and consequently the 
general direction of the public miud. 

* They are only specimens. By the side of Macaulay and Carlyle we have his- 
torians like Hallam, Buckle, and Grote ; by the side of Dickens, novel-writers like 
Bulwer, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot, and many more ; by the 
side of Tennyson, poets like Elizabeth Browning ; by the side of Stuart Mill, 
philosophers like Hamilton, Bain, and Herbert Spencer. I pass over the vast 
number of men of talent who write anonymously in reviews, and who, like soldiers 
in an army, display at times more clearly than their generals the faculties and 
inclinations of their time and their country. If we look for the common marks 
in this multitude of varied minds, we shall, I think, find the two salient features 
which I have already pointed out. One of these features is proper to English 
civilisation, the other to the civilisation of the nineteenth century. The one is 
national, the other European. On the one hand, special to this people, theii 
literature is an inquiry instituted into humanity, altogether positive, and conse- 
quently only partially beautiful or philosophical, but very exact, minute, useful^ 
and moreover very moral ; and this to such a degree, that sometimes the generosity 
or purity of its aspirations raises it to a height which no artist or philosopher has 
transcended. On the other hand, in common with the various peoples of our age, 
this literature subordinates dominant creeds and institutions to private inquiry 
and established science — I mean, to that irresponsible tribunal which is erected 
in each man's individual ;onscience, and to that universal authority which tha 
diverse human judgments, mutually rectified, and controlled by practice, borrow 
from the verifications of experience, and from their own harmony. 

* Whatever be the judgment passed on these tendencies and on these doctrines, 
we cannot, I tliink, refuse them the merit of spontaneity and originality. They 
are living and thriving plants. The six writers, described in this volume, Lav* 

VOL. LI. y 



338 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

expressed efficacious and complete ideas on God, nature, man, science, religion, 
art, and morality. To produce such ideas we have in Europe at this day but tliioa 
nations — England, Germany, and France. Those of England will here be foum^ 
arranged, discussed, and compared with those of the other two thinking countries.* 



CHAPTER I. 

The Novel. — Dickensi 
§ 1. — The Author. 



I. Connection of tbe different elements of a talent— -Importance of the ima^ft< 

tive faculty. 
II. Lucidity and intensity of imagination in Dickens — Boldness and vehemenc* 

of his fancy — How with him inanimate objects are personified and im* 

passioned — Wherein his conception is akin to intuition — How he de 

scribes idiots and madmen. 
J II. The objects to which he dii-ects his enthusiasm — His trivialities and minute ■ 

ness — Wherein he resembles the painters of his country — Wherein h« 

differs from George Sand — Misa Ruth and Genevi^e — A journey in a 

coach. 
i V. Vehemence of the emotions which this kind of imagination must produce— 

His pathos — Stephen, the factory hand — His humour — Why he attains 

to buffoonery and caiicature — Recklessness and nervous exaggeration of 

his gaiety. 

§ 2.— The Public. 
English novels are compelled to be moral — Wherein this constraint modifies 
the idea of love — Comparison of love in George Sand and Dickens — 
Pictures of the young girl and the -*vife — Wherein this constraint qualiijea 
the idea of passion — Comparison of passions in Balzac and Dickens — In- 
convenience of this foregone necessity — How comic or odious masks ar« 
substituted for natural characters — Comparison of Pecksniff an^ Tarikjfc 
—Why unity of action is absent in Dickens. 

§ 3. — The Charactebs. 

I. Two classes of characters — Natural and instinctive characters — ^Artificial 

and positive characters — Preference of Dickens for the first — Aversion 

against the second. 
II. The hypocrite — Mr. Pecksnif!— Wherein he is Enc^lish— Comparison ; f 

Pecksniff" and Tartuffe — The positive man — Mr. Gradgiind— The picud 

man — Mr. Dombey — Wherein these characters are English. 
in. Childien — Wanting in French literature — Little Joas and David Copper 

Jield — Men of the lower orders. 
jLV. The ideal man according to Dickens — Wherein this conception corresponds 

to a public need — Opposition of culture and nature in England — Reasser- 

tion of sense and instinct oppressed by conventionalism and rule— Sue 

cess of Dickens. 



OHAP L] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 339 

WERE Dickens dead, his biography might be m-itten. On the 
day after the burial of a celebrated man, his friends and 
enemies apply themselves to the work ; his schoolfellows relate in the 
newspapers his boyish pranks ; another man recalls exactly, and word 
for word, the conversations he had with him a score of years ago. The 
lawyer, who manages the affairs of the deceased, draws up a list of the 
different offices he has filled, his titles, dates and figures, and reveals 
to tlie matter-of-fact readers how the money left has been invested, and 
Ldw the fortune has been made ; the grandnephews and second cousina 
publish an account of his acts of humanity, and the catalogue of his 
domestic virtues. If there is no literary genius in the family, they 
select an Oxford man, conscientious, learned, who treats the dead like 
a Greek author, amasses endless documents, involves them in endless 
comments, crowns the whole with endless discussions, and comes ten 
yean; later, some fine Christmas morning, with his white tie and placid 
smile, to present to the assembled family three quartos, of eight hundred 
pages, the easy style of which Avould send a German from Berlin to 
sleep. He is embraced by them with tears in their eyes ; they make 
him sit down ; he is the chief ornament of the festivities ; and his Avork 
is sent to the Edinburgh Review. The latter groans at the sight of the 
enormous present, and tells off a young and intrepid member of the 
staff to concoct some kind of a biography from the table of contents. 
Another advantage of posthumous biographies is, that the dead man is 
no longer there to refute either biographer or man of learning. 

Unfortunately Dickens is still alive, and refutes the biographies 
made of him. What is worse, he claims to be his own biographer. 
His translator in French once asked him for a few particulars of his 
life ; Dickens replied that he kept them for himself. Without doubt, 
David Copperjield^ his best novel, has much the appearance of a con- 
fession ; but where does the confession end, and how far does fiction 
embroider truth ? All that is known, or rather all that is told, is that 
Dickens was born in 1812, that he is the son of a shorthand-writer, 
that he was himself at first a shorthand- writer, that he was poor and 
unfortunate in his youth, that his novels, published in parts, have gain^^i 
for him a great fortune and an immense reputation. The reader iLxy 
conjecture the rest ; Dickens will tell him it one day, when he writ'Ai 
his memoirs. Meanwhile he closes the door, and leaves outside the too 
inquisitive folk who go on knocking. He has a right to do so. Tliough 
a man may be illustrious, he is not on that account public property ; he 
is not constrained to be confidential ; he still belongs to himself ; he may 
reserve of himself what he thinks proper. If we give our v/orks to our 
readers, we do not give our lives. Let us be satisfied with what Dickens 
has given us. Forty volumes suffice, and more than suffice, to enable ua 
to know a man well ; moreover, they show of him all that it is important 
to know. It is not through the accidental circumstance? of his life thai 
he belongs to history, but by his taient ; and his talent is in his books. 



840 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ^ 

A man*s genius h like a clock ; it has its mechanism, and amongst ita 
parts a mainspring. Find out this spring, show how it communicates 
movement to the others, pursue this movement from part to part down 
to the hands in which it ends. This inner history of genius does not 
depend upon the outer history of the man ; and it is worth more. 

§ 1. — ^The Author. 
I. 

The first question which should be asked in connection with an artist 
is this : How does he regard objects ? With what clearness, what 
energy, what force ? The reply defines his whole work beforehand : 
for in a writer of novels the imagination is the master faculty ; the aii 
of composition, good taste, appreciation of truth, depend upon it ; one 
degree more of vehemence destroys the style which expresses it, changes 
the characters which it produces, breaks the framework in which it is 
enclosed. Consider that of Dickens, and you will perceive therein the 
cause of his faults and his merits, his power and his excess. 

II. 

He has the painter in him, and the English painter. Never surely 
did a mind figure to itself with more exact detail or greater energy all 
the parts and tints of a picture. Read this description of a storm ; 
the images seem photographed by a dazzling electric light : 

* The eye, partaking of the quickness of the flashing light, saw in its every 
gleam a multitude of objects which it could not see at steady noon in fifty time« 
that period. Bells in steeples, with the rope and wheel that moved them ; ragged 
nests of birds in cornices and nooks ; faces full of consternation in the tilted wag- 
gons that came tearing past: their frightened teams ringing out a warning which 
the thunder drowned ; harrows and ploughs left out in fields ; miles upon miles 
cf hedge-divided country, with the distant fringe of trees as obvious as the scare- 
crow in the beanfield close at hand ; in a trembling, vivid, flickering instant, 
everything was clear and plain : then came a flush of red into the yellow light ; 
a change to blue ; a brightness so intense that there was nothing else but light ; 
•nd then the deepest and profoundest darkness. ' ^ 

An imagination so lucid and energetic cannot but animate inanimate 
ohjects without an effort. It provokes in the mind in which it works 
extraordinary emotions, and the author pours over the objects which 
he figures to himself, something of the ever- welling passion which over- 
flows in him. Stones for him take a voice, white walls swell out into 
big phantoms, black wells yawn hideously and mysteriously in the 
daikness; legions of strange creatures whirl shuddering over the fan- 
tastic landscape ; blank nature is peopled, inert matter moves. Bui 
the images remain clear ; in this madness there is nothing vague oi 

* Martin Chuzzleicit, ch. xlii. The translator has used the ' Charles Dick 
enB ' edition, 1868, 18 vols. 



CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. gAJ 

disorderly ; imaginary objects are designed with outlines as precise and 
details as numerous as real objects, and the dream is equal to the truth. 
There is, amongst others, a description of the night wind, quaint and 
powerful, which recalls certain pages of Notre Dame de Paris. Th« 
source of this description^ as of all those of Dickens, is pure imagination. 
He does not, like Walter Scott, describe in order to give his reader a 
map, and to lay down the locality of his drama. He does not, like 
Lor 1 Byron, describe from love of magnificent nature, and in order to 
displaj a splendid succession of grand pictures. He dreams neither of 
attaini ig exactness nor of selecting beauty. Struck with a certain 
spectajle, he is transported, and breaks out into unforeseen figures. 
Now it is the yellow leaves, pursued by the wind, fleeing and jostling, 
shivering, scared, in a giddy chase, lying in the furrows, drowned in the 
ditches, perching in the trees.^ Here it is the night wind, sweeping 
round a church, moaning as it tries with its unseen hand the windows 
and the doors, and seeking out some crevices by which to enter : 

* And when it has got in ; as one not findincj what he seeks, whatever that 
may be ; it wails and howls to issue forth again : and not content with stalking 
through the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the 
deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters : then flings itself 
despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Anon, 
it comes up stealthily, and creeps along the walls : seeming to read, in whispers, 
the Inscriptions sacred to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out shrilly, as 
vith laughter ; and at others, moans and cries as if it were lamenting. ' ^ 

Hitherto you have only recognised the sombre imagination of a man 
of the north. A little further you perceive the impassioned religion 
of a revolutionary Protestant, when he speaks to you of ' a ghostly 
sound too, lingering within the altar j where it seems to chaunt, in its 

* * It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on 
Buch poor creatures as the fallen leaves ; but this wind happening to come up with 
a great heap of them just after venting its humonr on the insulted Dragon, did so 
disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, 
rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking 
frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the 
extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury : for, not 
content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted 
them into the wheelwright's saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the 
yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and 
when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their 
heels ! 

* The seared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was : 
for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their 
pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure ; and they crept under 
the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hay -ricks, like bats ; and 
tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges ; and, in short, 
went anywhere for safety.' — {Martin Chuzslewit, ch. ii.) 

.' The C J limes first quarter. 



342 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped ; in 
defiance of the Tables of the Law, which look so fair and smooth, but 
are so flawed and broken. Ugh 1 Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly 
lound the fire I It has an awful voice, that wind at Midnight, singing 
m a church I ' But an instant after, the artist speaks again ; he lead? 
you to the belfry, and in the racket of the accumuhited words^ 39m' 
ii:unicates to your nerves the sensation of the aerial tempest. I'fe? 
irind whistles, blows, and gambols in the arches : 

* High up in the steeple,- where it is free to come and go through many an airy 
arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl 
the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver ! ' ^ 

Dickens has seen it all in the old belfry ; his thought is a mirror ; doI 
the smallest or ugliest detail escapes him. He has counted ' the iron 
rails ragged with rust;' * the sheets of lead,' wrinkled and shrivelled^ 
which crackle and heave astonished under the foot which treads them ; 
* the shabby nests ' which ' the birds stuff into corners ' of the mossy 
joists; the gray dust heaped up; ' the speckled spiders, indolent and fat 
with long security,' which, hanging by a thread, * swing idly to and fro 
in the vibration of the bells,' and Avhich on a sudden alarm climb up 
like sailors on their ropes, or ' drop upon the ground and ply a sccre 
of nimble legs to save a life.' This picture captivates us. Kept up 
at such a height, amongst the fleeting clouds which spread their 
shadows over the town, and the feeble liglits scarce distinguished in 
the mist, we feel a sort of vertigo ; and we hardly fail to discover, 
with Dickens, thought and a soul in the metallic voice of the chimea 
which inhabit this trembling castle. 

He makes a story out of them, and it is not the first. Dickens ia 
a poet ; he is as much at home in the imaginative world as in the 
actual. Here the chimey are talking to the old messenger, and con- 
soling him. Elsewhere it is the Cricket on the Hearth singing of all 
domestic joys, and bringing before the eyes of the desolate master the 
happy evenings, the sanguine hopes, the happiness, the quiet cheerful- 
ness which he has enjoyed, and which he has no longer In anothei 
tale it is the history of a sick and precocious child who feels itself dying, 
and who, sleeping in the arms of its sister, hears the distant song of tho 
murmuring waves which rocked him to sleep. Objects, with DickenSy 
take their hue from the thoughts of his characters His imagination 
is so lively, that it carries everything with it in the path which it 
chooses. If the character is happy, the stones, flowers, and clouda 
must be h^appy too ; if he is sad, nature must weep with him. Evet 
to the ugly houses in the street, all speak. The style runs thiough 
a swarm of visions ; it breaks out into the strangest oddities. Here ia 
a young girl, pretty and good, who crosses Fountain Court and the low 
purlieus in search of her brother. What more simple ? what even 

' 27i) Chimes, fivst quarter. 



CHAP, ij THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 343 

more vulgar? Dickens is carried away by it. To entertain her, he 
summons up birds, trees, houses, the fountain, the offices, law papers, 
and much besides. It is a folly, and it is all but an enchantment : 

* "Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain Court 
for the smoky shruhs to have any consciousness of the brightest and purest-hearted 
little woman in the world, is a question for gardeners, and those who are learned 
in thr; loves of plants. But, that it was a good thing for that same paved yard to 
have P'-ch a delicate little figure flitting through it ; that it passed like a smile 
from the grimy old houses, and the woi-n flagstones, and left them duller, darkei, 
sterner than before ; there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have 
leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood, that in her person 
Btolc on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the Law ; the chirping 
8parr)ws, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to 
listen to imaginary sky-larks, as so fresh a little creature passed; the dingy boughs, 
unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in 
a kindred gracefulness, to shed their benedictions on her graceful head ; old love- 
letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account 
among the heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and of which, ir 
their degeneracy, they formed a part, might have stirred and fluttered with a 
moment's recollection of their ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by. Any- 
thing might have happened that did not happen, and never will, for the love of 
Ruth.'» 

This is far-fetched, without doubt. French taste, always measured, 
revolts against these affected strokes, these dckly prettinesses. And 
yet this affectation is natural ; Dickens does not hunt after quaint- 
nesses ; they come to him. His excessive imagination is like a string 
too tightly stretched ; it produces of itself, without any violent shock, 
sounds not otherwise heard. 

We shall see how it is excited. Imagine a shop, no matter what 
shop, the most repulsive ; that of a marine store dealer. Dickens sees 
the barometers, chronometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, 
sextants, speaking trumpets, and so forth. He sees so many, sees 
them so clearly, they are crowded and crammed, they replace each 
other so forcibly in his brain, which they fill and litter; there art* 
BO many geographical and nautical ideas scattered under the glass- 
ca«es hung from the ceiling, nailed to the wall, they swamp him from 
60 many sides, and in such abundance, that he loses his judgment 
' 1 he shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to 
become a snug, sea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good sea- 
room, in the event of an unexpected launch, to work its way securely 
to any desert island in the world.' ^ 

The difference between a madman and a man of genius is not very 
great. Napoleon, who knew men, said so to Esquirol.® The same 
faculty leads us to glory or throws us in a cell in a bmatic asylum. 
It is visionary imagination which forges the phantoms of the madn^an 

' 3IaTtin Ghuzzlewit, ch. xlv. « Domhey and Son, ch. iv 

2 See VI.)]. i. note 1, page 84;). 



344: MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK f 

and creates the personages of an artist, and the classifications serving 
for the first may serve for the second. The imagination of Dickens is 
like that of monomaniacs. To plunge oneself into an idea, to b« 
absorbed by it, to see nothing else, to repeat it under a hundred fonns, 
to enlarge it, to carry it thus enlarged to the eye of the spectator, to 
dazzle and overwhelm him with it, to stamp it upon him so tenacious 
and impressive that he can never again tear it from his memory, — these 
are the great features of this imagination and style. In this, David 
Vopperjield is a masterpiece. Never did objects remain more visible 
and present to the memory of a reader than those which he describes. 
The old house, the parlour, the kitchen, Peggotty's boat, and above 
all the school-yard, are interiors whose relief, energy, and precision are 
unequalled. Dickens has the passion and patience of the painters of 
his nation ; he reckons his details one by one, notes the various hueii 
of the old tree-trunks ; sees the dilapidated cask, the green and broken 
flagstones, the chinks of the damp walls ; he distinguishes the strange 
smells which rise from them ; marks the size of the mossy spots, reads 
the names of the scholars carved on the door, and dwells on the form 
of the letters. And this minute description has nothing cold about it : 
if it is thus detailed, it is because the contemplation was intense ; it 
proves its passion by its exactness. We felt this passion without 
accounting for it ; suddenly we find it at the end of a page ; the bold- 
ness of the style renders it visible, and the violence of the phrase 
attests the violence of the impression. Excessive metaphors bring 
before the mind grotesque fancies. We feel ourselves beset by ex- 
travagant visions. Mr. Mell takes his flute, and blows on it, says 
Copperfield, * until I almost thought he would gradually blow his whole 
being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the keys.' ^ We 
think of Hoffmann's fantastic tales ; we are arrested by a fixed idea, 
and our head begins to ache. These eccentricities are the style of 
sickness rather than of health. 

* Tom Pinch, disabused at last, discovers that his master Pecksniff is a hypo- 
critical rogue. He had so long been used to steep the Pecksniff of his fancy in 
his tea, and spread him out upon his toast, and take him as a relish with his beer, 
that he made but a poor breakfast on the first morning after his expulsion.' * 

Therefore Dickens is admirable in the depicture of hallucinations. 
We see that he feels himself those of his characters, that he is engrossed 
by their ideas, that he enters into their madness. As an Englishman 
and a moralist, he has described remorse frequently. Perhaps it may 
be said that he makes a scarecrow of it, and that an artist is wrong to 
transform himself into an assistant of the policeman and the preacher. 
What of that ? The portrait of Jonas Chuzzle^Yit is so terrible, that we 
may pardon it for being usefuh Jonas, leaving his chamber secretly, 
has treacherously murdered his enemy, and thinks thencefortl td 

' l\(vid Copijcrfield, ch. v. ^ Martin Ghuzdewit , ch. xxxvi 



CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 346 

breathe in peace ; but the recollection of the murder gradually dis- 
organises his mind, like poison. He is no longer able to control hia 
ideas ; they bear him on with the fury of a terrified horse. He is for 
ever thinking, and shuddering as he thinks, of the chamber where they 
believed he slept. He sees this chamber, counts the pattern, pictures 
the long folds of the dark curtains, the hollows of the bed which he 
has disarranged, the door at which some one might have knocked. 
The more he wants to escape from this vision, the more he is immersed 
in it; it is a burning gulf in which he rolls, struggling, with cries and 
sweats of agony. He fancies himself lying in his bed, as he ought to 
be, and an instant after he sees himself there. He fears this other 
self. The dream is so vivid, that he is not sure that he is not in 
London. * He became in a manner his own ghost and phantom.' 
And this imaginary being, like a mirror, only redoubles before his 
conscience the image of assassination and punishment. He returns, 
and shuffles, with pale face, to the door of his chamber. He, a man of 
business, a reckoner, a coarse machine of positive reasoning, has become 
as fanciful as a nervous woman. He advances on tiptoe, as if he wen 
afraid of rousing the imaginary man, whom he pictures lying in the 
bed. At the moment when he turns the key in the lock, * a monstrouj 
fear beset his mind. What if the murdered man were there before 
him I* At last he enters, and buries himself in his bed, burnt up with 
fever. * He buried himself beneath the blankets,' so as to try not to 
see the cursed room ; he sees it more clearly still. The rustling of the 
coverings, the buzz of an insect, the beatings of his heart, all cry to 
him, Murderer I His mind fixed with ' an agony of listening ' on the 
door, he ends by thinking that people open it ; he hears it creak. His 
senses are distorted ; he dares not mistrust them, he dares no longer 
believe in them ; and in this nightmare, in which drowned reason leaves 
nothing but a chaos of hideous forms, he finds no reality but the inces- 
sant burden of his convulsive despair. Thenceforth all his thoughts, 
dangers, the whole world disappears for him in ' the one dread ques- 
tion only,' * When would they find the body in the wood ?* He forces 
himself to distract his thoughts from this ; they remain stamped and 
glued to it ; they hold him to it as by a chain of iron. He continually 
figures himself going into the wood, * going softly about it and about it 
among the leaves, approaching it nearer and nearer through a gap in 
the boughs, and startling the very flies, that were thickly sprinkled all 
over it, like heaps of dried currants.' And he always «^nds with the 
idea of the discovery ; he expects news of it, listening rapt to the cries 
and shouts in the street, hearing men come in and go out, coijae up and 
go down. At the same time, he has ever before his eyes that corpse 
* lying alone in the wood;' * he was for ever showing and presenting 
it, as it were, to every creature whom he saw. Look here I do yon 
know of this ? Is it found ? Do you suspect me ? ' If he had been 
condemned to bear the body in his arms, and lay it down for recogni- 



»J46 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

tion at the feet of every one he met, it could not have been more con* 
stantly with him, or a cause of more monotonous and dismal occupation 
than it was in this state of his mind.^ 

Jonas is on the verge of madness. There are other characterf 
quite mad. Dickens has drawn three or four portraits of madmen, 
very agreeable at first sight, but so true that they are in reality horrible. 
It needed an imagination like his, irregular, excessive, capable of fixed 
ideas, to exhibit the derangements of reason. Two especially there are, 
which make us laugh, and which make us shudder. Augustus, the 
gloomy maniac, who is on the point of marrying Miss Pecksniff ; and 
poor Mr. Dick, half an idiot, half a monomaniac, who lives with Miss 
Trotwood. To understand these sudden exaltations, these unforeseen 
gloominesses, these incredible summersaults of perverted sensibility; 
to reproduce these hiatuses of thought, these interruptions of reason- 
ing, this recurrence of a word, always the same, which breaks in upon 
a phrase attempted and overturns renascent reason ; to see the stupid 
smile, the vacant look, the foolish and uneasy physiognomy of these 
haggard old children who painfully involve idea in idea, and stumble 
at every step on the threshold of the truth which they cannot attain, ia 
a faculty which Hoifmann alone has possessed in an equal degree with 
Dickens. The play of these shattered reasons is like the creaking of a 
dislocated door ; it makes one sick to hear it. We find, if we like, a dis- 
cordant burst of laughter, but we discover still more easily a groan and 
a lamentation, and we are terrified to gauge the lucidity, strangeness, 
exaltation, violence of imagination which has produced such creations, 
which has carried them on and sustained them unbendingly to the end, 
and which found itself in its proper sphere in imitating and producing 
their irrationality. 

III. 

To what can this force be applied ? Imaginations differ not omy 
in their nature, but also in their object; after having gauged their 
energy, we must define their domain; in the broad world the artist 
makes a world for himself ; involuntarily he chooses a class of objects 
which he prefers ; others do not warm his genius, and he does not per- 
ceive them. Dickens does not perceive great things ; this is the second 
feature of his imagination. Enthusiasm seizes him in connection with 
everything, especially in connection with vulgar objects, a curiosity 
shop, a sign-post, a town-crier. He has vigour, he does not attain 
beauty. His instrument gives vibrating sounds, but not harmonious. 
If he is describing a house, he will draw it with geometrical clearness ; 
he will put all its colours in relief, discover a face and thought in the 
shutters and the pipes ; he will make a sort of human being out of the 
house, grimacing and forcible, which will chain our regard, and which 
We shall never forget ; but he will not see the grandeur of the long 

' Martin Chuzzleicit ch. li. 



CHAP. I.] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 347 

monumental line«, (lie calm majesty oC the broad sliadows boldly 
divided by the white plaster, the cheerfulness of the light which covers 
them, and becomes palpable in the black niches in which it is poured, 
as though to rest and to sleep. If he is painting a landscape, he will 
perceive the haws which dot with tlieir red fruit the leafless hedges, 
the thin vapour streaming from a distant stream, the motions of an 
insect in the grass : but the deep poetry which would have seized th€ 
author of Valentine and Andre will escape him. He will be lost, like 
the painters of his country, in the minute and impassioned observation 
of small things ; he will have no love of beautiful forms and fine colours. 
He will not perceive that the blue and the red, the straight line and 
the curve, are enough to compose vast concerts, which amidst so many 
various expressions maintain a grand serenity, and open up in the depths 
of the soul a spring of health and happiness. Happiness is lacking in 
him ; his inspiration is a feverish rapture, which does not select its 
objects, which animates promiscuously the ugly, the vulgar, the 
ridiculous, and which, communicating to his creations an indescribable 
jerkiness and violence, deprives them of the delight and harmony which 
in other hands they might have retained. Miss Ruth is a very pretty 
housekeeper ; she puts on her apron : what a treasure this apron is 1 
Dickens turns it over and over, like a milliner's shopman who wants to 
sell it. She holds it in her hands, then she puts it round her waist, 
ties the strings, spreads it out, smoothes it that it may fall well. What 
does she not do with her apron ? And how delighted is Dickens during 
these innocent occupations 1 He utters little exclamations of joyous 
fun. * Oh heaven, what a wicked little stomacher I ' He apostrophises 
a ring, he sports round Euth, claps his hands for pleasure. It is 
much worse when she is making the pudding ; there is a whole scene, 
dramatic and lyric, with exclamations, protasis, sudden inversions, as 
complete as a Greek tragedy. These kitchen refinements and this 
waggery of imagination make us think (by way of contrast) of the 
iviterior pictures of George Sand, of the roo^r of Genevieve the flower- 
girl. She, like Ruth, is making a useful ouject, very useful, since she 
will sell it to-morrow for tenpence ; but this object is a full-blown 
rose, whose fragile petals are moulded by her fingers as by the fingers 
of a fairy, whose fresh corolla is purpled with a vermilion as tender 
as that of her cheeks ; a fragile masterpiece which has bloomed on an 
eToning of poetic emotion, whilst from her window she beholds in the 
sky the piercing and divine eyes of the stars, and in the depths of her 
virgin heart murmurs the first breath of love. Dickens does not need 
such a sight for his transports ; a stage-coach throws him into dithy- 
rambs ; the wheels, the splashing, the cracking whip, the clatter of 
the horses, harness, the vehicle; here is enough to transport him, 
He feels sympathetically the motion of the coach ; it bears him along 
with it; he hears the gallop of the -horses in his brain, and goes off, 
Uttering this ode, which seems to proceed from the guard's horn : 



348 MODERN AUTHOKS [BOOK V. 

' Yoho, among the gathering shades ; making of no account the deep reflectiont 
of the trees, "but scampering on through light and darkness, all the same, as if the 
light of London, fifty miles aAvay, were quite enough to travel by, and some to 
spare. Yoho, beside the village green, where cricket-players linger yet, and 
every little indentation made in the fresh grass by bat or wicket, ball or player'i 
foot, sheds out its perfume on the night. Away with four fresh horses from the 
Bald-faced Stag, where topers congregate about the door admiring ; and the last 
team, with traces hanging loose, go roaming off towards the pond, until ybserved 
and shouted after by a dozen throats, wliile volunteering boys pursue them. Now, 
with a clattering of hoofs and striking out of fiery sparks, across the old stone 
bridge, and down again into the shadowy road, and through the open gate, and fai 
away, away, into the wold. Yoho ! 

* Yoho, behind there, stop that bugle for a moment I Come creeping over to the 
front, along the coach-roof, guard, and make one at this basket ! Not that we 
slacken in our pace the while, not we : we rather put the bits of blood upon their 
mettle, for the greater glory of the snack. Ah ! It is long since this bottle of old 
wine was brought into contact with the mellow breath of night, you may depend, 
and rare good stuff it is to wet a bugler's Avhistle with. Only try it. Don't be 
afraid of turning up your finger, Bill, another pull ! Now, take your breath, and 
try the bugle, Bill. There's music ! There's a tone ! *' Over the hills and far 
away," indeed, Yoho! The skittisli mare is all alive to-night. Yoho ! Yoho ! 

* See the bright moon ; high up before we know it ; making the earth reflect 
the objects on its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cottages, church steeple:^ 
blighted stumps and flourishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the sudden, 
and mean to contemplate their own fair images till morning. The poplars yonder 
rustle, that their quivering leaves may see themselves upon the ground. Not so 
the oak ; trembling does not become him ; and he watches himself in his stout 
old burly stedfastness, without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown gate, ill 
poised upon its creaking hinges, crippled and decayed, swings to and fro before ita 
glass like some fantastic dowager ; while our own ghostly likeness travels on, Yoho ! 
Yoho ! through ditch and brake, upon the ploughed land and the smooth, alou 5 
the steep hill-side and steeper wall, as if it Avere a phantom -Hunter. 

' Clouds too ! And a mist upon the Hollow ! Not a dull fog that hides it, but 
a light, airy, gauze-like mist, which in our eyes of modest admiration gives a new 
charm to the beauties it is spread before : as real gauze has done ere now, and 
would again, so please you, though we were the Pope. Yoho ! Why, noAV we 
travel like the Moon herself. Hiding this minute in a grove of trees, next minute 
in a patch of vapour, emerging now upon our broad, clear course, withdrawing 
now, but always dashing on, our journey is a counterpart of hers. Yoho I A 
match against the Moon ! 

* The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when Day comes leaping up. Yoho ! 
Two stages, and the country roads are almost changed to a continuous street. 
Yoho, past market gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and squares ; 
past waggons, coaches, carts ; past early workmen, late stragglers, drunken men, 
and sober caniers of loads ; past brick and mortar in its every sliape ; and in among 
the rattling pavements, where a jaunty-seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve ! 
Yoho, down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until an old 
Inn-yard is gained, and Tom Pinch, getting down, quite stunned and giddy, ii 
in London ! ' ^ 

* Martin Ghuzzlewit, eh. xxxvi. 



CHAP I.] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 349 

All this to tell us that Tom Pincli is come to London I This lit o! 
lyricism, in which the most poetic extravagances spring from the most 
vulgar commonplaces, like sickly flowers growing in a broken old 
flower- pot, displays in its natural and quaint contrasts all the sides of 
Dickens' imagination. We shall have his portrait if we picture to our- 
selves a man Avho, with a stewpan in one hand and a postilion's whip 
in the other, took to making prophecies, 

IV. 

The reader already foresees what vehement emotions this species of 
imagination will produce. The mode of conception in a man governs 
the mode of thought. When the mind, barely attentive, follows the 
indistinct outlines of a rough sketched image, joy and grief glide past 
him with insensible touch. When the mind, with rapt attention, 
penetrates the minute details of a precise image, joy and grief shake the 
whole man. Dickens has this attention, and sees these details : this ia 
why he meets everywhere with objects of exaltation. He never aban- 
dons his impassioned tone ; he never rests in a natural style and in 
simple narrative ; he only rails or weeps ; he writes but satires or 
elegies. He has the feverish sensibility of a woman who laughs loudly, 
or melts into tears at the sudden shock of the slightest occurrence. 
This impassioned style is extremely potent, and to it may be attributed 
half the glory of Dickens. The majority of men have only weak emo- 
tions. We labour mechanically, and yawn much ; three-fourths of the 
things leave us cold ; Ave go to sleep by habit, and we end by ceasing 
to remark the household scenes, petty details, stale adventures, which 
are the basis of our existence. A man comes, who suddenly renders 
them interesting ; nay, who makes them dramatic, changes them into 
objects of admiration, tenderness, and dread. Without leaving the 
fireside or the omnibus, we are trembling, our eyes full of tears, oi 
shaken by fits of inextinguishable laughter. We are transformed, our 
life is doubled, our soul had been vegetating ; now it feels, suffers, 
loves. The contrast, the rapid succession, the number of the senti- 
ments, add further to its trouble ; we are immersed for two hundred 
pages in a torrent of new emotions, contrary and increasing, which 
communicates its violence to the mind, which carries it away in digres- 
eiii>ns and falls, and only casts it on the bank enchanted and exhausted. 
It is an intoxication, and on a delicate soul the effect would be too 
forcible ; but it suits the English public, and that public has justified it. 

This sensibility can hardly have more than two issues — laughter and 
tears. There are others, but they are only reached by lofty eloquence } 
they are th3 path to sublimity, and we have seen that for Dickens this 
pa til is cut dIF. Yet there is no writer who knows better how to touch 
and melt ; he makes us weep, absolutely shed tears ; before reading 
him we did not know there was so much pity in the heart. The griei 
of a child, who wishes to be loved by his father, und whom his fathei 



350 MODERN AUTHORS. [BO^-K V 

does not love; tlie despairing love and slow death of a poor half- 
imbecile young man : all these pictures of secret grief leave an inefface- 
able impression. The tears which he sheds are genuine, and comparison 
is their only source. Balzac, G^jorge Sand, Stendahl have al'KD recorded 
human miseries ; is it possible to write without recording them ? But 
they do not seek them out, they hit upon them ; they do not dream of dis- 
playing them to us ; they were going elsewhere, and met them on their 
way. They love art better than men. They delight only in setting in 
motion the springs of passions, in combining large systems of events, in 
constructing powerful characters: they do not write from sympathy 
with the wretched, but from love of beauty. When you have finished 
George Sand's Mauprat, your emotion is not pure sympathy ; you feel, 
in addition, a deep admiration for the greatness and the generosity of 
love. When you have come to the end of Balzac's Le Pere Goriot, your 
heart is bruised by the tortures of that anguish ; but the astonishing 
inventiveness, the accumulation of facts, the abundance of general 
ideas, the force of analysis, transport you into the world of science, and 
your painful sympathy is calmed by the spectacle of this physiology of 
the heart. Dickens never calms our sympathy ; he selects subjects in 
which it alone, and more than elsewhere, is unfolded : the long oppres- 
sion of children persecuted and starved by their schoolmaster ; the life 
of the factory-hand Stephen, robbed and degraded by his wife, driven 
away by his fellows, accused of theft, lingering six days at the bottom 
of a pit into which he has fallen, maimed, consumed by fever, and 
dying when he is at length discovered. Rachael, his only friend, is 
there ; and his delirium, his cries, the storm of despair in which 
Dickens envelopes his characters, have prepared the way for the painful 
picture of this resigned death. The bucket brings up a poor, crushed 
iiuman creature, and we see * the pale, worn, patient face looking up to 
the sky, v»diilst the right hand, shattered and hanging down, seems as 
if waiting to be taken by another hand.' Yet he smiles, and feebly said 
' Rachael I ' She stooped down, and bent over him until her eyes were 
between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look 
at her. Then in broken words he tells her of his long agony. Ever 
since he was born he has met with nothing but misery and injustice ; 
it u the rule — (he weak suffer, and are made to suffer. This pit into 
which he had fallen * has cost hundreds and hundreds o' men's lives- 
fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an' thousands, an' keeping 'em 
fro' want and hunger. . . . The men that works in pits ... ha' pray'n 
an' pray'n the lawmakers for Christ's sake not to let their work be murder 
to 'em, but to spare 'em for th' wives and children, that they loves as well 
as gentlefok loves theirs ; ' all in vain. * When the pit was m work, it 
killed wi'out need ; when 't is let along, it kills wi'out need.' ^ Stephen 
■ays this without anger, quietly merely, as the truth. He has hii 



nard T' les, bk. 3, ch. vi. 



CHAP, I.J THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 351 

calumniator before him ; he does not get angry, accuses no one ; he only 
charges the father to deny the calumny as soon as he shall be dead. 
His heart is up there in heaven, where he has seen a star shining. In 
his agony, on his bed of stones, he has gazed upon it, and the tender 
and touching regard of the divine star has calmed, by its mystical 
KTenity, the anguish of mind and body. 

* ** It ha* shined upon me," he said reverently, "in my pain and trouble down 
below. It ha' shined into my mind. I ha' lookn at't and thowt o' thee, Rachael, 
till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope. If soom ha' 
been wantin' in unnerstan'in' me better, I, too, ha' been wantin' in unnerstan'in' 
them better. 

' " In my pain an' trouble, lookin* up yonder, — wi' it shinin' on me. — I ha' seen 
more clear, and ha' made it my dyin' prayer that aw th' world may on'y coom 
toogether more, an' get a better unnerstan'in' o' one another, than when I wei^e 
in't my own weak seln. 

* *' Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin' on me dovm there in my 
t^Juble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour's home. I awmust think 
it be tbs very star ! " 

* They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and ovei 
the wide landscape ; Rachael always holdinf^ the hand in hers. Very few whispers 
broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown 
him where to find the God of the poor ; and through humility, and sorrow, and 
forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest. ' * 

This same writer is the most railing, the most comic, the most 
jocose of English authors. And it is moreover a singular gaiety I It 
is the only kind which would harmonise with this impassioned sensi- 
bility. There is a laughter akin to tears. Satire is the sister of elegy: 
if the second pleads for the oppressed, the first combats the oppres- 
sors. Wounded by misfortunes and vices, Dickens avenges himself by 
ridicule. He does not paint, he punishes. Nothing could be more 
damaging than those long chapters of sustained irony, in which the 
sarcasm is pressed, line after line, more sanguinary and piercing in the 
chosen adversary. There are five or six against the Americans, — their 
bribed newspapers, their drunken journalists, their cheating specu- 
lators, their women authors, their coarseness, their familiarity, their 
insolence, their brutality, — enough to captivate an absolutist, and to 
justify the Liberal who, returning from New York, embraced with tears 
in his eyes the first gendarme whom he saw on landing at Havre. 
Foundations of industrial societies, interviews of a member of Parlia- 
ment and his constituents, instructions of a member of the House of 
Commons to his secretary, the display of great banking-houses, the 
la}ing of the first stone of a public building, every kind of ceremony 
and lie of English society, are depicted with the fire and bitterness of 
Hogarth. There are parts where the comic element is so violent, that 
it has the appearance of a vengeance — as the story of Jonas Chuzzlewit 

' Hard Tim^-s. bk. a cb vi 



352 MODERN AUTHORS, [BOOK V 

*The very first word which this excellent boy learnt to spell was gain, 
and the second (when he came into two syllables) was money.' Thia 
fine education had unfortunately produced two results : first, that, 
* having been long taught by his lather to overreach everybody, ha 
had imperceptibly acquired a love of overreaching that venerable 
monitor himself;* secondly, that being taught to regard everything 
as a matter of property, * he had gradually come to look with impa- 
tience on his parent as a certain amount of personal estate,' who would 
be very well ' secured ' in that particular description of strong-box which 
is commonly called a coffin, and banked in the grave.^ ' Is that my 
father snoring, Pecksniff?' asked Jonas ; * tread upon his foot ; will you 
be so good ? The foot next you is the gouty one.' * He is introduced 
to us with this mark of attention ; you may judge of the rest. At 
bottom, Dickens is gloomy, like Hogarth ; but, like Hogarth, he makes 
us burst with laughter by the buffoonery of his inventions and the 
violence of his caricatures. He pushes his characters to absurdity with 
unwonted baldness. Pecksniff hits off moral phrases and sentimental 
actions so grotesque, that they make him extiavagant. Never were 
heard such monstrous oratorical displays. Sheridan had already painted 
an English hypocrite, Joseph Surface ; but he differs from Pecksniff as 
much as a portrait of the eighteenth century differs from a cartoon of 
Punch. Dickens makes hypocrisy so deformed and monstrous, that his 
hypocrite ceases to resemble a man ; you would call him one of those 
fantastic figures whose nose is greater than his body. This extravagant 
comicality springs from excess of imagination. Dickens uses the same 
spring throughout. The better to make us see the object he shows us, 
he dazzles the reader's eyes with it ; but the reader is amused by this 
irregular fancy : the fire of the execution makes him forget that the 
scene is improbable, and he laughs heartily as he listens to the under- 
taker, Mould, enumerating the consolations which filial piety.; well 
backed by money, may find in his shop. What grief could not be 
softened by 

* " Four horses to each vehicle . • . velvet trappings . . . drivers in cloth 
cloaks and top-boots . . . the plumage of the ostrich, died black . . . any 
number of walking attendants, dressed in the first style of funeral fashion, and 
carrying batons tipped with brass ... a place in "Westminster Abbey itself, if he 
choose to invest it in such a purchase. Oh ! do not let us say that gold is dross, 
when it can buy such things as these." **Ay, Mrs. Gamp, you are right," re- 
joined the undertaker. **We should be an honoured calling. AVe do good by 
stealth, and bltish to have it mentioned in our little bills. How much consolation 
may I— even I," cried Mr. Mould, "have diffused among my fellow-creatures by 
means of my four long-tailed prancers, never harnessed undeT ten pund ten ! " ' * 

Usually Dickens remains grave whilst drawing his caricatures. 
English wit consists in saying light jests in a solemn manner. Tom 

' Martin Chvzzkicit, cb viii. 2 ^^^^ 3 jj^^d^ ch. xix. 



CHAP. I.J THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 353 

and ideas are then in contrast ; every contrast makes a strong impres- 
sion. Dickens loves to produce them, and his public to hear them. 

If at times he forgets tc castigate his neighbour, if he tries to sport, 
to amuse himself, he is no longer happy over it. The element of the 
English character is its want of happiness. The ardent and tenacious 
imagination of Dickens is impressed with things too firmly, to pass lightly 
and gaily over the surface. He leans, he penetrates, works into, hollows 
them out ; all these violent actions are elForts, and all efforts are suffer- 
ings. To be happy, a man must be light-minded, as a Frenchman of 
the eighteenth century, or sensual, as an Italian of the sixteenth ; a man 
muat not get anxious about things, to enjoy them. Dickens does get 
anxious, and does not enjoy. Take a little comical accident, such as 
you meet with in the street — a gust of wind, which blows about the 
garments of a messenger. Scaramouche will grin with good humour ; 
Lesage smile like a diverted man ; both will pass by and think no 
more of it. Dickens muses over it for half a page. He sees so clearly 
all the effects of the wind, he puts himself so entirely in its place, he 
imagines for it a will so impassioned and precise, he shakes the clothes 
of the poor man hither and thither so violently and so long, he turns 
the gust into a tempest, into a persecution so great, that we are made 
giddy; and even whilst we laugh, we feel in ourselves too much 
emotion and compassion to laugh heartily : 

* And a breezy, goose -skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chatter- 
ing place it was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck weU knew. The 
wind came tearing round the corner — especially the east wind — as if it had sallied 
forth, express, from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And often- 
times it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected ; for, bouncing 
round the corner, and passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it 
cried: " Why, here he is ! " Incontinently his little white apron would be caught 
up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his feeble little cane would 
be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and liis legs would 
undergo tremendous agitation ; and Toby himself, all aslant, and facing now in 
tliis direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, aud touzled, and 
worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but 
one degree removed from a positive miracle that he wasn't carried up bodily into 
the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other portable creatures sometimes are, 
aud rained down again, to the great astonishment of the natives, on some strange 
ciuner of the world where ticket-porters are unknown. ' * 

If now you would picture in a glance this imagination, — so lucid, so 
violent, so passionately fixed on the object selected, so deeply touched 
by little things, so wholly attached to the details and sentiments of 
vulgar life, so fertile in incessant emotions, so powerful in rousing 
paitiful pity, sarcastic raillery, nervous gaiety, — you must fancy a 
LondDn street on a rainy winter's night. The flickering light of th« 
gas dazzles your eyes, streams through the shop windows, floods -ftvei 



* The Chimes, The First Quarter. 



354 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOCK V. 

the passing forms ; and its harsh light, settling upon their contracted 
features, brings out, with endless detail and damaging force, their 
wrinkles, deformities, troubled expression. If in this close and dirty 
crowd you discover the fresh face of a young girl, this artificial light 
covers it with false and excessive tones ; it makes it stand out against 
the rainy and cold blackness with a strange halo. The mind is struck 
with wonder; but you carry your hand to your eyes to cover theiii, 
and, whilst you admire the force of this light, you involuntarily think 
of the true country sun and the tranquil beauty of day. 

§ 2. — The Public. 
L 

Plant this talent on English soil ; the literary opinion of the country 

will direct its growth and explain its fruits. For this public opinion 
is its private opinion ; it does not submit to it as to an external con- 
straint, but feels it inwardly as an inner persuasion ; it does not weary, 
but develops it, and only repeats aloud what it said to itself in secret. 

The counsels of this public taste are somewhat like this ; the more 
powerful because they agree with its natural inclination, and urge it 
upon its special course : — 

* Be moral. AH' your novels must be such as may be read by 
young girls. We are practical minds, and we would not have litera- 
ture corrupt practical life. We believe in family life, and we would 
not have literature paint the passions which attack family life. We 
are Protestants, and we have preserved something of the severity of 
our fathers against enjoyment and passions. Amongst these, love is 
the worst. Beware against resembling in this respect the most illus- 
trious of our neighbours. Love is the hero of all George Sand's novels 
Married or not, she thinks it beautiful, holy, sublime in itself; and 
she says so. Don't believe this ; and if you do believe it, don't say it. 
It is a bad example. Love thus represented makes marriage a secondary 
matter. It ends in marriage, or destroys it, or does without it, accord- 
iijg to circumstances; but whatever it does, it treats it as inferior; it 
does not recognise any holiness in it, beyond that which love gives it, and 
holds it impious if it is excluded. A novel of this sort is a plea for 
the heart, the imagination, enthusiasm, nature ; but it is often a plea 
against society and law : we do not suiFer society and law to be touched, 
din;otly or indirectly. To present a feeling as divine, to bow before it 
all institutions, to carry it through a series of generous actions, to sing 
with a sort of heroic inspiration the combats which it wages and the 
attacks which it sustains, to enrich it with all the force of eloquence, 
to crown it with all the flowers of poetry, is to paint the life, which it 
results in, as more beautiful and loftier than others, to set it far above 
all passions and duties, in a sublime region, on a throne, whence it 
whines as a light, a consolation, a hope, and draws all hearts towardi 



OHAl*. 1.] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 355 

it. Perhaps this is the world of artists ; it is not the world of crdinary 
men. Perhaps it is agreeable to nature ; we make nature bend before 
the interests of society. George Sand paints impassioned women ; 
paint you for us good women. George Sand makes us desire to be 
in Jo i^e ; do you make us desire to be married. 

' This has its disadvantages, without doubt ; art suffers by it, if the 
public gains. Though your characters give the best examples, your 
works will be of less value. No matter ; you may console yourself 
with the thought that you are moral. Your lovers will be uninterest- 
ing ; for the only interest natural to their age is the violence of passion, 
and you cannot paint passion. In Nicholas Nicklehy you will show 
two good young men, like all young men, marrying two good young 
women, like all young women ; in Martin Chuzzlewit you will show 
two more good young men, perfectly resembling the other two, marry- 
ing again two good young women, perfectly resembling the other two ; 
in Domhey and Son there will be only one good young man and one good 
young woman. Otherwise, no difiference. And so on. The number 
of your marriages is marvellous, and you marry enough couples to 
people England. More curious still, they are all disinterested, and the 
young man and young woman snap their fingers at money as sincerely 
as at the Opera Comique. You will not cease to dwell on the pretty 
shynesses of the betrothed, the tears of the mothers, the tears of all the 
guests, the cheering and touching scenes of the dinner table ; you will 
create a crowd of family pictures, all touching, and all as agreeable 
as screen-paintings. The reader will be moved ; he will think he is 
beholding the innocent loves and virtuous attentions of a little boy and 
girl of ten. He should like to say to them : " Good little people, con- 
tinue to be very proper." But the chief interest will be for young 
girls, who will learn in how devoted and yet suitable a manner a lover 
ought to pay his court. If you venture on a seduction, as in Copper- 
field, you will not relate the progress, ardour, intoxication of the amour ; 
you will only depict its miseries, despair, and remorse. If in Copper- 
field and the Cricket on the Hearth you present a troubled marriage and 
a suspected wife, you will make haste to restore peace to the marriage 
and innocence to the wife ; and you will deliver, by her mouth, sc 
splendid a eulogy on marriage, that it might serve for a model \q 
Emile Augier.^ If in Hard Times the wife treads on the border of 
crime, she shall check herself there. If in Domhey and Son she flee? 
from her husband's roof, she will remain pure, will only incur the 
appearance of crime, and will treat her lover in such a manner that 
the reader will wish to be the husband. If, lastly, in Copperfield you 
relate the emotions and follies of love, you will rally this poor affection, 
depict its littlenesses, not venture to make us hear the ardent, generous, 
undisciplined blast of the all-powerful passion ; you will turn it intg 

* A living French author, whose dramas are all said to have a moral purpose.— T& 



S56 MODERN AUTHORS. [BC*m V 

a toy for good children, or a pretty marriage-trinket. But marriage 
will compensate you. Your genius of observation axid taste for details 
will be exercised on the scenes of domestic life ; you will excel ir, the 
picture of a fireside, a family dialogue, children on the knees of their 
mother, a husband watching by lamplight by his sleeping wife^ the 
heart full of joy and courage, because it feels that it is working for its 
own. You will find charming or grave portraits of women ; ol Doraj 
who after marriage continues to be a little girl, whose pouting, pretti- 
nessfcs, childishnesses, laughter, make the house gay, like the chirping 
of a bird ; Esther, whose perfect kindness and divine innocence cannot 
be affected by trials or years ; Agnes, so calm, patient, sensible, pure, 
worthy of respect, a very model of a wife, suflicient in herself to 
claim for marriage the respect which we demand for it. And when 
it is necessary to show the beauty of these duties, the greatness of this 
conjugal love, the depth of the sentiment which ten years of confidence, 
cares, and reciprocal devotion have created, you will find in your sen si - 
b/iity, so long constrained, speeches as pathetic as the strongest words 
of love.^ 

* The worst novels are not those which glorify love. A man must 
live across the Channel to dare what the French have dared. With 
them, some admire Balzac ; but no man would tolerate him. Some will 
pretend that he is not immoral ; but every one will recognise that he 
always and everywhere makes morality an abstraction. George Sand 
has only celebrated one passion ; Balzac has celebrated them all. He 
has considered them as forces ; and holding that force is beautiful, he 
has supported them by their causes, surrounded them by their circum- 
stances, developed them in their effects, pushed them to an extreme, 
and magnified them so as to make them into sublime monsters, more 
systematic and more true than the truth. We do not admit that a 
man only is an artist, and nothing else. We would not have him 
separate himself from his conscience, and lose sight of the practical 
We will never consent to see that such is the leading feature cf our 
own Shakspeare ; we will not recognise that he, like Balzac, brings 
his heroes to crime and monomania, and that, like him, he lives 
in a land of pure logic and imagination. We have changed much 
since the sixteenth century, and we condemn now what we appiovcd 
Ibrmerly. We would not have the reader interested m a miser, an 
ambitious man, a rake. And he is interested in them when the writer, 
neither praising nor blaming, sets himself to unfold the mood, training, 
phrenology, and habits of mind which have impressed in him this 
primitive inclination, to prove the necessity of its effects, to lead it 
through all its stages, to show the greater power which age and con- 
tentment give, to expose the irresistible fall which hurls man into 
madness or death. The reader, caught by this reasoning, admires the 

' Bd.cid Copperjidd, cli. Ixv. ; the scene between the doctor and hiy wife 



CHAP. I.J THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. - 357 

work which it has produced, and forgets to be indignant agsiinst th« 
personage created. He says, What a splendid miser ! and thinks not 
of the evils which avarice produces. He becomes a philosopher and 
an artist, and remembers not that he is an upright man. Always re- 
collect that you are such, and renounce the beauties which may flourish 
OD this evi* soil. 

* Amongst these the first is greatness. A man must be interested in 
passions tc cjomprehend their full effect, to count all their si>rings, to 
describe their whole course. They are diseases ; if a man is content 
to blame them, he will never know them ; if you are not a physiologist, 
if you are not enamoured of them, if you do not make your heroes out 
of them, if you do not start with pleasure at the sight of a fine feature 
of avarice, as at the sight of a valuable symptom, you will not be able 
to unfold their vast system, and to display their fatal greatness. You 
will not have this immoral merit ; and, moreover, it does not suit your 
species of mind. Your extreme sensibility, and ever-ready irony, must 
needs be exercised ; you have not sufficient calmness to penetrate to 
the depths of a character, you prefer to weep over or to rail at him ; 
you lay the blame on him, make him your friend or foe, render him 
touching or odious ; you do not depict him; you are too impassioned, 
and not enough inquisitive. On the other hand, the tenacity of your 
imagination, the vehemence and fixity with which you impress your 
thought into the detail you wish to grasp, limit your knowledge, arrest 
you in a single feature, prevent you from reaching all the parts of a 
soul, and from sounding its depths. Your imagination is too lively, 
too meagre. These, then, are the characters you will outline. You will 
grasp a personage in a single attitude, you will see of him only that, 
and you will impose it upon him from beginning to end. His face 
will have always the same, expression, and this expression will be 
almost always a grimace. They will have a sort of knack Avhich will 
not quit them. Miss Mercy will laugh at every word ; Mark Tapley 
will say "jolly" in every scene; Mrs. Gamp will be ever talking of 
Mrs. Harris ; Dr. Chi Hip will not venture a single action free froi» 
thnidity; Mr. Micawber will speak through three volumes the sam^j 
kind of emphatic phrases, and will pass five or six times, with comical 
suddenness, from joy to grief. Each of your characters will be a vice, 
i virtue, a ridicule personified; and the passion, which you lend it, will 
be ho frequent, so invariable, so absorbing, that it will no lon^jer be like 
a livring man, but an abstraction in man's clothes. The French have a 
Tanuffe like your Pecksniff, but the hypocrisy which he repv^sents has 
not destroyed the rest of his character ; if he adds to the comedy by 
his vice, he belongs to humanity by his nature. He has, besides his 
ridiculous feature, a character and a mood ; he is coarse, stroiii?, red in 
Ihe face, brutal, sensual ; the vehemence of his blood makes him bold ; 
his boldness makes him calm ; his boldness, his calm, hi? decisive readi- 
ness, his scorn of men, make him a great politician^ When he har 



358 MODERN AUTHORS. BOOK ^ 

entertained the public through five acts, he still offers to th( psycholo- 
gist and the physician more than one subject of study. Your Pecksnifl 
will offer nothing to these. He will only serve to instruct and amuse 
the public. He will be a living satire of hypocrisy, and nothing more. 
If you give him a taste for brandy, it is gratuitously ; in the mood 
wliich you assign to him, nothing requires it : he is so steeped in oily 
hypocrisy, in softness, in a flowing style, in literary phiases, in tender 
morality, that the rest of his nature has disappeared ; it is a mask, and 
not a man. But this mask is so grotesque and energetic, that it will 
be useful to the public, and will diminish the number of hypocrites. 
It is our end and yours, and the list of your characters will have rather 
the effect of a book of satires than of a portrait gallery. 

' For the same reason, these satires, though united, will continue 
effectually detached, and will not constitute a genuine collection. You 
began with essays, and your larger novels are only essays tagged to- 
gether. The only means of composing a natural and solid whole is to 
write the history of a passion or of a character, to take them up at their 
birth, to see them increase, alter, become destroyed, to understand the 
inner necessity of their development. You do not follow this develop- 
ment ; you always keep your character in the same attitude ; he is a 
miser, or a hypocrite, or a good man to the end, and always after the 
same fashion thus he has no history. You can only change the cir- 
cumstances in which he is met with, you do not change him ; he re- 
mains motionless, and at every shock that touches him, emits the same 
sound. The variety of events which you contrive is therefore only an 
amusing phantasmagoria ; they have no connection, they do not form a 
system, they are but a heap. You will only write lives, adventures, 
memoirs, sketches, collections of scenes, and you will not be able to 
compose an action. But if the literary ta^te of your nation, added to 
the natural direction of your genius, imposes upon you moral intentions, 
forbids you the lofty depicture of characters, vetoes the composition of 
united aggregates, it presents to your observation, sensibility, and satire, 
a succession of original figures which belong only to England, which, 
drawn by your hand, will form a unique gallery, and which, with the 
stamp of your genius, will offer that of your country and of your time.' 

§ 3. — The Characters. 

I. 

Take away the grotesque characters, who are only introduced to 
fill up and to excite laughter, and you will find that all Dickens' cha- 
racters belong to two classes — people who have feelings and emotions, 
and people who have none. He contrasts the souls which nature 
creates with those which society deforms. One of his last novels. Hard 
Times, is an abstract of all the rest. He there exalts instinct above 
reason, intuition of heart above positive science ; he attacks education 



CHAP. L] -I'HE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 35S 

built on statistics, figures, and facts ; overwhelms the positive and 
mercantile spirit with misfortune and ridicule ; combats the pride, 
hardness, selfishness of the merchant and the aristocrat ; falls foul ol 
manufacturing towns, towns of smoke and mud, which fetter the body 
in an artificial atmosphere, and the mind in a factitious existence. He 
seeks cmt poor artisans, mountebanks, a foundling, and crushes beneath 
theii common sense, generosity, delicacy, courage, and sweetness, the 
false science, false happiness, and false virtue of the ricli and powerful 
who despise them. He satirises oppressive society ; praises oppressed 
nature ; and his elegiac genius, like his satirical genius, finds ready to 
his hand in the English world around him, the sphere which it needi 
for its development, 

II. 

The first fruits of English society is hypocrisy. It ripens here 
under the double breath of religion and morality ; we know their popu- 
larity and dominion across the Channel. In a country where it is 
scandalous to laugh on Sunday, where the gloomy Puritan has preserved 
something of his old rancour against happiness, where the critics of 
ancient history insert dissertations on the virtue of Nebuchadnezzar, it 
is natural that the appearance of morality should be serviceable. It is 
a needful coin : those who lack good money coin bad ; and the more 
public opinion declares it precious, the more it is counterfeited. This 
vice is therefore English. Mr. Pecksniff is not found in France. His 
sneech would disgust Frenchmen. If they have an affectation, it is not 
<)f virtue, but of vice : if they wish to succeed, they would be wrong 
to speak of their principles : they prefer to confess their weaknesses ; 
and if they have quacks, they are trumpeters of immorality. They 
had their hypocrites once, but it was when religion was popular. 
Since Voltaire, Tartuffe is impossible. Frenchmen no longer try to 
affect a piety which would deceive no one and lead to nothing. Hypo- 
crisy comes and goes, varying with the state of morals, religion, and 
mind ; see, then, how conformable that of Pecksniff is to the dispositions 
of his country. He does not, like Tartuffe, utter theological phrases ; 
hfc expands a' together in philanthropic tirades. He has marched with 
the age ; he has become a humanitarian philosopher. He has called his 
daughters Mercy and Charity. He is tender, he is kind, Le gives vent 
to domestic effusions. He innocently exhibits, when visited, charming 
domestic scenes ; he displays his paternal heart, marital sentiments, 
the kindly feeling of a good house-master. The family vii'tues are 
honoured now-a-days ; he must muffle himself therew^ith. Orgop 
formerly said, as instructed by Tartuffe : 

* Et je verrais p^rir parents, enfauts, mfere, et femme, 
Que je m'en soucierais autant que de cela.' ^ 

' Moi iere, Tartuffe, i vi 



360 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

Modern virtue and English piety think otherwise ; we must nol 
despise this world in view of the next ; we must improve it. Tartuffa 
will speak of his hair-shirt and his discipline; Pecksniff, of his com- 
fortable little parlour, of the charm of friendship, the beauties of nature. 
He will try to bring men together. He will be like a member of the 
Peace Society. He will develop the most touching considerations on the 
benefits and beauties of union among men. It will be impossible to hear 
him without being affected. Men are refined now-a-days, they have 
read much elegiac poetry ; their sensibility is more active , they cun 
no longer be deceived by the gross impudence of Tartuffe. This is why 
Mr. Pecksniff will use gestures of sublime long-suffering, smiles of inef- 
fable compassion, starts, movements of recklessness, graces, tendernessei 
which will seduce the most reserved and charm the most delicate. The 
English in their Parlianir'nt, meetings, associations, public ceremonies, 
have learned the oratorical phraseology, the abstract terms, the style 
of political economy, of the newspaper and the prospectus. Pecksniff 
will talk like a prospectus. He will possess its obscurity, its wordiness, 
and its emphasis. He will seem to soar above the earth, in the region of 
pure ideas, in the bosom of truth. He will resemble an apostle, brought 
up in the Times office. He will declaim general ideas on every occasion. 
He will find a moral lesson in the ham and eggs he has just eaten : 

* Even the worldly goods of which we have just disposed, even they have their 
moral. See how they come and go. Every pleasure is transitory.' * 

* *' The process of digestion, as I have been informed by anatomical friends, is 
one of the most wonderful works of nature. I do not know how it may he with 
others, hut it is a great satisfaction to me to know, when regaling on my humble 
fare, that I am putting in motion the most beautiful machinery with which we have 
any acquaintance. I really feel at such times as if I was doing a piiblic service. 
When I have wound myself up, if I may employ such a term," said Mr. Pecksniflf 
with exquisite tenderness, "and know that I am Going, I feel that in the lesson 
afforded by the works within me, I am a Benefactor to my Kind 1 " ' * 

As he folds his napkin, he will rise to lofty contemplations. You 
recognise a new species of hypocrisy. Vices, like virtues, chango in 
every age. 

The practical, as well as the moral spirit, is English ; by commerce, 
labour, and government, this people has acquired the taste and talent for 
business ; this is why they regard the French as children and madr.ieu. 
The excess of this disposition is the destruction of imagination and sensi- 
bility. Man becomes a speculative machine, in which figures and facts 
are set in array ; he denies the life of the mind and the joys of the 
heart ; he sees in the world nothing but loss and gain ; he becomes 
hard, harsh, greedy, and avaricious ; he treats men as machinery ; du a 
certain day he finds himself simply a merchant, banker, statistician ; he 
has ceased to be a man. Dickens has multiplied portraits of the positive 

' Martin, Ghuzzleioit. eh. 11. * Ibid. ch. vlii. 



CHAP. Lj THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 3(5] 

man — Ralph Nickleby, Scrooge, Anthony Chuzzle-w it, Jonas Chnzzlewit, 
Alderman Cute, Mr. Murdstone and his sister, Bounderby, Gradgrind : 
there are such in all his novels. Some are so by education, others by 
natur* ; but all are odious, for they all take in hand to rail at and de- 
stroy kindness, sympathy, compassion, disinterested affections, religious 
eiDotions, enthusiasm of fancy, all that is lovely in man. They oppress 
children,, strike women, starve the poor, insult the wretched. The best 
are machines of polished steel, methodically performing their regular 
duties, and not knowing that they make others suffer. These kinds of men 
are not found in France. Their rigidity is not in the French character. 
They are produced in England by a school which has its philosophy, its 
great men, its glory, and which has never been established amongst 
the French. More than once, it is true, French writers have depicted 
avaricious men, men of business, and shopkeepers : Balzac is full of 
them ; but he explains them by their imbecility, or makes them mon- 
sters, like Grandet and Gobseck. Those of Dickens constitute a real 
class, and represent a national vice. Read this passage of Hard Times^ 
and see if, body and soul, Mr. Gradgrind is not wholly English : 

* ** Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts 
Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else 
You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts : nothing else will 
ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own 
childi-en, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick tc 
Facts, sir ! " 

* The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the 
speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring eveiy sen- 
tence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the 
speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his 
eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. 
The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard 
set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, 
and dictatorial The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled 
on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining 
Burface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum-pie, as if the head had 
•carcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate 
carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders — nay, his very neckcloth, trained 
to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, 
ftj It wa-? — all helped the emphasis. 

* ** In this life we want nothing but Facts, sir ; nothing but Facts ! " 

* The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all 
backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then 
»nd there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into 
til em until they were full to the brim.' 

* *' Thomas Geadgeind, sir ! A man of realities. A man of facts and calcula- 
tions. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and 
nothing over, and who is not to be talked into alloAving for anything over. Tliomaa 
Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and* 



' Hard Times, book i. ch. i. 



362 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready ta 
weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly whai it comei 
to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hop* 
to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgiind, or Augustus 
Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgvind (all supposititious, nou-existent 
persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind — no, sir ! " 

* In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to 
his private civcte of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, a« 
doubt, substituting the words "boys and girls " for " sir," Thomas Gradgrind now 
presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be £?le(i 
80 full of facts. ' ^ 

Another fault arising from the habit of commanding and striving id 
pride. It abounds in an aristocratic country, and no one has mor* 
soundly rated aristocracy than Dickens ; all his portraits are sarcasmfi. 
James Harthouse, a dandy disgusted with everything, chiefly with him- 
self, and rightly so ; Lord Frederick Verisopht, a poor duped idiot, 
brutalised with drink, whose wit consists in staring at men and sucking 
his cane ; Lord Feenix, a sort of mechanism of parliamentary phrases, 
out of order, and hardly able to finish the ridiculous periods into which 
he always takes care to lapse ; Mrs. Skewton, a hideous old ruin, a 
coquette to the last, demanding rose-coloured curtains for her death-bed, 
and parading her daughter through all the drawing-rooms of England, 
in order to sell her to some vain husband ; Sir John Chester, a wretch 
of high society, who, for fear of compromising himself, refuses to save 
his natural son, and refuses it with all kinds of airs, as he finishes hia 
chocolate. But the most complete and most English picture of the 
aristocratic spirit is the portrait of a London merchant, Mr. Dombey. 

Li France people do not look for types among the merchants, but 
they are found among that class in England, as forcible as in the proudest 
chateaux. Mr. Dombey loves his house as if he were a nobleman, as much 
as himself. If he neglects his daughter and longs for a son, it is to per- 
petuate the old name of his bank. He has his ancestors in commerce, and 
he \yould have his descendants. He maintains traditions, and continue.^ 
a power. At this height of opulence, and with this scope of action, he 
is a prince, and with a prince's position he has his feelings. You see 
there a character which could only be produced in a country whose 
commerce embraces the globe, where merchants are potentates, where 
a company oif merchants has speculated upon continents, maintain ^i 
wars, destroyed kingdoms, founded an empire of a hundred million me.i. 
The pride of such a man is not petty, but terrible ; it is so calm and 
high, that to find a parallel we must read again the Memaires of Saint 
Simon. Mr. Dombey has always commanded, and it does not entsr hia 
mind that he could yield to any one or anything. He receives flattery 
es a tribute to which he had a right, and sees men beneath him, at a 
Vast distance, as beings made to beseech and obey him. His secon<J 

' Hard Times, book. 1. eh. ii. 



CHaF. 1] THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 3G3 

wife, proud Edith Skewton, resists and scorns him ; the pride of the 
merchant is pitted against the pride of the noble-born woman, and the 
restrained outbursts of this growing opposition reveal an intensity of 
passion, which souls thus born and bred alone could feel. Edith, to 
avenge herself, flees on the anniversary of her marriage, and gives her- 
ityJ. 'he appearai ce of being an adulteress. It is then that the inflexible 
pride asserts itself in all its sLifihess. He has driven out of the house 
his daughter, whom he believes the accomplice of his wife ; he forbids 
the one or the other to be brought to his memory ; he commands his 
sister and his friends to be silent ; he receives guests with the same tone 
and the same coldness. Despairing in heart, eaten up by the insult, by 
the conscience of his failure, by the idea of public ridicule, he remains 
as firm, as haughty, as calm as ever. He launches out more recklessly 
in business, and is ruined ; he is on the point of suicide. Hitherto all 
was well : the bronze column continued whole and unbroken ; but the 
exigencies of pubhc morality mar the idea of the book. His daughter 
arrives in the nick of time. She entreats him ; he softens, she carriei 
him away ; he becomes the best of fathers, and spoils a fine novel. 

III. 

Let us look at some other personages. In contrast with these bad 
and factitious characters, produced by national institutions, you find 
good creatures such as nature made them ; and first, children. 

We have none in French literature. Kacine's little Joas could 
only exist in a piece composed for the ladies' coUege of Saint Cyr ; 
the little child speaks like a prince's son, with noble and acquired 
phrases, as if repeating his catechism. Now-a-days these portraits 
are only seen in France in New-year's books, written as models foi 
good children. Dickens has painted his with special gratification ; 
he did not think of edifying the public, and he has charmed it. -All 
his children are of extreme sensibility ; they love much, and they crave 
to be loved. To understand this gratification of the painter, and this 
choice of characters, we must think of their physical type. English 
children have a colour so fresh, a complexion so delicate, a skin so 
tiinspaient, eyes so blue and pure, that they are like beautiful flowers. 
No wonder if a novelist loves them, lends to their soul a sensibility and 
innocence which shine forth from their looks, if he thinks that these 
frail and charming roses are crushed by the coarse hands which try 
to bend them. We must also imagine to ourselves the households in 
which they grow up. When at five o'clock the merchant" and the 
clerk leave their office and their business, they return as quickly as 
possible to the pretty cottage, where their children have played all day 
on the lawn. The fireside by which they will pass the evening is a 
sanctuary, and domestic tenderness is the only poetry they need. A 
child deprived of these affections and this happiness will seem to be 
deprived of the air that we breathe, and the novelist will not find a 



364 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V, 

volume too much to explain its unhappiness. Dickens has recorded 
it in ten volumes, and at last he haF written the history of David 
Coppei^Jield. David is loved by his mother, and by an honest servant 
girl, Peggotty ; he plays with her in the garden ; he watches her sew ; 
he reads to her the natural history of crocodiles ; he fears the hens and 
geese, which strut in a menacing and ferocious manner in the yard ; 
ha is peifectly happy. His mother marries again, and all changes. The 
fatlier-in-law, Mr. Murdstone, and his sister Jane, are harsh, methodic, 
and cold beings. Poor little David is every moment wounded by hard 
vf ords. He dare not speak or move ; he is afraid to kiss his mother ; 
he feels himself weighed down, as by a leaden cloak, by the cold looks 
of the new master and mistress. He falls back on himself ; mechani- 
cally studies the lessons assigned him ; cannot learn them, so great is 
his dread of not knowing them. He is whipped, shut up with bread 
and water in a lonely room. He is terrified by night, and fears him- 
self. He asks himself whether in fact he is not bad or wicked, and 
weeps. This incessant terror, hopeless and issueless, the spectacle of 
this wounded sensibility and stupefied intelligence, the long anxieties, 
the watches, the solitude of the poor imprisoned child, his passionate 
desire to kiss his mother or to weep on the breast of his nurse, — all 
this is sad to see. These children's griefs are as deep as the vexations 
of a man. It is the history of a frail plant, which was flourishing in 
a warm air, under a sweet sun, and which, suddenly transplanted to the 
snow, sheds its leaves and withers. 

The common people are like the children, dependent, ill culti* 
vated, akin to nature, and subject to oppression. That is to say, 
Dickens extols them. That is not new in France ; the novels of 
Eugene Sue have given us more than one example, and the theme 
is as old as Rousseau ; but in the hands of the EngUsh writer it has 
acquired a singular force. His heroes have admirable delicacy and 
devotion. They have nothing vulgar but their pronunciation ; the rest 
is but nobility and generosity. You see a mountebank abandon his 
daughter, his only joy, for fear of harming her in any way. A young 
'Woman devotes herself to save the unworthy wife of a man who loves 
her, and whom she loves ; the man dies ; she continues, from pure self- 
sacrifice, to care for the degraded creature. A poor waggoner who 
thinks his wife unfaithful, loudly pronounces her innocent, and all his 
vengeance is to think only of loading her with tenderness and kind- 
ness. No one, according to Dickens, feels so strongly as they do the 
happiness of loving and being loved — the pure joys of domestic life. 
No one has so much compassion for those poor deformed and infirm 
creatures whom they so often bring into the world, and who seem only 
born to die. No one has a juster and more inflexible moral sense. I 
confess even that Dickens' heroes unfortunately resemble,. the indignant 
fathers of French melodramas. When old Peggotty learns that his 
niece is seduced, he sets off, stick in hand, and walks over France, 



rRAP. I.J THE NOVEL.— DICKENS. 365 

Germany, and Italy, to find her and bring her back to daty. But 
above all, they have an English sentiment, which fails in Frenchmen : 
they are Christians. It is not only women, as in France, who take 
refuge in the idea of another world ; men turn also their thoughts to- 
wards it. In England, where there are so many sects, and every one 
chooses his own, each one believes in the religion he has made for 
himself ; and this noble sentiment raises still higher the throne, upcn 
which the uprightness of their resolution and the delicacy of their 
heart has placed them. 

In reality, the novels of Dickens can all be reduced lo one phrase^ 
to wit : Be good, and love ; there is genuine joy only in the emotions 
of the heart ; sensibility is the whole man. I<eave science to the wise, 
pride to the nobles, luxury to the riob , havb compassion on humble 
wretchedness ; the smallest and most Jespissd being may in himself be 
worth as much as thousands of the powerful &,ui the proud. Take 
care not to bruise the delicate souls which flourish in all conditions, 
under all costumes, in all ages. Believe that humanity, pity, forgive- 
ness, are the finest things in man; believe that intimacy, expansion, 
tenderness, tears, are the finest things in the world. To live is nothing; 
to be powerful, learned, illustrious, is little ; to be useful is not enough. 
He alon{j has lived and is a man who has wept at the remembrance of 
a benefit, given or received. 

IV. 

We do not believe that this contrast between th-B weak and the 
strong, or this outcry against society in favour of nature, are tne 
caprice of an artist or the chance of the moment. When we penetrate 
deeply into the history of English genius, we find that its primitive 
foundation was impassioned sensibility, and that its natural expression 
v/as lyrical exaltation. Both were brought from Germany, and make 
up the literature existing before the Conquest. After an interval you 
find them again in the sixteenth century, when the French literature, 
introduced from Normandy, had passed away : they are the very soul 
of the nation. But the education of this soul was opposite to its 
genius ; its history contradicted its nature ; and its primitive inclina- 
tion has clashed with all the great events which it has created or 
suffered. The chance of a victorious invasion and an imposed aristo- 
cracy, whilst establishing the enjoyment of political liberty, has im- 
pressed in the character habits of strife and pride. The chance of aia 
insular position, the necessity of commerce, the abundant possession of 
the first materials for industry, have developed the practical faculties 
and the positive mind. The acquisition of these habits, faculties, and 
mind, added to the chance of an old hostility to Rome, and an old hatred 
against an oppressive church, has given birth to a proud and reasoning 
religion, replacing submission by independence, poetic theology by 
practical morality, and faith by discussion. Politics, business, and 



566 MODERN AUTHOKS. [B00& V 

religion, like three powerful machines, have created a new man abova 
the old. Stern dignity, self-command, the need of domination, harsh- 
ness in dominion, strict morality, without compromise or pity, a taste 
for figures and dry calculation, a dislike of facts not palpable and ideas 
not useful, ignorance of the invisible world, scorn of the weaknesses 
and tendernesses of the heart, — such are the dispositions which the 
stream of facts and the ascendency of institutions tend to confirm in 
tlieir souls. But poetry and domestic life prove that they have only 
half succeeded. The old sensibility, oppressed and perverted, still lives 
and works. The poet subsists under the Puritan, the trader, the states- 
man. The social man has not destroyed the natural man. This frozen 
srust, this unsociable pride, this rigid attitude, often cover a good and 
tender being. It is the English mask of a German head ; and when a 
talented writer, often a writer of genius, reaches the sensibility which 
is bru«sed or buried by education and national institutions, he moves 
liis reader in the most inner depths, and becomes the master of aii 
heartA. 



CHAP. IL] THE NOVEL.—TnACKEKAY. ^GT 



CHAPTER IT 

The Novel continued — Thackeray. 

I. Abundance and excellence of novels — Of manners in England— Superiority 
of Dickens and Thackeray — Comparison between them. 
II. The satirist — His moral intentions— His moral dissertations. 
ni. Comparison of raillery in France and England — Difference of the twe 

temperaments, tastes, and minds. 
J V. Superiority of Thackeray in bitter and serious satire — Serious irony — Literary 

snobs — Miss Blanche Amory — Seiious caricature — Miss Hoggarty. 
V. Solidity and precision of this satirical conception — Eesemblance of Thackeiay 

and Swift — The duties of an ambassador. 
VI. Misanthropy of Thackeray — SiUinuss of his heroines — Silliness of love — 

Inbred vice of human generosities and exaltations. 
Vll. His levelling tendencies— Default of characters and society in England — 
Aversions and preferences — The snob and the aristocrat — Portraits of tha 
king, the great court noble, the county gentleman, the town gentleman 
— Advantages of this aristocratlv: institution — Exaggeration of the satire. 
VIII. The artist- Idea of pure art — "Wherein satire injures art — Wherein it 
diminishes the interest — Wherein it falsifies the characters — Comparison 
of Thackeray and Balzac — VaUrie Marneffe and Rebecca Sharp. 
IX. Attainment of pure art — Portrait of Henry Esmond — Historical talent ol 

Thackeray — Conception of ideal man. 
3L Literature is a definition of man — The definition according to Thackexay— « 
Wherein it difl'ers from the tiuth. 

I. 

THE novel of manners in England multiplies, and for this there ar« 
several reasons : first, it is born there, and every plant grows 
well in its own soil ; secondly, it is an amusement : there is no music 
there as in Germany, or conversation as in France : and men who must 
think and feel find it a means of feeling and thinKmg. On the other 
liand, women take part in it with eagerness ; amidst the nullity of 
gallantry and the coldness of religion, it gives scope for imagination 
and dreams. Finally, by its minute details and practical counsels, it 
opens up a career to the precise and moral mind. The critic thus is, 
as it were, swamped in this copiousness ; he must select in order to 
grasp the whole, and confine himself to a few in order to embrace the 
whole. 

In this crowd two men have appeared of a superior talent, originaJ 



aCS MODERN AUTHORS fBOOfi V 

and contrasted, popular on the same grounds, ministers to the same 
cause, moralists in comedy and drama, defenders of natural sentiments 
against social institutions ; who, by the precision of their pictures, the 
depth cf their observations, the succession and harshness of their 
attacks, have renewed, with other views and in another style, the old 
combative spirit of Swift and Fielding. 

One, more ardent, more expansive, wholly- given up to rapture, as 
impassioned painter of crude and dazzling pictures, a lyric prose-writer^ 
omnipotent in laughter and tears, plunged into fantastic invenlioii, 
painful sensibiUty, vehement buffoonery ; and by the boldness of hia 
style, the excess of his emotions, the grotesque familiarity of his carica- 
tures, he has displayed all the forces and weaknesses of an artist, all 
the audacities, all the successes, and all the oddities of the imagination. 

The other, more contained, more instructed and stronger, a lover 
of moral dissertations, a counsellor of the public, a sort of lay preacher, 
less bent on defending the poor, more bent on censuring man, has 
brought to the aid of satire a sustained common sense, a great know- 
ledge of the heart, a consummate cleverness, a powerful reasoning, a 
treasure of meditated hatred, and has persecuted vice with all the 
weapons of reflection. By this contrast the one completes the other ; 
and we may form an exact idea of the English taste, by adding the por- 
trait of William Makepeace Thackeray to that of Charles Dickens. 

§ 1. — The Satirist. 
II. 

No wonder if in England a novelist writes satires. A gloomy and 
reflective man is impelled to it by his character ; he is still further im- 
pelled by the surrounding manners. He is not permitted to contem- 
plate passions as poetic powers ; he is bidden to appreciate them as 
moral qualities. His pictures become sentences ; he is a counsellor 
rather than an observer, a judge rather than an artist. You see by 
what machinery Thackeray has changed novel into satire. 

I open at random his three great works — Pendemiis, Vanity Fairy 
The Newcomes. Every scene sets in relief a moral truth : the author 
desires that at every page we should find a judgment on vice and viitue ; 
he has blamed or approved beforehand, and the dialogues or portraits 
are to him only means by which he adds our approbation to his appro- 
bation, our blame to his blame. He is giving us lessons ; and under 
the sentiments which he describes, as under the events which he relates, 
we continually discover precepts of conduct and the intentions of the 
reformer. 

On the first page of Pendennis you see the portait of an old Major, 
a man of the world, selfish and vain, seated comfortably in his club, 
at the table by the fire, and near the window, envied by surgeon 
Glowry, whom nobody invites, seeking in the records of aristocratic 



UlIAi*. 110 THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 36^1 

entertainments for his own name, gloriously placed amongst those of 
illustrious guests. A family letter arrives. Naturally he puts it aside, 
and reads it carelessly alter all the rest. He utters an exclamation of 
5iarror; his nephew wants to marry an actress. He has places booked 
in the coach (charging the sum which he disbursed for the seats to the 
account of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom he was 
guardian), and hastens to save the young fool. If there were a low 
marriage, what would become of his invitations ? The manifest con- 
clusion is: Let us not be selfish, or vain, or fond of good living, like 
the INIajor. 

Chapter the second : Pendennis, father of the young man, was in 
his time an apothecary, but of good family, and grieving to be reduced 
to this trade. He comes into money ; passes for a physician, marriea 
the relative of a lord, tries to creep into high families. He boasts all 
his life of having be^n invited by Sir Pepin Ribstone to an entertain- 
ment. He buys an estate, tries to sink the apothecary, and shows oft 
in the new glory of a landed proprietor. Each of these details is a con- 
cealed or evident sarcasm, which says to the reader: ' My good friend, 
remain the honest John Tomkins that you are ; and for the love of your 
son and yourself, avoid taking the airs of a great nobleman.' 

Old Pendennis dies. His son, the noble heir of the domain, 
* Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks,' begins to reign 
over his mother, his cousin, and the servants. He sends wretched verses 
to the county papers, begins an epic poem, a tragedy in which sixteen 
persons die, a scathing history of the Jesuits, and defends church and 
king like a loyal Tory. He sighs after the ideal, wishes for an un- 
known maiden, and falls in love Avith an actress, a woman of thirty-two, 
who learns her parts mechanically, as ignorant and stupid as can be. 
Young folks, my dear friends, you are all affected, pretentious, dupes 
of yourselves and of others. Wait to judge the world until you have 
seen it, and do not think you are masters when you are scholars. 

The instruction continues as long as tlie life of Arthur. Like 
Lesage in Gil Blas^ and Balzac in Le Fere Go7^iot, the author of Pe?i- 
dennis depicts a young man having some talent, endowed with good 
feelings, even generous, desiring to make a name, and falling in with 
the maxims of the world ; but Lesage only wished to amuse us, and 
Dalzac only wished to stir our passions : Thackeray, from beginning to 
end, works to correct us. 

This intention becomes still more evident if we examine in detail 
one of his dialogues and one of his pictures. You will not find there 
the impartial energy, bent on copying nature, but the attentive thought- 
fulness, bent on transforming into satire objects, words, and events. 
All the words of the character are chosen ar,d weighed, so as to be 
odious or ridiculous. He accuses himself, is icudious to display hig 
vice, and under his voice we hear the voice of the writer who judges, 
unmasks, and punishes him. Miss Crawley, a ricn old woman, falls 
VOT. U. 2 A 



370 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK T 

ill.^ Mrs. Bute, her relative, hastens to save her, and to save th« 
inheritance. Her aim is to have excluded from the will a nephew, 
Captain RaAvdon, an old favourite, presumptive heir of the old lady. 
This Rawdon is a stupid guardsman, a frequenter of hotels, a too clever 
gambler, a duellist, and a roue. Fancy the capital opportunity for Mrs, 
Bute, the respectable mother of a family, the worthy spouse of a clergy- 
man, accustomed to write her husband's sermons I From sheer virtue 
she hates Captain Rawdon, and will not suffer that such a good sum of 
money should fall into such bad hands. Moreover, are we not re- 
sponsible for our families ? and is it not for us to publish the faults of 
our relatives? It is our strict duty, and Mrs. Bute acquits herself of 
hers conscientiously. She provides edifying stories of her nephew, and 
therewith she edifies the aunt. He has ruined so and so ; he has 
wronged such a woman. He has duped this tradesman ; he has killed 
this husband. And above all, unworthy man, he has mocked his aunt * 
Will that generous lady continue to cherish such a viper? AVill she 
suffer her numberless sacrifices to be repaid by this ingratitude and 
this ridicule ? You can imagine the ecclesiastical eloquence of Mrs. 
Bute. Seated at the foot of the bed, she keeps the patient in sight, 
plies her with draughts, enlivens her with terrible sermons, and mounts 
guard at the door against the probable invasion of the heir. The siege 
was well conducted, the legacy attacked so obstinately must yield ; the 
virtuous fingers of the matron grasped beforehand and by anticipation 
the substantial heap of shining sovereigns. And yet a carping spectator 
might have found some faults in her management. She managed rather 
too well. She forgot that a woman persecuted with sermons, handled 
like a bale of goods, regulated like a clock, might take a dislike to so 
harassing an authority. What is worse, she forgot that a timid old 
woman, confined in the house, overwhelmed with preachings, poisoned 
with pills, might die before having changed her will, and leave all, 
alas, to her scoundrelly nephew. Instructive and notable example! 
Mrs. Bute, the honour of her sex, the consoler of the sick, the coun- 
sellor of her family, having ruined her health to look after her beloved 
sister-in-law, and to preserve the inheritance, was just on the pcint, by 
her exemplary devotion, of putting the patient in her coffin, and th« 
inheritance in the hands of her nephew. 

Apothecary Clump arrives ; he trembles for his dear client ; she is 
worth to him two hundred a year ; he is resolved to save this precious 
life, in spite of Mrs. Bute. Mrs. Bute interrupts him, and says ; 

* I am sure, my dear Mr. Clump, no efforts of mine Iiave been wanting to 
restore our dear invalid, whom the ingratitude of her nephew has laid on the bed 
of sickness. 1 never shrink from personal discomfort ; I never refuse to sacrifica 



* Vanity Fair, [Unless the large octavo edition is mentioned, the trans 
later has always used the collected edition of Thackeray's works, in small 
octavo, 1855-1868, 14 vols.] 



CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 371 

myself. ... I would lay down my life for my duty, or for any member of mj 
husband's family.' ^ 

The disinterested apothecary returns to the charge heroically. Imme- 
diately she replies in the finest strain ; her eloquence flows frrm her 
lips as from an over-full pitcher. She cries aloud : 

* Never, as long as nature supports me, will I desert the post of duty. As th« 
mother of a family and the wife of an English clergyman, I humbly trust that my 
f rinciples are good. "When my poor James was in the smallpox, did I allow any 
hireling to nurse him ? No ! ' 

The patient Clump scatters about sugared compliments, and pressing 
his point amidst interruptions, protestations, offers of sacrifice, railings 
against the nephew, at last hits the mark. He delicately insinuatei 
that the patient * should have change, fresh air, gaiety.' *The sight 
of her horrible nephew casually in the Park, where I am told the 
wretch drives with the brazen partner of his crimes,' Mrs. Bute said 
(letting the cat of selfishness out of the bag of secrecy), * would cause 
her such a shock, that we should have to bring her back to bed again. 
She must not go out, Mr. Clump. She shall not go out as long as I 
remain to watch over her. And as for my health, what matters it? 
I give it cheerfully, sir. I sacrifice it at the altar of my duty.' It is 
clear that the author attacks Mrs. Bute and all legacy-hunters. Ke 
gives her ridiculous airs, pompous phrases, a transparent; gross, and 
blustering hypocrisy. The reader feels hatred and disgust for her the 
more she speaks. He would unmask her; he is pleased to see her 
assailed, driven in a corner, taken in by the polished manceuvres of 
her adversary, and rejoices with the author, who tears from her and 
emphasises the shameful confession of her folly and her greed. 

Having arrived so far, satirical reflection quits the literary form. 
In order the better to develop itself, it exhibits itself alone. Thackeray 
comes in his proper character to attack vice. No author is more fertile 
in dissertations ; he constantly enters his story to reprimand or instruct 
us ; he adds theoretical to active morality. We might glean from his 
novels one or two volumes of essays in the manner of La Bruyere or of 
Addison. There are essays on love, on vanity, on hypocrisy, on meanness, 
on all the virtues, all the vices ; and turning over a few pages, we shall 
fi:id one on the comedies of legacies, and of too attentive relatives : 

' What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker's ! How 
tenderly we look at her faults, if she is a relative (and may every reader have a 
score of such), what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her ! How the 
junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling to the carriage with the 
lozengs upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman ! How, when she co ines to pay ni 
a visit, we generally find an opportunity to let our friends know her station in tha 
world ! We say (and with perfect truth) I wish I had Miss Mac Whirter's signa* 
tlire to a cheque for five thousand pounds. She wouldn't miss it, says your wife. 
She is my aunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if Misf 

' Vanity Fair, cl» vix. 



372 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK T 

Mac Wliirter is any relative ? Your wife is perpetually sending her little testl* 
monies of affection ; your little girls work endless worsted baskets, cushions, and 
foot-stools for her. What a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay 
you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without one ! The house during 
her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other 
gcasons. You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find youv- 
self all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a rubber. Wliai 
good dinners you have — game every day, IMalnisey-Jladeira, and no end of fis]> 
from London ! Even the servants in the kitchen share in the general prosperity ; 
and, somehow, during the stay of Miss Mac Whirter's fat coachman, the beer [3 
grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (wliera 
her maid takes her meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so ? 
I appeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers ! I wish you would send 
me an old aunt — a maiden aunt — an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a 
front of light coffee-coloured hair — how my children should work workbags for 
her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable 1 Sweet — sweet vision I 
Foolish — foolish di-eam ! ' ' 

There is no disguising it. The reader most resolved not to tfl 
warned, is warned. When we have an aunt with a good sum to 
leave, we shall value our attentions and our tenderness at their true 
worth. The author has taken the place of our conscience, and the 
novel, transformed by reflection, becomes a school of manners. 

m. 

The lash is laid on very heavily in this school ; it is the English 
taste. About tastes and whips there is no disputing; but without 
disputing we may understand, and the surest means of understanding 
the English taste is to compare it with the French taste. 

I see in France, in a drawing-room of men of wit, or in an artist'i 
studio, a score of lively people: they must be amused, that is their 
character. You may speak to them of human wickedness, but on con- 
dition of diverting them. If you get angry, they will be shocked ; if 
you teach a lesson, they will yawn. Laugh, it is the rule here — not 
cruelly, or from manifest enmity, but in good humour and in lightness 
of spirit. This nimble wit must act ; for it the discovery of a clean 
piece of folly is a fortunate hap. As a light flame, it glides and flickers 
in sudden outbreaks on the mere surface of things. Satisfy it by 
imitation, and to please gay people be gay. Be polite, that is the 
second commandment, very like the other. You speak to sociable, 
delicate, vain men, whom you must take care not to offend, and flatter. 
You would wound them by trying to carry conviction by force, by 
dint of solid arguments, by a disphiy of eloquence and indignation. 
Do them the honour of supposing that they understand you at tlie first 
word, that a hinted smile is to them as good as a syllogism established, 
that a fine allusion caught on the wing reaches them better than tha 



Vanity Fair, eh. ix 



<aJiP. II.J THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 373 

heavy onset of a gross geometrical satire. Think, lastly (between our- 
selves), that, in politics as in religion, they have been for a thousand 
years very well governed, over governed ; that when a man is bored 
he desires to be so no more ; that a coat too tight splits at the elbows 
and elsewhere. They are critics from choice ; from choice they like 
t*) insinuate forbidden things ; and often, by abuse of logic, by transport, 
by Mivacity, from ill humour, they strike at society through govern- 
ment, at morality through religion. They are scholars who have been 
too long under the rod ; they break the windows in opening the doors. 
I dare not tell you to please them ; I simply remark that, in order to 
please them, a grain of seditious humour will do no harm. 

I cross seven leagues of sea, and here I am in a great unadorned 
hall, with a multitude of benches, with gas burners, swept, orderly, 
a debating club or a preaching house. There are five hundred long 
faces, gloomy and subdued;^ and at the first glance it is clear that 
they are not there to amuse themselves. In this land a grosser mood 
overcharged with a heavier and stronger nourishment, has deprived 
impressions of their flat mobility, and thought, less facile and prompt, 
has lost its vivacity and its gaiety. If you rail before them, think that 
you are speaking to attentive, concentrated men, capable of durable 
and profound sensations, incapable of changeable and sudden emotion. 
Those immobile and contracted faces will preserve the same attitude ; 
they resist fleeting and half- formed smiles ; they cannot unbend ; and 
their laughter is a convulsion as stiff as their gravity. Do not skim 
over your subject, lay stress upon it ; do not pass over it lightly, impress 
it ; do not dally, but strike ; reckon that you must vehemently move 
vehement passions, and that shocks are needed to set these nerves in 
motion. Reckon also that your hearers are practical minds, lovers oi 
the useful; that they come here to be taught; that you owe t'lem 
solid truths ; that their common sense, somewhat contracted, does not 
fall in with hazardous extemporisations or doubtful hints ; that they 
demand worked out refutations and complete explanations; and that 
if they have paid to come in, it was to hear advice which they might 
apply, and satire founded on proof. Their mood requires strong emo- 
tions ; their mind asks for precise demonstrations. To satisfy their 
mood, you must not touch the surface, but torture vice ; to satisfy their 
mind, you must not rail in sallies, but by arguments. One word more : 
down there, in the midst of the assembly, behold that gilded, splendid 
book, resting royally on a velvet cushion. It is the Bible ; about it there 
are fifty moralists, who a while ago met at the theatre and pelted an 
actor off the stage with apples, who was guilty of having the wife of 9 
townsman for his mistress. If with your finger-tip, with all the com- 
pliments and disguises in the world, you touch a single sacred leaf, of 

' Thackeray, in his Book of Snobs, says : ' Their usual English expressioji 
»f intense gloom and subdued agony.' 



374 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

the least moral conventionalism, immediately fifty hands on your coat 
collar will put you out of the door. With Englislimen you must 
be English, with their passion and their common sense adopt theii 
leading-strings. Thus confined to recognised truths, your satire will 
become more bitter, and will add the weight of public belief to the 
pressure of logic and the force of indignation, 

IV. 

No writer was better giftea than Thackeray for this kind of satire^, 
because no faculty is more proper to satire than reflection. Reflec- 
tion is a concentrated attention, and concentrated attention increases 'a 
hundredfold the force and duration of emoti ms. He who is immersed 
in the contemplation of a vice feels a hatred of vice, and the intensity 
of his hatred is measured by the intensity of his contemplation. At 
first anger is a generous wine, which intoxicates and exalts ; when 
preserved and shut up, it becomes a liquor burning all that it touches, 
and corroding even the vessel which contains it. Of all satirists, 
Thackeray, after Swift, is the most gloomy. Even his countrymen 
have reproached him with depicting the world uglier than it is. In- 
dignation, grief, scorn, disgust, are his ordinary sentiments. When 
he digresses, and imagines tender souls, he exaggerates their sensibility, 
in order to render their oppression more odious. The selfishness which 
wounds them appears horrible, and this resigned sweetness is a mortal 
insult to their tyrants : it is the same hatred which has calculated the 
kindliness of the victims and the harshness of the persecutors. 

This anger, exasperated by reflection, is also armed by reflection. 
It is clear that the author is not carried away by passing indignation 
or pity. He has mastered himself before speaking. He has often 
weighed the rascality which he is about to describe. He is in posses- 
sion of the motives, species, results, as a naturalist is of his classifica- 
tions. He is sure of his judgment, and has matured it. He punishas 
like a man convinced, who has before him a heap of proofs, who 
advances nothing without a document or an argument, who has forf?- 
seen all objections and refuted all excuses, who will never pardon, who 
IS ri^ht in being inflexible, who is conscious of his justice, and who 
refits his sentence and his vengeance on all the powers of meditatioj 
anil equity. The efl*ect of this justified and contained hatred is over- 
whelming. When we have read to the end of Balzac's novels, we feel 
the pleasure of a naturalist walking through a museum, past a fine 
collection of specimens and monstrosities. When we have read to the 
end of Thackeray, we feel the shudder of a .stranger brought before a 
mattress in the operating-room of an hospital, on the day when moi-a« 
are applied or a limb is taken off. 

In such a case the most natural weapon is serious irony, because il 
bears witness to a concentrated hate : he who employs it suppressej 
his first movement ; he feigns to be speaking against himself, and con* 



CHAP, ll.j THE NOVEL.— THA JKERAY. 375 

Strains himself to take the part of his adversnry. On the other hand, 
this painful and voluntary attitudt is the sign of an excessive scorn ; 
tlie apparent protection lent to his enemy is the worst of insults. The 
author seems to say : * I am ashamed to attack you ; you are so weak 
that, even supported, you must fall ; your reasonings are your shame, 
and your excuses are your condemnation.* Thus the more serious the 
irony, the stronger it is ; the more you take care to defend your <nd- 
versar j, the more yr^u degrade him ; the more you seem to aid him, 
the more you crush hm.. This is why Swift's grave sarcasm is so 
tenible ; we think he is showing respect, and he slays ; his approbation is 
a flagellation. Amongst Swift's pupils, Thackeray is the first. Several 
chapters in the Book of Snobs — that, for instance, on literary snobs — 
are worthy of Gulliver. The author has been passing in review all 
the snobs of England ; what will he say of his colleagues, the literary 
§nobs ? Will he dare to speak of them ? Certainly : 

* My dear and excellent querist, whom does the Schoolmaster flog so resolutely 
•8 his own son ? Didn't Brutus chop his offspring's head off ? You have a very 
bad opinion indeed of the present state of Literature and of literary men, if you 
fancy that any one of us would hesitate to stick a knife into his neighbour penman, 
if the latter's death could do the State any service. 

* Fut the fact is, that in the literary profession there are no Snobs. Look 
round at the whole body of British men of letters, and I defy you to point out 
among them a single instance of vulgarity, or envy, or assumption. 

* Men and women, as far as I have known them, they are all modest in theii 
demeanour, elegaut in their manners, spotless in their lives, and honourable in 
their conduct to the world and to each other. You viay occasionally, it is true, 
hear one literary man abusing his brother ; but why ? Not in the least out of 
malice ; not at all from envy ; merely from a sense of truth and public duty. 
Suppose, for instance, I good-naturedly point out a blemish in my friend Mr. 
Punch's person, and say Mr. P. has a hump-back, and his nose and chin are more 
crooked than those features in the Apollo or Antinous, which we are accustomed 
to consider as mi standards of beauty ; does this argue malice on my part towards 
Mr. Punch? Not in the least. It is the critic's duty to point out defects aa 
vrell as merits, and he invariably does his duty with the utmost gentleness and 
candour. . . . 

* That sense of equality and fraternity amongst Authors has always struck me 
»s one of the most amiable characteristics of the class. It is because we know and 
respect each other, that the world respects us so much ; that we hold such a good 
position in society, and demean ourselves so irreproachably when there. 

* Literary persons are held in such esteem by the nation, that about two of 
them have been absolutely invited to Court during the present reign ; and it is 
probable that towards the end of the se&son, one or two will be asked to dinitey 
by Sir Robert Peel. 

* They are such favourites with the public, that they are continually obliged 
to have their pictures taken and published ; and one or two coulo be pointed outi 
of whom the nation insists upon having a fresh portrait every year. Nothing can 
be more gratifying than this proof of the affectionate regard which the people had 
i'.-r its instructors. 

* Liteiatare is held in such honour in England, that there ia a sum of nea» 



376 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOE V 

twelve hundred pounds per annum set apart to pension deserving persons foUoAving 
that profession. And a gi'eat compliment this is, too, to the professors, and a 
proof of their generally prosperous and flourishing condition. They are generally 
BO rich and thrifty, that scarcely any money is wanted to help them.** 

We are tempted to make a mistake ; and to comprehend this pas- 
sage, we must remember that, in an aristocratical and monarchicjil 
society, amidst money-worship and adoration of rank, poor and vulgar 
talent is treated as its vulgarity and poverty deserve.^ What makes 
these ironies yet stronger, is their length ; some are prolonged during 
a whole tale, like the Fatal Boots. A Frenchman could not keep 
up a sarcasm so long. It would escape right or left through various 
emotions ; it would change countenance, and would not preserve so 
fixed an attitude — the mark of such a decided animosity, so calcul iied 
and bitter. There are characters which Thackeray develops through 
three volumes — Blanche Amory, Rebecca Sharp — and of whom he 
never speaks but with insult ; both are base, and he never introduces 
them without plying them with tendernesses : dear Rebecca I tondei 
Blanche 1 The tender Blanche is a sentimental and literary young 
creature, obliged to live with her parents, who do not understand her. 
She suffers so much, that she ridicules them aloud before everybody • 
she is so oppressed by the folly of her mother and father-in-law, tha 
she never omits an opportunity of making them feel their folly. Ii. 
good conscience, could she do otherwise ? Would it not be on her 
part a lack of sincerity to affect a gaiety which she has not, or a respect 
which she cannot feel ? We understand that the poor child is in need 
of sympathy. When she gave up her dolls, this loving heart became 
first enamoured of Trenmor, a high-souled convict, the fiery Stenio, 
Prince Djalma, and other heroes of Fi-ench novels. Alas ! the imagi- 
nary world is not sufficient for wounded souls, and the craving for the 
ideal, for satiety, falls at last to worldly beings. At eleven years of 
age Miss. Blanche had felt tender emotions towards a little Savoyard, 
an organ-grinder at Paris, whom she persisted in believing to be a 
prince carried off from his parents; at twelve an old and hideous 
drawing-master had agitated her young heart; at Madame de Cara- 
mel's boarding-school a correspondence by letter took place with two 
young pupils of the college of Charlemagne. Dear forlorn girl, her 
delicate feet are already wounded by the briars in her path of life ; 
every day her illusions shed their leaves, and in vain she confides them 
to verse, in a little book bound in blue velvet, with a clasp of gold, 
entitled Mes Larmes. In this isolation, what is she to do? She grows 
enthusiaitic over the young ladies whom she meets, feels a magnetic 
attraction at sight of them, becomes their sister, except that she casti 

' The Book of Snobs, oh. xvi. ; On Literwy 8nohs. 

^ Stendhal says : 'L'Espritet le genie perd'^nt vingt-cinq pour ceui J« 
leur valeur p.n abordant en Anglettrre.' 



CHAP, n.j THE NOVEL— THACKERAY. ^y f 

them aside to-morrow like an old dress : we cannot command our feel- 
ings, and nothing is more beautiful than the natural. Moreover, as 
the amiable child has much taste, a lively imagination, a poetic inclina- 
tian for change, she keeps her maid Pincott at work day and night. 
Like a delicate person, a genuine dilettante and lover of the beautifulj 
sl'e scolds her for her heavy eyes and her pale face : 

' Onr nrnse, with the candour which distinguished her, never failed to remind 
o€i' attendant of the real state of matters. ** I should send you away, Pincott, for 
you are a great deal ti^o weak, and ycur eyes are failing you, and you are always 
cr}'ing and snivelling, and wanting the doctor ; but I Avish that your parents at 
home should be supported, and I go on enduring for their sake, mind," the dear 
Blanche would say to her timid little attendant. Or, ** Pincott, your wretched 
appearance and slavish manner, and red eyes, positively give me the migraine ; 
and I think I shall make you wear rouge, so that you may look a little cheerful ; " 
or, '* Pincott, I can't bear, even for the sake of your starving parents, that you 
should tear my hair out of my head in that manner ; and 1 will thaiik you to write 
to them and say that I dispense with your services." ' ^ 

This fool of a Pincott does not appreciate her good fortune. Can one 
be sad in serving such a superior being as Miss Blanche ? What joy 
to furnish her with subjects for her style! because, to confess the 
truth, Miss Blanche has not disdained to write 'some very pretty verses 
about the lonely little tiring-maid, whose heart was far away,' 'sad 
exile in a foreign land.' Alas I the slightest event suffices to wound 
this too sensitive heart. At the least emotion her tears flow, her feel- 
ings are shaken, like a delicate butterfly, crushed as soon as touched. 
There she goes, aerial, her eyes fixed on heaven, a faint smile lingering 
round her rosy lips, a touching fairy, so consoling to all who surround 
her, that every one wishes her at the bottom of a well. 

One step added to serious irony leads us to serious caricature. Here, 
as before, the author pleads the rights of his neighbour ; the only 
difference is, that he pleads them with too much warmth ; it is insult 
upon insult. Under this head it abounds in Thackeray. Some of his 
grotesques are outrageous: for instance, M. Alcide de Mirobolant, a 
French cook, an artist in sauces, who declares his passion to Misa 
Blanche through the medium of symbolic dishes, and thinks himself & 
g«intleman ; Mrs. Major O'Dowd, a sort of female grenadier, the most 
pompous and bragging of Irishwomen, bent on ruling the regiment^ 
and marrying the bachelors will they nill they ; Miss Briggs, an old 
eompanion, born to receive insults, to make phrases and shed tears ; the 
Doctor, who proves to his scholars who write bad Greek, that habitual 
idleness and bad construing lead to the gallows. These calculated defor- 
mities only excite a sad smile. We always perceive behind the oddity 
of the character the sardonic air of the painter, and we conclude thai 

^ These remarks are only to be found in the r^-.iginal octavo edi tion of 
Pendennis. — Tr. 



378 MODERN A.UTHORS. [BOOK V 

the human race is base and stupid. Other figures, less exaggerated, 
are not more natural. We see that the author throws them expressly 
into palpable follies and marked contradictions. Such is Miss Crawley, 
an old immoral woman and free-thinker, who praises unequal marriages, 
and falls into a fit when on the next page her nephew makes one \ who 
calls Rebecca Sharp her equal, and at the same time bids her * pi^ 
some coals on the fire;' who, on learning the departure of her favcuritf^ 
cries with despair, * Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate? 
These are comedy scenes, and not pictures of manners. There ar« 
twenty such. You see an excellent aunt, Mrs. Hoggarty, of CsiJtU 
Hoggarty, settling down in the house of her nephew Titmarsh, throw 
him into vast expenses, persecute his wife, drive away his friends, 
make his marriage unhappy. The poor ruined fellow is thrown into 
prison. She denounces him to the creditors with genuine indignation, 
and reproaches him with perfect sincerity. The wretch has been hia 
aunt's executioner ; she has been dragged by him from her home, tyran- 
nised over by him, robbed by him, outraged by his wife. She writes : 
* I have seen butter wasted as if it had been dirt, cole flung away, candlea 
burned at both ends ; ... and now you have the audassaty, being placed in prison 
justly for your crimes, for cheating me of £3000. . . . You come upon me to pay 
your detts ! No, sir, it is quite enough that your mother should go on the parish, 
and that your wife should sAveep the streets, to which you have indeed brought 
them ; /, at least . . . have some of the comforts to which my rank entitles me. 
The furnitur in this house is mine ; and as 1 presume you intend your lady to 
sleep in the streets, I give you warning that I shall remove it all to-morrow. Mr. 
Smithers will tell you that I had intended to leave you my intire fortune. I have 
this morning, in his presents, solamly toar up my will, and hereby renounce all 
connectiun with you and your beggarly family. P.S. — I took a viper into my 
bosom, and it stung me. ' ^ 

This just and compassionate woman finds her match, a pious man, John 
Brough, Esquire, M.P., director of the Independent West Diddlesex 
Fire and Life Insurance Company. This virtuous Christian has sniffed 
from afar the cheering odour of her lands, houses, stocks, and other 
landed and personal property. He pounces upon the fine property ^A 
Mrs. Hoggarty, is sorry to see that it only brings that lady four ptr 
cent., and resolves to double her income. He calls upon her at hfii 
lodgings, when her face was shockingly swelled and bitten by — ntvei 
mind what: 

* *• Gracious heavens ! " shouted John Brough, Esquire, *' a lady of your rank 
to suffer in this way ! — the excellent relative of my dear boy, Titmarsh ! Never, 
madam— never let it be said that Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty should be 
subject to such horribls humiliation, while John Brough iias a home to offer her, 
— a humble, happy Christian home, madam, though unlike, perhaps, the splendoui 
to which yor. have been accustomed in the course of your distinguished career. 
Isabella, mj love ! — Belinda ! speak to Mrs. Hoggarty. Tell h r that John 
Brough's house is hers from garret to cellar. I repeat it, madam, from garret to 

' T7ie History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggai-y Diamond, ch, xl 



CHAP. 11.1 THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 379 

cellar. I desire — I insist — I order, that Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty'i 
trunks should be placed this instant in my carriage ! " ' ^ 

This style raises a laugh, if you will, but a sad laugh. We have just 
learned that man is a hypocrite, unjust, tyrannical, blind. In cur 
vexation we turn to the author, and we see on his lips only sarcasms, 
DC his brow only chagriB- 

V. 

Let us look carefully ; perhaps in less grav<» matters we shall find 
mbject of genuine laughter. Let us consider, not a rascality, but a 
misadventure ; rascality revolts, a misadventure might amuse. Bud 
amusement alone is not here ; even in a diversion the satire retains its 
force, bi'cause reflection retains its intensity. There is in English 
fun a seriousness, an eiFort, an application that is marvellous, and their 
comicalities are composed with as much science as their sermons. The 
powerful attention decomposes its object in all its parts, and repro- 
duces it with illusive detail and relief. Swift describes the land of 
speaking horses, the politics of Lilliput, the inventors of the Flying 
Island, with details as precise and harmonious as an experienced 
traveller, an exact inquirer into manners and countries. Thus sup- 
ported, the impossible monster and the literary grotesque enter upon 
actual existence, and the phantom of the imagination takes the con- 
sistency of objects which we touch. Thackeray introduces this im- 
perturbable gravity, this solid conception, this talent for illusion, into 
his farce. Study one of his moral essays ; he wishes to prove that in 
the world we must conform to received customs, and transforms this 
commonplace into an Oriental anecdote. Reckon up the details oi 
manners, geography, chronology, cookery, the mathematical designa- 
tion of every object, person, and g-esture, the lucidity of imagination, 
the profusion of local truths ; you will understand why his raillery 
produces so original and biting an impression, and you will find here 
the same degree of studiousness and the same attentive energy as in the 
foregoing ironies and exaggerations : his enjoyment is as reflective as his 
Kitred ; he has changed his attitude, not his faculty : 

' I aca. naturally averse to egotism, and hate self-laudation consumedly ; but 
\ can't help relating here a circumstance illustrative cf the point in question, in 
l?hich I must think I actcJ with considerable prudence. 

* Being at Constantinople a few years since — (on a delicate mission) — the 
fik'issians were playing a double game, between ourselves, and it became necessary 
on oiu- [-art to employ an extra negotiator — Leckerbiss Pashs of Eouraelia, then 
Chief Galeongee of the Porte, gave a diplomatic banquet at his summer palace at 
Bujukdere. I was on the left of the Galeongee ; and the Russian agent Count de 
Diddloff on his dexter side. Diddloff is a dandy who would die of a rose in aro- 
matic pain : he had tried to liave me assassinated three times in the course of the 
negotiation : but of course we were friends in public, and saluted each other in th« 
most cordial and charming manner. 

' The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Oreat Hoggarty Diamond, cL. ii 



3S0 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

' The Galeongee is — or was, alas ! for a bow-string has d*fje for him — a staunch 
supporter of the old school of Turlcish politics. We dined with our fingers, and 
had flaps of bread for plates ; the only innc-vation he admitted was the use ol 
European liquors, in which he indulged with great gusto. He was an enormous 
eater. Amongst the dishes a very large one was placed before him of a lamb 
dressed in its wool, stuffed with prunes, garlic, assafoetida, capsicums, and other 
condiments, the most abominable mixture that ever mortal smelt or tasted. The 
Galeongee ate of this hugely ; and pursuing the Eastern fashion, insisted on help- 
ing his friends right and left, and when he came to a particularly spicy morsel, 
would push it with his own hands into his guests' very mouths. 

* I never shall forget the look of poor DiddloflF, when his Excellency, rolling up 
A Urge quantity of this into a ball, and exclaiming, " Buk Buk " (it is very good), 
administered the horrible bolus to Diddioff. The Russian's eyes rolk^d dreadfully as 
he received it : he swallowed it with a grimace that I thought must precede a con- 
vulsion, and seizing a bottle next him, which he thought was Sauterne, but which 
turned out to be French brandy, he drank off nearly a pint before he knew his 
error. It finished him ; he was carried away from the dining-room almost dead, 
and laid out to cool in a summer-house on the Bosphorus. 

* When it came to my turn, I took down tlie condiment with a smile, said 
" Bismillah," licked my lips with easy gratification, and when the next dish was 
served, made up a ball myself so dexterously, and popped it down the old Galeon- 
gee's mouth with so much grace, that his heart was won. Russia was put out of 
Court at once, and the treat)/ of Kabobanople ivas signed. As for Diddioff, all wa» 
over with him, he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and Sir Roderick MurchisoD 
saw him, under the No. 3967, working in the Ural mines. ^ 

The anecdote is evidently authentic ; and when De Foe related the 
apparition of Mrs. Veal, he did not better imitate the style of an 
authenticated account. 

VI. 

So attentive a reflection is a source of sadness. To amuse our- 
selves with human passions, we must consider them as inquisitive men, 
like shifting puppets, or as learned men, like regulated wheels, or as 
artists, like powerful springs. If you only consider tliem as virtuous 
or vicious, your lost illusions will enchain you in gloomy thoughts, and 
you Avill find in man only weakness and ugliness. This is why Thackeray 
depreciates our whole nature. He does as a novelist what Hobbes does 
as a pldlosopher. Almost everywhere, when he describes fine senti- 
ments, he derives them from an ugly source. Tenderness, kindness, 
love, are in his characters the effect of the nerves, of instinct, or of a 
moral disease. Amelia Sedley, his favourite, and one of his master- 
pieces, is a poor little woman, snivelling, incapable of reflection and 
decision, blind, a superstitious adorer of a coarse and selfish husband, 
always sacrificed by her own will and fault, whose love is made up oi 
folly and weakness, often unjust, accustomed to see falsely, and more 
worthy of compassion than respect. Lady Castlewood, so good and 
tender, is enamoured, like Amelia, of a drunken and imbecile boor 5 and 



The Book of Snobs, ch. i. ; The Snob playfully f.ealt mfh. 



CHAP. II.] THE NO 7EL.— THACKERAY. 381 

her wild jealousy, exasperated on the slightest suspicion, implacable 
against her husband, giving utterance violently to cruel words, shows 
that her love comes not from virtue, but from mood. Helen Pen- 
deems, the model of motliers, is a somewhat silly country prude, ^ 
iiarrov/ education, also jealous, and having in her jealousy all the harsh 
a ess KjL Puritanism and passion. She fiiints on learning that her son 
has a mistress : it is * such a sin, such a dreadful sin. I can't bear to 
think that my boy should commit such a crime. I wish he had died, 
al Host, before he had done it.' ^ Whenever she is spoken to of little 
F.mny, * the widow's countenance, always soft and gentle, assumed a 
cruel and inexorable expression.' ^ Meeting Fanny at the bedside of 
the sick young man, she drives her away as if she were a prostitute and a 
servant. Maternal love, in her as in the others, is an incurable blindness : 
her son is lier idol ; in her adoration she finds the means of making his 
lot insupportable, and himself unhappy. As to the love of the men for 
the women, if we judge from the pictures of the author, we can but 
feel pity for it, and look on it as ridiculous. At a certain age, accord- 
ing to Thackeray, nature speaks : we meet some woman ; a fool or not, 
good or bad, we adore her ; it is a fever. At the age of six months 
dogs have their disease ; man has his at twenty. If a man loves, it is 
not because the lady is loveable, but because hs must love. Do you 
think one would drink if not thirsty, or eat if not hungry ? 

He relates the history of this hunger and thirst with a bitter vigour. 
He seems like a man grown sober, railing at drunkenness. He explains 
at length, in a half sarcastic tone, the folly of Major Dobbin for Amelia ; 
how the Major buys bad wines fi'om her father ; how he urges the 
postilions, rouses the servants, persecutes his friends, to see Amelia more 
quickly ; how, after ten years of sacrifices, tenderness, and services, he 
sees that he is held second to an old portrait of a faithless, coarse, selfish, 
and dead husband. The saddest of these accounts is that of the first love 
of Pendennis — Miss Fotheringay, the actress, whom he loves, a matter- 
of-fact person, a good housekeeper, who has the mind and the education 
of a kitchen-maid. She speaks to the young man of the fine weather, 
and the pie she has just been making : Pendennis discovers in these 
*,wo phrases a wonderful depth of intellect and a superhuman majesty 
vf devotion. He asks Miss Fotheringay, who has just been playing 
Ophelia, if the latter loved Hamlet. Miss Fotheringay answers : 

* " In love witK well a little ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley ? ' 
She bristled with indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he 
flpote, but Di Ophelia of the play. " Oh, indeed ; if no olFence was meant, none 
was taken : but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him — n<5t that glass of 
punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. **Kotzebue? who was he?" "The 
author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably. " * •' She did not 
know that — the man's name at the beginning of the book was Thompson," she 
Pel. laughed at her adorable simplicity. Pendennis, Pendennis — how shf 



Pendennis, ch. liv. * Ibid. eh. lii. 



hS2 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

<pcke the words ! Emily, Emily ! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how per 
feet she is ! ' * 

The first volume runs wholly upon this contrast ; it seems as though 
Thackeray said to his reader : * My dear brothers in humanity, we are 
rascals forty-nine days in fifty ; in the fiftieth, if we escape pride, vanityj 
wickedness, selfishness, it is because we fall into a hot fever our ft Ily 
causes our devotion.' 

VII. 

Yet, short, of being Swift, one must love something; one cannot 
always be wounding and destroying ; and the heart, wearied of scorn 
and hate, needs repose in praise and emotion. Moreover, to blame a 
fault is to laud the contrary quality ; and a man cannot sacrifice a 
victim without raising an altar : it is circumstance which fixes on the 
one, and which builds the other ; and the moralist who combats the 
dominant vice of his country and his age, preaches the virtue contrary 
to the vice of his age and his country. In an aristocrat ical and com- 
mercial society, this vice is selfishness and pride 1 Thackeray will 
therefore extol sweetness and tenderness. Let love and kindness be 
blind, instinctive, unreasoning, ridiculous, it matters little: such as 
they are, he adores them ; and there is no more singular contrast than 
that of his heroes and of his admiration. He creates foolish women, 
and kneels before them ; the artist within him contradicts the com- 
mentator : the first is ironical, the second laudatory ; the first repre- 
sents the pettiness of love, the second writes its panegyric ; the top of 
the page is a satire in action, the bottom is a dithyramb in periods. 
The compliments which he lavishes on Amelia Sedley, Helen Pendennis, 
Laura, are infinite ; no author ever more visibly and incessantly paid 
court to his women ; he sacrifices men to them, not once, but a hun- 
dred times : 

* Very likely female pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks ol 
their young ones : it is certain that women do, There must be som*^ sort of plea- 
sure which we men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of bt.ng scari- 
fied. ^ ... Do not let us men despise these instincts because we cannot feel theax, 
The« women were made for our comfort and delectation, gentlemen. — with a)j 
the rijst of the minor animals. ^ ... Be it for a reckless husband, a dissipates 
eon, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready their hearts are to pour out their 
best treasures for the benefit of the cherished person ; and what a deal of this sort 
of enjoyment are we, on our side, ready to give the soft creatures! Thei-e ii 
scarce a man that reads this, bat has administered pleasure in that fashion to hii 
womankind, and has treated them to the luxury of forgi\'ing him.' * 

When he enters the room of a good mother, or of a young honest girl^ 

' Pendennis, ch. v. 
Ibid. ch. xxi. This passage is only found ir the large octavo edition. — Tr. 

• Ibid. ch. xxi. 

* Ihid. ch. xxi,, large octavo edition. These words are not in the smaV 
Of*tavo edition. — Tr. 



CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL.-THACKERAY. 383 

he casts down his eyes as on the threshold of a sanctuary. In the pre- 
sence of Laura resigned, pious, he checks himself : 

* And as that duty was performed quite noiselessly — while the supplication* 
which endowed her with the requisite strength for fulfilling it, also took place 
iu her own chamber, away from all mortal sight, — we, too, must be perforce lilent 
about these virtues of hers, which no more bear public talking about than « 
flower will bear to bloom in a ball-room.' * 

Like Dickens, he has a reverence for the family, tender and simple 
tsentiments, calm and pure contentments, such as are relished by the 
fireside between a child and a wife. When this misanthrope, so re« 
flective and harsh, lights upon a filial effusion or a maternal grief, he if 
wounded in a sensitive place, and, like Dickens, he makes us weep. * 

We have enemies because we have friends, and aversions because 
we have preferences. If we prefer devoted kindliness and tender 
affections, we dislike arrogance and harshness : the cause of love is also 
the cause of hate ; and sarcasm, like sympathy, is the criticism of a 
social form and a public vice. This is why Thackeray's novels are a 
war against aristocracy. Like Eousseau, he praised simple and affec- 
tionate manners ; like Rousseau, he hates the distinction of ranks. 

He wrote a whole book on this, a sort of moral and half political 
pamphlet, the Book of Snobs. The word does not exist in France, 
because they have not the thing. The snob is a child of aristocratical 
societies : perched on his step of the long ladder, he respects the man 
on the step above him, and despises the man on the step below, without 
inquiring what they are worth, solely on account of their position ; in 
his innermost heart he finds it natural to kiss the boots of the first, and 
to kick the second. Thackeray reckons up at length the degrees of 
this habit. Hear his conclusion : 

* I can bear it no longer — this diabolical invention of gentility, which kills 
natural kindliness and honest friendship. Proper pride, indeed ! Pvank and pre- 
cedence, forsooth ! The table of ranks and degrees is a lie and should be flung 
into the fire. Organise rank and precedence ! that was well for the masters of 
ceremonies of former ages. Come forward, some great marshal, and organise 
Equality in society.' 

Then he adds, with common sense, altogether English bitterness aai 
familiarity : 

* If ever our cousins the Smigsmags asked me to meet Lord Longears, I would 
like to take an opportunity after dinner, and say, in the most good-natured way in 
the world : — Sir, Fortune makes you a present of a number of thousand poundi 
every year. The inefi"able wisdom of our ancestors has placed you as a chief and 
hereditary legislator over me. Our admirable Constitution (the pride of Britons 
and envy of surrounding nations) obliges me to receive you as my senator, superior, 

1 Pendennis, eh. li. 

" See, for example, in the (heat Hoggarty Diamond, the death of the littlt 
fUild. The Book of 8nobs ends thus : ' Fun is good, Truth is still better, and 
* >ve best of all.' 



384 MODERN AU-'HORS. [BOOK V 

and gnardiaiL Yonr eldist son, Fitz-Heehaw, is sure of a place in Parliament; 
your younger sons, the De Brays, will kindly c ondescend to be post-captaius and 
lieutenant-colonels, and to represent us in foreign courts, or to take a good livinf^ 
when it falls convenient. These prizes our admirable Constitution (the pride and 
envy of, etc.) pronounces to be your due ; without count of your dulness, youj- 
vices, your selfishness ; of your entire incapacity and folly. Dull as you may Is 
(and we have as good a right to assume that my lord is an ass, as the other pro- 
positian, that he is an enliglitened patriot) ; — dull, I say, as you may be, no cub 
will accuse you of such monstrous folly, as to suppose that you are indifferent tj 
the good luck which yon possess, or have any inclination to part with it. No— » 
and patriots as we are, under happier circumstances. Smith and I, I have no doubt, 
were we dukes ourselves, would stand by our order. 

* "We would submit good-naturedly to sit in a high place. "We would acquieigcc 
in that admirable Constitution (pride and envy of, etc.) which made us chiefs and 
the world our inferiors ; we would not cavil particularly at that notion of here- 
ditary superiority which brought so many simple people cringing to our kneea. 
May be we would rally round the Corn-Laws ; we would make a stand against the 
Reform Bill ; we would die rather than repeal the acts against Catholics and Dis- 
senters ; we woidd, by our noble system of class-legislation, bring Ireland to iti 
present admirable condition. 

* But Smith and I are not Earls as yet. We don't believe that it is for the inte- 
rest of Smith's army, that young De P^ray should be a Colonel at five-and-twenty, 
of Smith's diplomatic relations, that Lord Longears should go ambassador to Con- 
stantinople, — of our politics, that Longears should put his hereditary foot into them. 

' This booing and cringing Smith believes to be the act of Snous ; and he will 
do all in his might and main to be a Snob, and to submit to Snobs no longer. To 
Longears he says, *' "We can't help seeing, Longears, that we are as good as you. 
"We can spell even better ; we can think quite as rightly ; we will not have you 
for our master, or black your shoes any more. " ' * 

This opinion of politics only continues the remarks of the moralist. 
If he hates aristocracy, it is less because it oppresses man than because 
it corrupts him ; in deforming social life, it deforms private life ; in 
establishing injustice, it establishes vice ; after having forestalled the 
common weal, it poisons the soul ; and Thackeray finds its trace in the 
perversity and foolishness of all classes and all sentiments. 

The king opens this list of vengeful portraits. It is George IV., 
' the first gentleman in Europe.' This great monarch, so justly re- 
gretted, could cut out a coat, drive a four-in-hand nearly as well as 
the Brighton coachman, and play the fiddle well. 'In the vigour of 
youth and the prime force of his invention, he invented Maraschino 
punch, a shoe-buckle, and a Chinese pavilion, the most hideous build- 
ing in the world :* 

*Two boys had leave from their loyal masters to go from Slaughter Houm 
School where they were educated, and to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a 
crowd which assembled there to greet the king. THE KING ? There he was. 
Beef-eaters were before the august box : the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the 
Powder Closet) and other great orticers of state were behind the chair on which he 

' lliG Book of Snobs, last chapter. 



CHAP. II.l THE NOVEL.— THACKERAl . 385 

Bate, He sate — florid of face, portly of person, covered with orders, and in a ricb 
curling head of hair — How we sang God save him ! How the house rocked and 
shouted with that magnificent music. How they cheered, and cried, and waved 
handkerchiefs. Ladies wept : mothers clasped their children : some fainted with 
emotion. . . . Yes, we saw him. Fate cannot deprive us of that. Others have 
seen Napoleon. Some few still exist who have beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor 
Johnson, Marie Antoinette, etc. — be it our reasonable boast to our cliildren, that 
we saw George the Good, the Magnificent, the Great. ' ^ 

Dear prince I the virtue emanating from his heroic throne spread 
feiirougb the hearts of all his courtiers. Whoever presented a better 
example than the Marquis of Steyne? This lord, a king iu his own 
sphere, tried to prove that he was so. He forces his wife to sit at table 
beside women without any character, his mistresses. Like a true prince, 
he had for his special enemy his eldest son, presumptive heir to the 
marquisate, whom he leaves to starve, and compels to run into debt. 
He is now making love to a charming person, Mrs. Rebecca Crawley, 
whom he loves for her hypocrisy, coolness, and unequalled insensibility. 
The Marquis, by dint of debasing and oppressing all who surround 
him, ends by hating and despising men ; he has no taste for anything 
but perfect rascalities. Rebecca rouses him ; one day even she trans- 
ports him with enthusiasm. She plays Clytemnestra in a charade, and 
her husband Agamemnon ; she advances to the bed, a dagger in her 
hand; her eyes are lighted up with a smile so ghastly, that people quake 
as they look at her ; Brava ! brava 1 old Steyne's strident voice was 

heard roaring over all the rest, *By , she'd do it too !' One can 

hear that he has the true conjugal feeling. His conversation is remark- 
ably frank. * I can't send Briggs away,' Becky said. — ' You owe her 
her wages, I suppose,' said the peer. — ' Worse than that, I have ruined 
her.'- — ' Ruined her ? then why don't you turn her out?' 

He is, moreover, an accomplished gentleman, of fascinating sweet- 
ness ; he treats his women like a pacha, and his words are like blows. 
I commend to the reader the domestic scene in which he gives the 
order to invite Mrs. Crawley. Lady Gaunt, his daughter-in-law, says 
that she will not be present at dinner, and will go home. His lord- 
ship ansv/ered : 

' I wish you would, and stay there. You will find ihe bailiffs at Bareacres vert 
^kbasant ccmpajiy, and I shall be freed from lending money to your relations, and 
from your own damned tragedy airs. Who are you to give orders here? You 
have no money. You've got no brains. You were here to have children, and you 
have not had any. Gaunt's tired of you ; and George's wife is the only person in 
the family who doesn't wish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you 
vere. . . . You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue. . . . Pray, madame, 
ghall I tell you some httle anecdotes about my Lady Ba)'eacres, your mamma ? ' * 

The rest is in the same style. His daughters-in-law, driven to despair 



* Vai-Aty Fair, ch. xlviii. This passage is only found in the original oo 
lave edition. — Tr. 
' Ibid. ch. xlix. 
^OL. H. 2 B 



386 MODERN AUTHORS. [300K ^ 

say they wish they were dead. This declaration rejoices him, and he 
conchides with these words ; * This Temple of Virtue belongs to me. 
And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by — , they shall be 
•welcome * The habit of despotism makes despots, and the best meant 
of implanting despots in families, is to preserve nobles in tne State. 

Let lis take rest in the contemplation of the country gentleman. The 
mnocence of the fields, hereditary respect, family traditions, the pur- 
^tiit of agriculture, the exercise of local magistracy, must have produced 
these upright and sensible men, full of kindness and probity, protectors 
of their county, and servants of their country. Sir Pitt Crawley is a 
model ; he has four thousand a year and two parliamentary boroughs. 
It is true that these are rotten boroughs, and that he sells the second 
for fifteen hundred a year. He is an excellent economist, and shears 
his farmers so close that he can only find bankrupt-tenants. A coach 
proprietor, a government contractor, a mine proprietor, he pays his sub- 
ordinates so badly, and is so niggard in outlay, that his mines * are filled 
with water ; and as for his coach-horses, every mail proprietor in the 
kingdom knew that he lost more horses than any man in the country;' 
the Government flung his contract of damaged beef upon his hands. A 
popular man, he always prefers the society of a horse-dealer to the com- 
pany of a gentleman. * He was fond of drink, of swearing, of joking 
with the farmers' daughters ; . . . would cut his joke and drink his 
glass with a tenant, and sell him up the next day ; or have his laugh 
with the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour.' He 
speaks with a country accent, has the mind of a lackey, the habits of 
a boor. At table, waited on by three men and a butler, on massive 
silver, he inquires into the dishes, and the beasts which have furnished 
them. * What sliip was it, Horrocks, and when did you kill?* * One 
of the black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt : we killed on Thursday.' * Who 
took any ? ' ' Steel of Mudbury took the saddle and two legs. Sir Pitt ; 
but he says the last was too young and confounded woolly. Sir Pitt.' 
* What became of the shoulders ? ' The dialogue goes on in the same 
tone: after the Scotch mutton cc/mes the black Kentish pig: these 
anmials might be Sir Pitt's family, so much is he interested in them. 
As for his daughters, he lets them stray to the gardener's cottage, where 
they pick up their education. As for his wife, he beats her from time 
to time. As for his people, he exacts the last farthing of the money 
they owe him. * A farthing a day is seven shillings a year ; seven 
shillings a year is the interest of seven guineas. Take care of your 
farthings, old Tinker, and your guineas will come quite nat'ral.' ' H« 
never gave away a farthing in his life,' growled Tinker. * Never, and 
never will : it's against my principle.' He is impudent, brutal, coarse, 
stingy, shrewd, extravagant ; but is courted by ministers, and a high- 
sheriff; honoured, powerful, he rolls in a gil'ded carriage, and is one 
of the pillars of the State. 

These are the rich ; probably money has corrupted them. Let uf 



CJHAP. ll.j THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 381 

look for a poor aristocrat, free from temptations ; his lofty soul, left to 
itself, will display all its native beauty. Sir Francis Clavering is in tliii 
case. He has played, drunk, and supped until he has nothing more 
} lit Transactions at the gambling table had speedily effected his ruin \ 
Le had been forced to sell out ; had shown the white feather, and after 
frequenting all the billiard-rooms in Europe, been thrown into prison 
by his uncourteous creditors. To get out he has married a good Indian 
widow, who outrages spelling, and whose money was left her by hei 
father, a disreputable old lawyer and indigo-smuggler. Clavering ruins 
her, goes on his knees to obtain gold and pardon, swears on the Bible 
to contract no more debts, and when he goes out runs straight to the 
money-lender. Of all the rascals that novelists have ever exhibited, 
he is the basest. He has neither resolution nor common sense ; he is 
simply a man in a state of dissolution. He swallows insults like water, 
weeps, begs pardon, and begins again. He debases himself, prostrates 
himself, and the next moment swears and storms, to fall back into the 
depths of the extremest cowardice. He implores, threatens, and in the 
same quarter of an hour accepts the threatened man as his intimate 
confidant and friend : 

* Now, ain't it hard that she won't trust me with a single tea-spoon ; ain't it 
imgentlemanlike, Altamont ? You know my lady's of low birth — that is — I beg your 
pardon — hem — that is, it's most cruel of her not to show more confidence in me. 
And the very servants begin to laugh — the dam scoundrels ! . . . They don't answer 
my bell ; and — and my man was at Vauxhall last night with one of my dress 
shirts and my velvet waistcoat on, I know it was mine — the confounded impu- 
dent blackguard ! — and he went on dancing before my eyes, confound him ! I'm 
iure he'll hve to be hanged — he deserves to be hanged — all those infernal rascala 
of valets 1 ' 1 

His conversation is a compound of oaths, whines, and ravings ; h«» 
is not a man, but a wreck of a man : there survive in him but the dis- 
cordant remains of vile passions, like the fragments of a crushed snake, 
which, unable to bite, bruise themselves and wriggle about in their 
slaver and mud. The sight of a bank-note makes him launch bhndly 
into a mass of entreaties and lies. The future has disappeared foi 
him ; he sees but the present. He will sign a bill for twenty potind? al 
three months to get a sovereign. His brutishness has become imbe- 
cility ; his eyes are shut ; he does not see that his protestations excite 
mistrust, that his lies excite disgust, that by his very baseness he loses 
the fruit of his baseness ; so that when he comes in, one feels a violent 
inclination to take the honourable baronet, the member of parliament, 
the proud inhabitant of a historic house, by the neck, and pitch him, 
like a basket of rubbish, from the top of the stairs to the bottom. 

We must stop. A volume would not exhaust the list of perfections 
which Thackeray discovers in the Enghsh aristocracy. The Marquij 

* Pendennis, eh. ix. 



388 MODERN AUTHORS. !1300K V 

of Farintosh, twenty-fifth of his name, an illustrious fool, healthy and 
self-contented, whom al! tlie women ogle and all the men bow to ; Lady 
Kew, an old woman of the woi-ld, tyrannical and corrupted, at enmity 
with her daughter, and a match-maker; Sir Barnes Newcome, one ol 
the most cowardly of men, the wickedest, the falsest, the best abused 
and beaten who has ever smiled in a drawing-room or spoken in Par- 
liament. I see only one estimable character, and he is indistinct — Lcirc 
Kew, who, after many follies and excesses, is touched by his Purilar 
old mother, and repents. But these portraits are sweet compared to 
the dissertations; the commentator is still more bitter than the artitt; 
he wounds more in speaking than in making his personages speak. You 
must read his biting diatribes against marriages of convenience, and the 
sacrifice of girls ; against the inequality of inheritance and the envy of 
younger sons ; against the education of the nobles, and their traditionary 
insolence ; against the purchase of commissions in the army, the isolation 
of classes, the outrages on nature and family, invented by society and 
law. Behind this, philosophy shows a second gallery of portraits as 
insulting as the first : for inequality, having corrupted the great men 
whom it exalts, corrupts the small men whom it degrades ; and the 
spectacle of envy or baseness in the small, is as ugly as that of insolence 
or despotism in the great. According to Thackeray, English society is 
a compound of flatteries and intrigues, each striving to hoist himself 
up a step higher on the social ladder and to push back those who ai'e 
climbing. To be received at court, to see one's name in the papers 
amongst a list of illustrious guests, to give a cup of tea at home to some 
stupid and bloated peer ; such is the supreme limit of human ambition 
and felicity. For one master there are always a hundred lackeys. Major 
Pendennis, a resolute man, cool and clever, has contracted this leprosy. 
His happiness to-day is to bow to a lord. He is only at peace in a 
drawing-room, or in a park of the aristocracy. He craves to be treated 
with that humiliating condescension wherewith the great overwhelm their 
inferiors. He pockets lack of attention with ease, and dines graciously 
at a noble board, where he is invited twice in three years to stop a gap. 
He leaves a man of genius or a witty woman to converse with a titled 
sheep or a tipsy lord. He prefers being tolerated at a Marquess' to being 
respected at a commoner's. Having exalted these fine dispositions into 
principles, he inculcates them on his nephew, whom he loves, and s 
push him on in the world, offers him in marriage a basely acquired fortune 
and the daughter of a convict. Others glide through the proud drawing* 
rooms, not with parasitic manners, but on account of their splendid 
balance at the banker's. Once upon a time in France, the nobles with 
the money of citizens manured their estates ; now in England the citizens, 
by a noble marriage, ennoble their money. For a hundred thousand 
pounds to the father. Pump, the merchant, marries Lady Blanche Stiff- 
neck, who, though married, remains my Lady. Naturally he is scorned 
by her, as a tradesman, and moreover, hated for having made her half a 



CHAP. 11. j THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 389 

woman of the people. He dare not see his friends at home ; they are 
too vulgar for his wife. He dare not visit the friends of his wife; 
tliey are too high for him. He is his wife's butler, the butt of his 
fi\ther-in-laAV, the servant of his son, and consoles himself by thinking 
tliat his grandsons, when they become Lord Pump, will blush for him 
and never mention his name.^ A third means of entering the aristo- 
cra".y is to ruin oneself, and never see any one. This ingenious method 
IS employed by Mrs. Major Ponto in the country. She hac <ui incom- 
pai ible governess for her daughters, Avho thinks that Dante is called 
Ali^jhieri because he was born at Algiers, but who has educated two 
Hcarchionesses and a countess. 

' Some one wondered we were not enlivened by the appearance of some of the 
neighbours. — We can't in onr position of life, we can't well associate with the 
attorney's family, as I leave you to suppose — and the Doctor — one may ask one's 
medical man to one's table, certainly : but his family. — The people in that large 
red house just outside of the town. — What! the chateau -calicot That purse- 
proud ex-linendraper — The parson — Oh 1 he used to preach in a surplice. He is 
a Puseyite ! ' 

This sensible Ponto family yawns in solitude for six months, and the rest 
of the year enjoys the gluttony of the country-squires whom they regale, 
and the rebuffs of the great lords whom they visit. The son, an officer 
of the hussars, requires to be kept in luxury so as to be on an equality 
with his noble comrades, and his tailor receives above three hundred 
a year out of the nine hundred which make up the whole family 
income.^ I should never end, if I recounted all the villanies and 
miseries which Thackeray attributes to the aristocratic spirit, the 
division of families, the pride of the ennobled sister, the jealousy 
of the sister who preserves her condition, the degradation of the 
characters trained up from school to reverence the little lords, the 
abasement of the daughters who strive to compass noble marriages, 
the rage of snubbed vanity, the meanness of the attentions offered, the 
triumph of folly, the scorn of talent, the consecrated injustice, the 
heart rendered unnatural, the morals perverted. Before this striking 
picture of truth and genius, we need remember that this injurious 
inequality is the cause of a wholesome liberty, that social injustice 
pr )duces political welfare, that a class of hereditary nobles is a class 
of liercditary statesmen, that in a century and a half England has had 
ft hundred and fifty years of good government, that in a century and a 
half France has had a hundred and fifty years of bad government, that 
all is compensated, and that it is possible to pay dearl}-- for capable 
leaders, a connected policy, free elections, and the control of the 
Government by the nation. "We must also remember that this talent, 
founded on intense reflection, concentrated in moral prejudices, could 
cot but have transformed the picture of manners into a systematic 

' The Book of Snobs, ch. viii. ; G7'eat City Snobs. 
^ lb-id. ch. xsvi. ; On Some Country Snobs. 



390 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK \ 

and combative jatire, exasperate satire into calculated and implacable 
ttnimosity, blaclcen human nature, and become enraged, with studied, 
redoubled, and natural hatred, against the chief vice of hia country and 
of his time. 

$ 2. — The Artist. 
VIII. 

In literature as well as in politics, we cannot hare evcrytlilng 
Talents, like happiness, do not always follow suit. Whatever constitu- 
tion it selects, a people is always half unhappy ; whatever genius he 
has, a writer is always half impotent. We cannot preserve at once 
more than a single attitude. To transform the novel is to deform it : he 
who, like Thackeray, gives to the novel satire for its object, ceases to 
give it art for its rule, and all the force of the satirist is tlie weakness 
of the novelist. 

What is a novelist? In my opinion he is a psychologist, who 
naturally and involuntarily sets psychology at work ; he is nothing 
else, nor more. He loves to picture feelings, to perceive their con- 
nections, their precedents, their consequences ; and he indulges in this 
pleasure. In his eyes they are forces, having various directions and 
magnitudes. About their justice or injustice he troubles himself 
little. He introduces them in characters, conceives the dominant 
quality, perceives the traces which this leaves on the others, marks 
the contrary or harmonious influences of the temperament, of educa- 
tion, of occupation, and labours to manifest the invisible world of 
inward inclinations and dispositions by the visible world of outward 
words and actions. To this is his labour reduced. Whatever these 
bents are, he cares little. A genuine painter sees with pleasure a well- 
drawn arm and vigorous muscles, even if they be employed in slaying 
a man. A genuine novelist enjoys the contemplation of the greatness 
of a harmful sentiment, or the organised mechanism of a pernicious 
character. He has sympathy with talent, because it is the only faculty 
which exactly copies nature : occupied in experiencing the tmotions 
of his personages, he only dreams of marking their vigour, kind and 
mutual action. He represents them to us as they are, whole, not 
blaming, not punishing, not mutilating ; he transfers them to us inuict 
and separate, and leaves to us the right of judging if we desire it. His 
whole effort is to make them visible, to unravel the types darkened 
and altered by the accidents and imperfections of real life, to set in 
relief wide human passions, to be shaken by the greatness of the 
beings whom he animates, to raise us out of ourselves by the force o( 
Lis creations. We recognise art in this creative power, impartial and 
universal as nature, freer and more potent than nature, taking up the 
rough-drawn or disfigured work of its rival in order to correct its fauitg 
and give effect to its conceptions. 

All is changed by the intervention of satire ; and to begin witli 



CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL— THACKERAf. J5,>1 

the part of the author. When in pure novel he spealcs in his own 
name, it is to explain a sentiment or mark the cause of a faculty ; in 
satirical novel it is to give us moral advice. It has been seen to hovj 
many lessons Thackeray subjects us. That they are good ones no one 
disputes ; but at least they take the place of useful explanations. A 
third of the volume, being occupied by warnings, is lost to art. Sum- 
moned to reflect on our faults, we know the character less. The 
author designedly neglects a hundred delicate shades which he might 
have discovered and shown to ns. The character, less complete, is less 
lifelike ; the interest, less concentrated, is less lively. Turned away from 
him instead of brought back to him, our eyes wander and forget him ; 
instead of being absorbed, we are absent in mind. More, and worse, 
we end by experiencing some degree of weariness. We judge these ser- 
mons true, but repeated till we are sick of them. We fancy ourselves 
listening to college lectures, or handbooks for the use of young priests. 
We find the Hke things in gilt books, with pictured covers, given as 
Christmas presents to children. Are you much rejoiced to learn that 
marriages of convenience have their inconveniency, that in the absence 
of a friend we readily speak evil of him, that a son often afflicts his 
mother by his irregularities, that selfishness is an ugly fault ? All this 
is true ; but it is too true. We come to listen to a man in order to 
hear new things. These old moralities, though useful and well spoken, 
smack of the paid pedant, so common in England, the clergyman in 
the white tie, standing bolt upright in his room, and droning for three 
hundred a year, daily admonition to the young gentlemen whom parents 
have sent to his educational hothouse. 

This studied presence of a moral intention spoils the novel as well 
as the novelist. It must be confessed, a volume of Thackeray has the 
cruel misfortune of recalling the novels of Miss Edgeworth or the 
stories of Canon Schmidt. Here is one which shows us Pendennis 
proud, extravagant, hare-brained, lazy, shamefully plucked for his ex- 
aminations ; Avhilst his companions, less intellectual but more studious, 
tooH high places in honours, or passed with decent credit. This 
edifying contrast does not warn us ; we do not wish to go back to 
school ; we shut the book, and recommend it like medicine, to our little 
cousin. Other puerilities, less shocking, end in wearying us just as 
much. We do not like the prolonged contrast between good Colonel 
Newcome and his wicked relatives. This Colonel gives m^ney ant? 
cakes to every child, money and shawls to all his cousins, money and 
kind words to all the servants ; and these people only answer him with 
coldness and coarseness. It is clear, from the first page, that the 
author would persuade us to be affable, and we kick against the too 
matter-of-course invitation ; we don't want to be scolded in a novel ; 
we are in a bad humour with this invasion of pedagogy. We wanted 
to go to the theatre ; we have been taken in by the outside bill, and 
»r3 growl, sotto voce^ to find ourselves at a sermon. 



■592 MODERN AUTHORS. "BOOK 1 

Let us console ourselves : the characters suffer as much as we ; the 

author spoils them in preaching to us ; they, like us, are sacrificed to 
satire. He does not animate beings, he lets puppets act. He only 
combines their actions to make them ridiculous, odious, or disappoint- 
ing. After a few scenes we recognise the spring, and thenceforth w« 
are always foreseeing when it is going to act. This foresight deprives 
the character of half its truth, and the reader of half his illusion. 
Perfect fooleries, complete mischances, immitigated wickednesses, are 
rare things. The events and feelings of real life are not so arranged 
as to make such calculated contrasts and such clever combinations. 
Nature does not invent these dramatic effects : we soon see that we are 
before the foot-lights, in front of bedizened actors, whose words are 
written for them, and their gestures arranged. 

To picture exactly this alteration of truth and art, we must com- 
pare two characters step by step. There is a personage, unanimously 
recognised as Thackeray's masterpiece, Becky Sharp, an intrigante 
and a bad character, but a superior and well-mannered woman. Let 
us compare her to a similar personage of Balzac, in les Parents pauvreSj 
Valerie Marneffe. The difference of the two works will exhibit the 
difference of the two literatures. As the English excel as moralists 
and satirists, so the French excel as artists and novelists. 

Balzac loves his Valerie ; this is why he explains and magnifies 
her. He does not labour to make her odious, but intelligible. He 
gives her the education of a prostitute, a ' husband as depraved as a 
prison full of galley-slaves,' luxurious habits, recklessness, prodigality, 
womanly nerves, a pretty woman's disgust, an artist's rapture. Thus 
born and bred, her corruption is natural. She needs elegance as one 
needs air. She takes it no matter whence, remorselessly, as we drink 
water from the first stream. She is not worse than her profession ; she 
has all its innate and acquired excuses, of mood, tradition, circumstance, 
necessity ; she has all its powers, abandon, graces, mad gaiety, alterna- 
tives of triviality and elegance, unmeditated audacity, comical devices, 
magnificence and success. She is perfect of her kind, like a proud 
and dangerous horse, which we admire while we fear it. Balzac 
delights to paint her with no other aim but his picture. He dresses 
her, lays on for her her patches, arranges her dresses, trembles before 
her dancing-girl's motions. He details her gestures with as much 
pleasure- and truth as if he were her waiting-woman. His artistic 
cuiiosity is fed on the least traits of character and manners. After a 
violent scene, he pauses at a spare moment, and shows her idle, stretched 
on her couch like a cat, yawning and basking in the sun. Like a 
physiologist, he knows that the nerves of the beast of prey are softened, 
and that it only ceases to bound in order to sleep. But what bounds ! 
She dazzles, fascinates ; she defends herself saccessively against three 
proved accusations, refutes evidence, alternately humiliates and glorifies 
herself, rails, adores, demonstrates, changing a score of times her 1 pnes, 



CHAP. ll.J THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 

ideas, tricks, in the same quarter of an hour. An old shopkeeper, 
protected against emotions by trade and avarice, trembles at her 
speech : * She sets her feet on my heart, crushes me, stuns me. Ah, 
what a woman I When she looks cold at me, it is worse than a 
Btomach-ache. . , . How she tripped down the steps, making them 
bright with her looks!' Everywhere passion, force, atrocity, conceal 
the ugliness and corruption. Attacked in her fortune by an honest 
woman, she gets up an incomparable comedy, played with a great 
poet's eloquence and exaltation, and broken suddenly by the coarse 
burst of laughter and triviality of a porter's daughter on the stage. 
Style and action are raised to the height of an epic. ' When the words 
" Hulot and two hundred thousand francs " were mentioned, Valerie 
gave a passing look from between her two long eyelids, like the glafre of 
a cannon through its smoke.' A little further, caught in the act by one 
of hei lovers, a Brazilian, and quite capable of killing her, she blenched 
for an instant ; but recovering the same moment, she checked her 
tears. * She came to him, and looked so fiercely that her eyes glittered 
like daggers.' Danger roused and inspired her, and her excited nerves 
propel genius and courage to her brain. To complete the picture of 
this impetuous nature, superior and unstable, Balzac at the last moment 
makes her repent. To proportion her fortune to her vice, he leads 
her triumphantly through the ruin, death, or despair of twenty people, 
and shatters her in the supreme moment by a fall as terrible as her 
success. 

Before such passion and logic, what is Becky Sharp? A calcu- 
lating plotter, cool in temperament, full of common sense, a former 
governess, having parsimonious habits, a genuine man of business, 
always proper, always active, unsexed, void of the voluptuous -softness 
and diabolical transport which can give brilliancy to her character and 
charm to her profession. She is not a prostitute, but a petticoated and 
heartless barrister. Nothing is more fit to inspire aversion. The 
author loses no opportunity of expressing his own ; for three volumes 
he pursues her with sarcasms and misfortunes ; he puts only false 
words, perfidious actions, revolting sentiments, in her mouth. From 
her coming on the stage, at the age of seventeen, treated with rare 
kindness by a noble family, she lies from morning to night, and by 
coarse expedients tries to fish there for a husband. The better to 
crush her, Thackeray himself sets forth all these basenesses, lies, and 
indecencies. Rebecca ever so gently pressed the hand of fat Joseph : 

* It was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some ladies of indisputable correct- 
Bess and gentility will condemn the action as immodest ; hut, you see, poor dear 
Rebecca had all this work to do for herself. If a person is too poor to keep a 
servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep his own rooms : if a duar girl liai. 
IBC dear manuna to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herseit ' * 



Vanitv Fair, eh. iv. 



394 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

A governess at Sir Pitt Crawley's, she gains the friendship cf hei 
pupils by reading the tales of Crebillon the younger, and of Voltaire, 
with them. She writes to her friend Ameha : 

* The rector's wife paid me a score of compliments about the progress my pupila 
made, aiid thought, no doubt, to touch my heart — poor, simple, country soul ! aa 
if I cared a fig about my pupils. * ' 

ITiis phrase is an imprudence hardly natural in so careful a person, and 
lie author adds it to her part, to make it odious. A little further Rebecca 
is grossly adulatory and mean to old Miss Crawley ; and her pompous 
periods, manifestly false, instead of exciting admiration, raise disgust. 
She is selfish and lying to her husband, and, knowing that he is on the 
field of battle, busies herself only in getting together a little purse. 
Thackeray designedly dwells on the contrast : the heavy dragoon ' went 
through the various items of his little catalogue of effects, striving to 
Bee how they might be turned into money for his wife's benefit, in case 
any accident should befall him.' * Faithful to his plan of economy, 
the captain dressed himself in his oldest and shabbiest uniform ' to get 
killed in : 

* And this famous dandy of Windsor and Hyde Park went off on his campaign 
. . . with something like a prayer on the lips for the woman he was leaving. He 
took her up from the ground, and held her in his arms for a minute, tight pressed 
against his strong beating heart. His face was purple and his eyes dim, as he 
put her down and left her. . . . And Rebecca, as we have said, wisely determined 
not to give way to unavailing sentimentality on her husband's departure. . . . 
** What a fright I seem," she said, examining herself in the glass, ** and how pale 
this pink makes one look." So she divested herself of this pink raiment ; . . . 
then she put her bouquet of the ball into a glass of water, and went to bed, and 
slept very comfortably. ' ^ 

From these examples judge of the rest. Thackeray's whole business is 
to degrade Rebecca Sharp. He convicts her of harshness to her son, 
theft from her tradesmen, imposture against everybody To finish, he 
makes her a dupe ; whatever she does, it comes to nothing. Compro- 
mised by the advances which she has lavished on foolish Joseph, 
she momentarily expects an offer of marriage. A letter comes, an- 
nouncing that he has gone to Scotland, and presents his compliments 
to Miss Rebecca. Three months later, she secretly marries Captnin 
Rawdon, a poor dolt. Sir Pitt Crawley, Rawdon's father, throws Jiim- 
self at her feet, with four thousand a year, and offers her his hand. 
In her consternation she weeps despairingly. * Married, married, mar- 
ried already I ' is her cry ; and it is enough to pierce sensitive soula^ 
Later, she tries to win her sister-in-law by passing for a good mother. 
*Why do you kiss me here?' asks her son; *you never kiss me al 
home.' The consequence is, complete discredit ; once more *he is lost. 
The Marquis of Steyne, her lover, presents her to society, loads hei 

' Vani'y Fair, eh. xi. * lUd. ch. xxx. 



CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 395 

with jeAvels, bank-notes, and lias her husband appointed to some island 
in the East. The husband enters at the wrong moment, knocks my 
lord down, restores the diamonds, and drives her away. Wandering 
on the Continent, she tries five or six times to grow rich and appear 
honest. Always, at the moment of success, accident brings her to the 
ground, Thackeray sports with her, as a child with a cockchafer, 
letting her hoist herself painfully to the top of the ladder, in order to 
pluck her down by the foot and make her tumble disgracefully. H<? 
ends by dragging her through taverns and greenrooms, and pointing his 
finger at her from a distance, as a gamester, a drunkard, is unwilling 
to touch her further. On the last page he installs her vulgarly in a 
fortune, plundered by doubtful devices, and leaves her in bad odour, 
uselessly hypocritical, abandoned to the shadiest society. Under this 
storm of irony and contempt, the heroine is dv/arfed, illusion is 
weakened, interest diminished, art attenuated, poetry disappears, and 
the character, more useful, has become less true and beautiful. 

IX. 

Suppose that a happy chance lays aside these causes of weakness, 
»nd keeps open these sources of talent. Amongst all these transformed 
novels will appear a single genuine one, elevated, touching, simple, 
original, the history of Henry Esmond. Thackeray has not written a 
less popular nor a more beautiful story. 

Tliis book comprises the fictitious memoirs of Colonel Esmond, a 
contemporary of Queen Anne, who, after a troubled life in Europe, 
retired with his wife to Virginia, and became a planter there. Esmond 
speaks ; and the necessity of adapting the tone to the character sup- 
presses the satirical style, the reiterated irony, the sanguinary sarcasm, 
the scenes contrived to ridicule folly, the events combined to crush 
vice. Thenceforth we enter the real world ; we let illusion guide us, 
we rejoice in a varied spectacle, easily unfolded, without moral inten- 
tion. You are no more harassed by persoiial advice ; you remain in 
your place, calm, sure, no actor's finger pointed at you to warn you at 
an interesting moment that the piece is played on your account, and 
to do you good. At the same time, and unconsciously, you are at ease. 
Quitting bitter satire, pure narration charms you; you take rest frcn? 
bating. You are like an army surgeon, who, after a day of fights and 
manoeuvres, sits on a hillock and beholds the motion in the camp, the 
procession of carriages, and the distant horizon softened by the sombre 
tints of evening. 

On the other hand, the long reflections, which seem vulgar and 
dislocated under the pen of the writer, become natural and connected 
in the mouth of the character. Esmond is an old man, writing for his 
children, and remarking upon his experience. He has a right to judge 
life : his maxims are suitable to his years : having passed into sketches 
')£ manners, they lose their pedantic air ; we hear them complacently. 



396 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOB T 

and perceive, as we turn the page, the calm and sad emile which hai 
dictated them. 

With the reflections we endure the details. Elsewhere, the miuut« 
descriptions appear frequently puerile; we blamed the author for 
dwelling, with the scrupulosity of an English painter, on school adven- 
tures, coach scenes, inn episodes ; we thought that this intense studious- 
ness, unable to sympathise with lofty themes of art, was compelled to 
stoop to microscopical observations and photographic details. Here all 
is changed. A writer of memoirs has a right to record his infantine 
impressions. His distant recollections, mutilated remnants of a for- 
gotten life, have a peculiar charm ; we accompany him back to infancy. 
A Latin lesson, a soldiers' march, a ride behind some one, become 
important events embellished by distance; we enjoy his peaceful and 
familiar pleasure, and feel with him a vast sweetness in seeing once 
more, with so much ease and in so clear a light, the well-known 
phantoms of the past. Minute detail adds to the interest in adding to 
the naturalness. Stories of campaign life, scattered opinions on the 
books and events of the time, a hundred petty scenes, a thousand petty 
facts, manifestly useless, are on that very account illusory. We forget 
the author, we listen to the old Colonel, we find ourselves carried back 
a hundred years, nnd we have the extreme pleasure, so uncommon, of 
believing in what we read. 

Whilst the subject obviates the faults, or turns them into virtues, 
it offers for these virtues the very finest theme. The powerful reflec 
tion has decomposed and reproduced the manners of the time with a 
most astonishing fidelity. Thackeray knows Swift, Steele, Addison, St. 
John, Marlborough, as well as the most attentive and learned historian. 
He depicts their habits, household converse, like Walter Scott himsdf ; 
and, what Walter Scott could not do, he imitates their style so that we 
are deceived by it ; and many of their authentic phrases, inwoven with 
the text, cannot be distinguished from it. This perfect imitation is not 
limited to a few select scenes ; it comprises the whole volume. Colonel 
Esmond writes as people wrote in the year 1700. The tiick, I was 
going to say the genius, is as great as the effort and success of Paul 
Louis Courier, in imitating the style of ancient Greece. The st^le of 
Esmond has the calmness, the exactness, the simplicity, the solidity c^ 
the classics. Our modern temerities, our prodigal imagery, our jostled 
figures, our habit of gesticulation, our striving for effect, all our bad 
literary customs, have disappeared. Thackeray must have gone back 
to the primitive sense of words, discovered their forgotten shades of 
meaning, recomposed an outworn state of intellect and a lost species 
of ideas, to make his copy approach so closely to the original. The 
imagination of Dickens himself would have failed in this. To attenjpt 
and accomplish it, then, were needed aU the sagacity, calm, and force o{ 
knowledge and meditation. 

But the masterpiece of the work is the character cf Esmond 



CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL.— THACKERAi". SO'J 

Thackeray has endowed him with that tender kindliness, almost feminine, 
which he everywhere extols above all other human virtues, and that 
self mastery which is the effect of habitual reflection. These are the 
finest qualities of his psychological armoury ; each by its contrast in- 
creases the value of the other. We see a hero, but original and new, 
English in his cool resolution, modern by the delicacy and sensibility of 
his heart. 

Henry Esmond is a poor child, the supposed bastard of Lord Castle- 
wood, and brought up by the inheritors of his name. In the first 
chapter we are touched by the modulated and noble emotion which we 
retain to the end of the volume. Lady Castlewood, on her first visit 
to the castle, comes to him in the ' book-room or yellow-gallery ;' being 
informed by the housekeeper who the little boy is, she blushes and 
walked back ; the next instant, touched by remorse, she returns : 

* With a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she took his hand 
i^ain, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying some words to him, 
which -were so kind and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who had never 
looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a superior being or angel 
smote him down to the ground, and kissed the fair protecting hand as he knelt on 
one knee. To the very last hour of his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she 
then spoke and looked, the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, th« 
beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming in a 
smile, the sun making a golden halo round her hair.^ . . . There seemed, as thii 
boy thought, in every look or gesture of this fair creature, an angelical softness andi 
bright pity— in motion or repose she seemed gracious alike ; the tone of her voice, 
though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost 
to anguish. It cannot be called love, that a lad of twelve years of age, little mor* 
than a menial, felt for an exalted lady, his mistress : but it was worship. ' ^ 

This noble and pure feeling is expanded by a succession of devoted 
actions, related with extreme simplicity ; in the least words, in the 
turn of a phrase, in a chance conversation, we perceive a great heart, 
passionately grateful, never tiring of in^ anting benefits or services, sym- 
pathising, friendly, giving advice, defending the honour of the family and 
the welfare of the children. Twice Esmond interposed between Lord 
Castlewood and Mohun the duellist ; it was not his fault that the mur- 
derer's weapon did not reach his own breast. When Lord Castlewood 
on his deathbed revealed that he was not a bastard, that the title and 
fortune were his, he burned without a word the confession which would 
have rescued him from the poverty and humiliation in which he had 
BO long pined. Outraged by his mistress, sick of a wound received by 
his master's side, accused of ingratitude and cowardice, he persisted io 
his silence with the justification in his hand : 

* And when the struggle was over in Harry's mind, a glow of righteous happi 
aess filled it ; and it was with gi-ateful tears in his eyes that he returned thanks t# 
God for that decision which he had been enabled to make. ' ^ 

' The History of nenry Esmond, bk. i. ch. i. 

" ibid. bk. i. ch. vii. ^ Ibid. bk. ii. ch. i 



398 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

Later, being m love with another, sure not to marry her if his birth 
remained under a cloud in the eyes of the world, absolved by his bene- 
factress, whose son he had saved, entreated by her to resume the nami 
which belonged to him, he smiled sweetly, and gravely replied : 

* **It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord's bedside," says Colonol 
Esmond. " The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his heirs aftci 
him must hear our name. 'Tis his rightfully ; I have not even a proof of that mar« 
riage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on his deatlibed, told me thai 
Father Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood. I would not seek it when 1 
was abroad. 1 went and looked at my poor mother's grave in her convent. What 
matter to her now ? No court of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive 
my Lord Viscount and set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady ; but 
Frank is Viscount of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn 
monk, or disappear in America." 

* A3 he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing 
to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung hei - 
self down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of 
passionate love and gratitude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him 
feel very proud and thankful that God had given him the power to show his love 
for her, and to prove it by some Uttle sacrifice on his own part. To be able to be- 
stow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred 
upon a man — and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, 
could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some 
kindness upon his best and dearest friends ? 

* "Dearest saint," says he, ** purest soul, that has had so much to suffer, that 
has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. 'Tis for me to 
kneel, not for you : 'tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy. Hath 
my life any other aim ? Blessed be God that I can serve you ! " ' ^ 

These noble tendernesses seem still more touching when contrasted with 
the surrounding circumstances. Esmond goes to the wars, serves a party, 
lives amidst dangers and business, judging revolutions and politics from 
a lofty point of view ; he becomes a man of experience, well informed, 
learned, provident, capable of great enterprises, possessing prudence 
and courage, harassed by his own thoughts and griefs, ever sad and ever 
strong. He ends by accompanying to England the Pretender, half- 
brother of Queen Anne, and keeps him disguised at Castlewood, await- 
ing the moment when the queen, dying and won over to the cause, 
should declare him her heir. This young prince, a Stuart, pa} s court 
to Lord Castlewood's daughter Beatrix, whom Esmond loves, and gets 
out at night to join her. Esmond, who waits for him, sees the cro\rn 
lost and his house dishonoured. His insulted honour and outraged 
love break forth in a superb and terrible rage. Pale, with set teeth, 
his brain fired by four nights of anxieties and watches, he preserves his 
clear mind, his restrained tone, and explains to the prince with perfect 
etiquette, with the respectful coldness of an official messenger, the folly 
which the prince has committed, and the villany which the prince has 

' IJie Hidory of Htnry Esmond, hk. iii. ch. ii. 



CHAP. II.] THE NOVEL.— THACKEBAY 39CJ 

contemplated The scene must be read to see how much superiority 
and passion this calmness and bitterness impiy ; 

* " What mean you, my lord ? " says the Prince, and muttered something ahoul 
a gxmet-d-pens, which Esmond caught up. 

* '* The snare, Sir," said he, '* was not of our laying ; it is not we that invited 
fCtL We came to avenge, and not to compass, the dishonour of our family." 

* "Dishonour! Morhleu! there has been no dishonour," says the Prince, turn- 
Itig scarlet, ** only a little harmless playing." 

* "That was meant to end seriously." 

« ** I swear," the Prince broke out impetuously, "upon the honour of a gentle- 
man, my lords " — 

* " That we arrived in time. No wrong hath been done, Frank," says Colonel 
F-S7»ond, turning round to young Castlewood, who stood at the door as the talk 
>ra,i going on. " See ! here is a paper whereon his Majesty hath deigned to com- 
mence some verses in honour, or dishonour, of Beatrix. Here is ' Madame ' and 
VFlamme,' 'Cruelle' and 'Rebelle,' and 'Amour' and 'Jour,' in the Royal 
writing and spelling. Had the Gracious lover been happy, he had not passed his 
time in sighing." In fact, and actually as he was speaking, Esmond cast his eyes 
down towards the table, and saw a paper on which my young Prince had been 
scrawling a madrigal, that was to finish his charmer on the morrow. 

***Sir," says the Prince, burning with rage (he had assumed his Royal coat 
unassisted by this time), "did I come here to receive insults ? " 

* " To confer them, may it please your Majesty," says the Colonel, with a very 
low bow, " and the gentlemen of our family are come to thank you." 

* ' Malediction ! " says the young man, tears starting into his eyes with help- 
V Mt rage and m ortification. " What will you with me, gentlemen ? " 

"If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment," says Esmond, pre 
bervinghis grave tone, " I have some papers there which I would gladly submit to 
you, and by your permission I will lead the way ;" and taking the taper up, and 
backing before the Prince with very great ceremony, Mr. Esmond passed into the 
little Chaplain's room, through which we had just entered into the house :— " Please 
to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank," says the Colonel to his companion, who won- 
dered almost as much at this scene, and was as much puzzled by it, as the other 
actor in it. Then going to the crypt over the mantel-piece, the Colonel opened it, 
and drew thence the papers which so long had lain there. 

*"Here, may it please your Majesty," says he, "is the Patent of Mcirouis 
isnt over by your Royal Father at St. Germain's to Viscount Castlewood, my father: 
here is the witnessed certificate of my father's marriage to my mother, and of my 
birth and christening ; I was christened of that religion of which your sainted sire 
gave all through life so shining example. These are my titles, dear Frank, and 
this whi»t I do with them : here go Baptism and Marriage, and here the Mar(iuisat« 
and the August Sign-Manual, with which your predecessor va» pleased to honour 
our race." And as Esmond spoke he set the papers burning in the brazier. " Yoti 
will please, sir, ti^remember," he continued, "that our family hath ruined itself 
by fidelity to yours ; that my grandfather spent his estate, and gave his blood and 
his son to die for your service ; that my dear lord's grandfather (for lord yru ara 
tow, Frank, by right and title too) died for the same cause ; that my poor kins- 
woman, my father's second wife, after giving away her honour to your wicked per- 
jnred race, sent all her wealth to the King, and got in return that precious titli 
that lies in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue riband. I lay this at youx 
feet, and stamp upon it : I draw this sword, and break ft and deny you ; ant^ had 



400 MODERN AUTHORS. * [BOOK V 

you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have diivcn it 
through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father pardoned Mon- 
mouth."'^ 
Two pages later he speaks thus of his marriage to Lady Castlewood : 

' That happiness, which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot he written ia 
words ; 'tis of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, though the 
heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the One ear alone — toon* 
fond being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife ever man was blessed with. 
As I think of the immense happiness which was in store for me, and of tlie depth 
and intensity of that love which, for so many years, hath blessed me, I own to * 
transport of wonder and gratitude for such a boon — nay, am thankful to have been 
endowed with a heart capable of feeling and knowing the immense beauty and 
value of the gift which God hath bestowed upon me. Sure, love vincit omnia, is 
immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than 
name. He knows not life who knows not that : he hath not felt the highest 
faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it. In the name of my wife 1 write the 
completion of hope, and the summit of happiness. To have such a love is the one 
blessing, in comparison of which all earthly joy is of no value ; and to think of 
her, is to praise God.' 

A character capable of such contrasts is a lofty work ; it is to be 
remembered that Thackeray has produced no other ; we regret that 
moral intentions have perverted these fine literary faculties ; and we 
deplore that satire has robbed art of such a talent. 

X. 

Who is he ; and what is the value of this literature of which he if 
one of the princes? At bottom, like every literature, it is a definition 
of man ; and to judge it, we must compare it with man. We can do so 
now ; we have just studied a mind, Thackeray himself ; we have con- 
sidered his faculties, their connections, results, their different degrees ; 
we have under our eyes a model of human nature. We have a right 
to judge of the copy by the model, and to shape the definition which 
his romances lay down by the definition which his character furnishea 

The two defi/iitions are contrary, and his portrait is a criticism cfl 
his talent. We have seen that in him the same faculties produce tb-e 
beautiful and the ugly, force and weakness, success and failure; khai 
moral reflection, after having provided him with every satirical power, 
debases him in art; that, after having spread through his contempcrai')> 
novels a tone of vulgarity and falseness, it raises his historical novel 
to the level of the finest productions ; that the same constitution of 
mind teaches him the sarcastic and violent, as well af the modulated 
and simple style, the bitterness and harshness of hate with the effusions 
and delicacies of love. The evil and the good, the beautiful and the 
ugly, the repulsive and the agreeable, are then in him but remoter 
effects, of slight importance, born of changing circumstances, derived 



The History of Henry Esmond, bk. iii. eh. xiii 



ITJHAP. II.J THE NOVEL.— THACKERAY. 401 

and fortuitous qualities, not essential and primitive, diverse forms AvliicK 
diverse streams trace in the same bed. So it is with other men. Doubt- 
less moral qualities are of the first rank; they are the motive power o! 
civilisation, and constitute the nobleness of the individual ; society exists 
by them alone, and by them alone man is great. But if they are the fineal 
fririt of the human plant, they are not its root; they give us oar value, 
but do not constitute our elements. Neither the vices nor the viitues 
}f man are his nature ; to praise or to blame him is not to know him j 
approbation or disapprobation does not define him ; the names of good 
or bad tell us nothing of what he is. Put the robber Cartoucho in an 
Italian court of the fifteenth century ; he would be a great statesman. 
Transport this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into a shop ; he will 
be an exemplary tradesman. This public man, of inflexible probity, is 
in his drawing-room an intolerable coxcomb. This father of a family, so 
humane, is an idiotic politician. Change a virtue in its circumstances, 
and it becomes a vice ; change a vice in its circumstances, and it be- 
comes a virtue. Eegard the same quality from two sides ; on one it is 
a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of man is found concealed 
far below these moral badges ; they only point out the useful or noxious 
effect of our inner constitution : they do not reveal our inner con- 
stitution. They are safety lamps or railway-lights attached to our 
names, to warn the passer-by to avoid or approach us ; they are not the 
explanatory table of our being. Our true essence consists in the causes 
of our good or bad qualities, and these causes are discovered in the 
temperament, the species and degree of imagination, the amount and 
velocity of attention, the magnitude and direction of primitive pas- 
sions. A character is a force, like gravity, weight, or steam, capable, 
as it may happen, of pernicious or profitable effects, and which must 
be defined otherwise than by the amount of the weight it can lift 
or the havoc it can cause. It is therefore to ignore man, to reduce 
him, as Thackeray and English literature generally do, to an aggre- 
gate of virtues and vices ; it is to lose sight in him of all but the 
exterior and social side ; it is to neglect the inner and natural element. 
You will find the same fault in English criticism, always moral, nevei 
I'sychological, bent on exactly measuring the degree of human honesty, 
ignorant of the mechanism of our sentiments and faculties; you will 
find the same fault in English religion, which is but an emotion or a 
discipline ; in their philosophy, destitute of metaphysics ; and if you 
ascend to the source, according to the rule which derives vices from 
virtues, and virtues from vices, you will see all these weaknesses derived 
from their native energ}', their practical education, and that sort of 
severe and religious poetic instinct which has iu time {:!ast made them 
Protestant and Puritan. 



TOL. n. So 



i{p% MODERN AUTHORS [BOOK. ¥ 



CHAPTER III. 

Criticism and History.— Macaulay. 

I The vocation and position of Macaulay in England, 

II. His Assays— Agreeable character and utility of the style — C^ln!o««-" 
Philosophy. Wherein it is English and practical — His E>isay on BacM 
— The true object, according to him, of the sciences — Comparison ol 
Bacon with the ancients. 

III. His criticism— Moral prejudices— Comparison of criticism in France and 
England — Why he is religious— Connection of religion and Liberalism 
in England— Macaulay 's Liberalism— £Jssay on Church and Stale. 

IV. His passion for political liberty— How he is the orator and historian of th« 

Whig party— Assays on the Revolution and the Sliiaris. 
V. His talent — Taste for demonstration— Taste for development— Oratotical 
character of his mind — ^Wherein he differs from classic orators— His 
estimation for particular facts, experiment on the senses, personal remini- 
scences—Importance of decisive phenomena in every branch of know- 
ledge — Essays on Warren Hastings and dive. 

VI. English marks of his talent — Rudeness— Humour— Poetry. 
VII. His work — Harmony of his talent, opinion, and work — Universality, unity, 
interest of his history — Picture of the Highlands— James ii. in Ireland 
— Tlie Act of Toleration — The Massacre of Glencoe—Trsices of amplifi- 
cation and rhetoric. 
VIII. Comparison of Macaulay with French historians — Wherein he is classical — 
Wherein he is English— Intermediate position of his misd between Um 
Latin and the Germanic mind. 



I SHALL not here attempt to vprite the life of Lord ^Tacaulay. It caa 
only be related after twenty years, when his friends shall have put 
together all their recollections of him. As to what is public now, it seems 
to me useless to recall it : every one knows that his father was an aboli- 
tionist and a philanthropist ; that our Macaulay passed through a most 
brilliant and complete classical education ; that at twenty-five his essay 
on Milton made him famous ; that at thirty he entered Parliament, and 
took his standing there amongst the first orators ; that he went to India 
to reform the law, and that on his return he was appointed to high 
ofiices ; that on one occasion his liberal opinions in religious matters 
lost him the votes of his constituents ; that he was re-elected amidst 
universal congratulations; that he continued to be the most celebrated 



CHAP. m.l CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. 403 

publicist and the most accomplished writer of the Whig party ; and 
that on this ground, at the close of his life, the gratitude of his party 
and the public admiration, made him a peer of England. It will be 
a fine biography to write — a life of honour and happiness, devoted 
to noble ideas, and occupied by manly enterprises ; literary in the first 
place, but sufficiently charged with action and immersed in business to 
furnish substance and solidity to his eloquence and style, — to create tlic 
cbserver side by side with the artist, and the thinker side by side with 
the writer. On the present occasion I will only describe the thinkei 
and writer : I leave the life, I take his works ; and first his Essays, 

II. 

His E'says are an assemblage of articles : I confess that I am fond of 
books such as these. In the first place, we can throw down the volume 
after a score of pages, begin at the end, or in the middle ; we are not 
its slave, but its master ; we can treat it like a newspaper : in fact, it 
is a journal of a mind. In the second place, it is varied ; in turning 
over a page, we pass from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, 
from England to India : this diversity surprises and pleases. Lastly, 
involuntarily, the author is indiscreet ; he displays himself to us, keeping 
back nothing; it is a familiar conversation, and no conversation is 
worth so much as that of England's greatest historian. We are pleased 
to mark the origin of this generous and powerful mind, to discover 
what faculties have nourished his talent, what researches have shaped 
his knowledge ; what opinions he has formed on philosophy, religion, 
the state, literature ; what he was, and what he has become ; what he 
wishes, and what he believes. 

Seated in our arm-chair, with our feet on the fender, we see little 
by little, as we turn over the leaves of the book, an animated and pen- 
sive face arise before us; the countenance assumes expression and 
clearness ; his different features are mutually explained and lightened 
up ; presently the author lives again for us, and before us ; we per- 
ceive the causes and birth of all his thoughts, we foresee what he is 
going to say; his bearing and mode of speech are as familiar to us 
as those of a man whom we see every day ; his opinions correct and 
affect our own ; he enters into our thoughts and our life ; he is two 
hundred leagues away, and his book stamps his image on us, as the 
reflected light paints on the horizon the object from which it is emitted. 
Such is the charm of books, which deal with all kinds of subjects, 
which give the author's opinion on all sorts of things, which lead us 
in all directions of his thoughts, and make us, so to speak, walk around 
his mind. 

Macaulay treats philosophy in the English fashion, as a practical 
man. He is a disciple of Bacon, and sets him above all philosophers ; 
he decides that genuine science dates from him ; that the ^^peculations 
of old thinkers are only the sport of the mind ; that for two thousand 



404 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK 1 

years the hiiman mind was on a wrong tack ; that only since Bacon it 

has discovered the goal to which it nrnst turn, and the method by which 
it must arrive there. This goal is utility. The object of knowledge if 
not theory, but application. The object of mathematicians is not thn 
satisfaction of an idle curiosity, but the invention of machines calcu* 
lated to alleviate human labour, to increase the power of dominating 
nature, to render life more secure, commodious, and happy, Tht 
object of astronomy is not to furnish matter for vast calculations and 
poetical cosmogonies, but to subserve geography and to guide naviga- 
tion. The object of anatomy and the zoological sciences is not to 
suggest eloquent systems on the nature of organisation, or to set before 
the eyes the orders of the animal kingdom by an ingenious classification, 
but to conduct the surgeon's hand and the physician's prognosis. The 
object of every research and every study is to diminish pain, to aug- 
ment comfort, to ameliorate the condition of man ; theoretical laws are 
serviceable only in their practical use ; the labours of the laboratory 
and the cabinet receive their sanction and value only, through the use 
made of them by the workshops and mills ; the tree of knowledge must 
be estimated only by its fruits. If we wish to judge of a philosophy, 
we must observe its effects ; its works are not its books, but its acts. 
The philosophy of the ancients produced fine writings, sublime phrases, 
infinite disputes, hollow dreams, systems displaced by systems, and left 
the world as ignorant, as unhappy, and as wicked as it found it. That 
of Bacon produced observations, experiments, discoveries, machines, 
entire arts and industries : 

* It has lengthened life ; it has mitigated pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; 
it has increased the fertility of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; 
it has furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers and estuaries 
with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it has guided the thunderbolt 
innocuously from heaven to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendour 
of the day ; it has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied the 
power of the human muscles ; it has a<"celerated motion ; it has annihilated dis- 
tance ; it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all desp.itcli 
of business ; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar Intx} 
the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the earth, to traveise the 
land in cars which whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which rua 
t^a knots an hour against the wind.' * 

The first was consumed in solving unsolvable enigmas, fabricating pop« 
traits of an imaginary sage, mounting from hypothesis to hypothesis, 
tumbling from absurdity to absurdity ; it despised what was practicable, 
promised what was impracticable ; and because it despised the limits 
of the human mind, ignoied its power. The other, measuring our force 
and weakness, diverted us from roads that were closed to us, to start 
us on roads that were open to us ; it recognised facts and laws, because 

' Mac aulay's Works, ed. Lady Trevelyan, 8 vols. 1866 ; £Jssa^ on Bacon, 
^l 222. 



CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. 4,35 

It resigned itself to remain ignorant of their essence and principles^ 
it has rendered man more happy, because it has not pretended to render 
him perfect ; it has discovered great truths and great effects, because 
it had the courage and good sense to study small things, and to en ep 
for a long time over petty vulgar experiments ; it has become glorious 
and powerful, because it has deigned to become humble and tiseful. 
Formerly, science furnished only vain pretensions and chimerical con- 
ceptions, whilst it held itself aloof, far from practical existence, and 
styled itself the sovereign of man. Now, science possesses acquired 
truths^ the hope of loftier discoveries, an ever-iucreasing authority, 
because it has entered upon active existence, and it has declared itself 
the servant of man. Let her keep to her new functions ; let her not 
try to penetrate the region of the invisible ; let her renounce what 
must remain unknown ; she does not contain her own issue, she is hut 
a medium ; man was not made for her, but she for man ; she is like 
the thermometers and piles which she constructs for her own experi- 
ments ; her whole glory, merit, and office, is to be an instrument : 

* "We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might be written, in 
which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of Bacon should be introduced as fellow- 
travellers. They come to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage, and 
find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, mothers weeping 
m terror over their children. The Stoic assures the dismayed population that there 
is nothing bad in the smaU-pox, and that to a wise man disease, deformity, death, 
the loss of friends, are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to 
vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great dismay. An explosion of noisome 
vapours has just killed many of those who were at work ; and the survivors are 
afraid to venture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an accident 
is nothing but a mere x'ToTpo'/iy/itivov. The Baconian, who has no such fine word at 
his command, contents himself with devising a safety-lamp. They find a ship- 
wrecked merchant wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable 
cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from opulence to 
beggary. The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happiness in things which lie 
without himself, and repeats the whole chapter of Epictetus, ^poi reus rh a-roflat 
h'hiiKoraf. The Baconian constructs a diving-bell, goes down in it, and returns 
v/ith the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be easy to multiply illus- 
trations of the dilfereuce between the philosophy of thorns and the philosophy of 
fiuit, the philosophy of words and the philosophy of works.' * 

It is not for me to discuss these opinions ; it is for the reader 14) 
blame or praise them, if he sees fit : I do not wish to criticise doctrines, 
but to depict a man ; and truly nothing could be more striking than 
this absolute scorn for speculation, and this absolute love for the prac- 
tical. Such a mind is entirely suitable to the national genius : in Eng- 
land a barometer is still called a philosophical instrument; and philosophy 
is there a thing unknown. The English have moralists, psychologists, 
but no metaphysicians: if there is one — Hamilton, for instance— 

^ Macaulay'a Works ; Essay on Bacon, vi. 333. 



406 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 

he is a sceptic in metaphysics ; he has only read the Geinnan philoso- 
phers to refute them ; he regards speculative philosophy as an extrava- 
gance of visionaries, and is compelled to ask his readers to pardon 
him for the strangeness of his matter, when he tries to make them 
understand somewhat of Hegel's conceptions. The English, positive 
and practical men, excellent politicians, administrators, fighters, and 
workers, are no more suited than the ancient Romans for the abstraction? 
of aiibtle dialectics and grand systems ; and Cicero, too, once excused 
himself, when he tried to expound to his audience of senators and 
public men, the deep and audacious deductions of the Stoics. 

IIL 

The only part of philosophy which pleases men of this kind is 
morality, because, like them, it is wholly practical, and only attends 
to actions. Nothing else was studied at Rome, and every one knows 
what place it holds in English philosophy : Hutcheson, Price, Ferguson, 
Wollaston, Adam Smith, Bentham, Reid, and many others, have filled 
the last century with dissertations and discussions on the rule of duty, 
and the faculty which discovers our duty; and Macaulay's Essays 
are a new example of this national and dominant inclination ; his 
biographies are less portraits than judgments. What strictly is the 
degree of uprightness and vice of the personage, that is the important 
question for him; he makes all other questions refer to it; he applies 
himself throughout only to justify, excuse, accuse, or condemn. If he 
speaks of Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Sir William Temple, Addison, 
Milton, or any other man, he devotes himself first of all to measure 
exactly the number and greatness of their faults and virtues ; he inter- 
rupts himself, in the midst of a narration, to examine whether the action, 
which he is relating, is just or unjust; he considers it as a legist and a 
moralist, according to positive and natural law ; he takes into account 
the state of public opinion, the examples which surrounded the ac- 
cused, the principles he professed, the education he has received ; he 
bases his opinion on analogies drawn from ordinary life, from the 
history of all peoples, the laws of all countries ; he brings forward so 
many proofs, such certain facts, such conclusive reasonings, that the 
best advocate might find a model in him ; and when at last he pro-> 
nounces judgment, we think we are listening to the summing up of a 
judge. If he analyses a literature — that of the Restoration, for instance 
—he empanels before the reader a sort of jury to judge it. He makes 
it appear at the bar, and reads the indictment ; he then presents the 
plea of the defenders, who try to excuse its levities and indecencies : 
at last he begins to speak in his turn, and proves that the arguments 
set forth are not applicable to the case in question ; that the accused 
writers have laboured effectually and with premeditation, to coirupt 
morcils ; that they not only employed unbecoming words, but that 
they designedly, and with deliberate intentj represented urbecoming 



CHAP. lU.J CRITICISM AND Hi STORY— MACAUL AY. 407 

things ; that they always took care to blot out the hatefulness of vice, 
to render virtue ridiculous, to place adultery amongst the good manner! 
and necessary exploits of a man of taste ; that this intention was all 
the more manifest from its being in the spirit of the times, and that 
they were pandering to a crime of their age. If I dare employ, like 
Macaulay, leligious comparisons, I should say that his criticism was 
like the Last Judgment, in which the diversity of talents, characters; 
ranks, employments, will disappear before the consideration of virtue 
and vice, and where there will be no more artists, but a judge of the 
righteous -and the sinners. 

In France, criticism has a more literal gait ; it is less subser- 
vient to morality, and nearer akin to art. When we try to relate a 
life, or paint the character of a man, we consider him very readily as 
a simple subject of painting or science : we only think of displaying 
the various feelings of his heart, the connection of his ideas, and the 
necessity of his actions ; we do not judge him, we only wish to repre- 
sent him to the eyes, and make him intelligible to the reason. We are 
spectators, and nothing more. What matters it if Peter or Paul is a 
rascal? that is the business of his contemporaries: they suffered from hia 
vices, and ought to think only of despising and condemning him. Now 
we are beyond his reach, and hatred has disappeared with the danger. 
At this distance, and in the historic perspective, I see in him but a 
mental machine, provided with certain springs, animated by a primary 
impulse, affected by various circumstances. I calculate the play of his 
motives ; I feel with him the impact of obstacles ; I see beforehand 
the curve which his motion will trace out; I experience for him 
neither aversion nor disgust ; I have left these feelings on the threshold 
of history, and I taste the very deep and pure pleasure of seeing a soul 
act after a definite law, in a fixed groove, with all the variety of human 
passions, with the succession and constraint which the inner structure 
of man imposes on the external development of his passions. 

In a country where men are so much occupied by morality, and so 
littk by philosophy, there is much religion. For lack of natural 
thee logy they have a positive theology, and demand from the Bible the 
metaphysics not supplied by reason. Macaulay is a Protestant ; and 
though a very candid and liberal mind, he at times retains the English 
prejudices against the Catholic religion.^ Popery in England always 

' ' Charles himself, and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent 
badges uf Popery, retained all its worst vices,— a complete subjection of reason to 
authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mum* 
meries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a mer» 
ciless intolerance.' — Macaulay, v. 24 ; Milton. 

* It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile, that in the sacrifice of th« 
mass, Loyola saw transubstantiation take place, and that, as he stood praying ok 
tht3 steps of the Church of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept 
aloud with joy and wonder.' — Macaulay, vi. 4G8 ; Ranke, History of the Popes 



408 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ^ 

passes for an impious idolatry and for a degrading servitude. After 
two revolutions, Protestantism, allied to liberty, seemed to be the reli- 
gion of liberty ; and Roman-Catholicism, allied to despotism, seemed the 
religion of despotism : the two doctrines have both assumed the name of 
the cause which they sustained. To the first has been trnnsferred the 
love and veneration which were felt for the rights which it defended ; 
on the second has been poured the scorn and hatred which wem felt for 
the slavery which it would have introduced: political passioDS liavfl 
inflamed religious beliefs ; Protestantism has been confounded with tht 
victorious fatherland, Roman-Catholicism, with the conquered enemy 
the prejudice survived when the strife ended, and to this day English 
Protestants do not feel for the doctrines of Roman- Catholics the same 
goodwill or impartiality which French Roman-Catholics feel for the 
doctrines of Protestants. 

But these English opinions are moderated in Macaulay by an ardent 
love for justice. He is liberal in the largest and best sense of the word. 
He demands that all citizens should be equal before the law, that men 
of all sects .ojhould be declared capable to fill all public functions — that 
Roman-Catholics and Jews may, as well as Lutherans, Anglicans, and 
Calvinists, sit in Parliament. He refutes Mr. Gladstone and the partisans 
of State religion with incomparable ardour and eloquence, abundance of 
proof, and force of argument ; he clearly proves that the State is only a 
secular association, that its end is wholly temporal, that its single object 
is to protect the life, liberty, and property of the citizens ; that in 
entrusting to it the defence of spiritual interests, we overturn the order 
of things ; and that to attribute to it a religious belief, is as though a 
man, walking with his feet, should also confide to his feet the care of 
seeing and hearing. This question has often been discussed in France; 
it is so to this day ; but no one has brought to it more common sense, 
more practical reasoning, more palpable arguments. Macaulay with- 
draws the discussion from the region of metaphysics ; he brings it down 
to the earth ; he makes it accessible to all minds ; he takes his proofs 
and examples from the best known facts of ordinary life ; he addresses 
the shopkeeper, the citizen, the artist, the scholar, every one ; he con- 
nects the truth, which he asserts, with the familiar and intimate truths 
which no one can help admitting, and which are believed with \\\ the 
force of experience and habit; he carries off and conquers our belief 
by such solid reasons, that his adversaries will thank him for convincing 
them ; and if by chance a few amongst us have need of a lesson on 
tolerance, they had better look for it in Macaulay's essay on that subject 

IV. 

This love of justice becomes a passion when political liberty is at 
stake ; this is the sensitive point ; and when we touch it, we touch the 
writer to the quick. Macaulay loves it interestedly, because it is the 
only guarantee of the properties, happiness, and life of individuals ; he 



CHAP. UI.J CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. 409 

loves it from pride, because it is the honour of man : he lores it from 

[jatriotism, because it is a legacy left by preceding generations ; because 
for two hundred years a succession of upright and great men havtf 
defended it against aU attacks, and preserved it in all dangers ; because 
it has made the power and glory of England ; because in teaching the 
citizens to will and to decide for themselves, it adds to their dignity and 
ictelligence ; because in assuring internal peace and continuous progress, 
it guarantees the land from bloody revolutions and silent decay. All these 
advantages are perpetually present to his eyes ; and whoever attacks 
the liberty, which founds them, becomes at once his enemy. Macaulaj 
ciinnot look calmly on the oppression of man ; every outrage ou humac 
will hurts him like a personal outrage. At every step bitter words 
escape him, and the stale adulations of courtiers, which he meets with, 
bring to his lips a sarcasm the more violent from being the more 
deserved. Pitt, he says, at college wrote Latin verses on the death of 
George i. In this piece ' the Muses are earnestly entreated to weep over 
the urn of Cgesar : for Caesar, says the poet, loved the muses ; Caesar, who 
could not read a line of Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and 
fat women.' ^ Elsewhere, in the biography of Miss Burney, he relates 
how the poor young lady, having become celebrated by her two first 
novels, received as a reward, and as a great favour, a place of keeper 
of the robes of Queen Chailotte; how, worn out with watching, sick, 
nearly dying, she asked as a favour the permission to depart ; how 
' the sweet queen' was indignant at this impertinence, unable to under- 
stand that any one could refuse to die in and for her service, or that a 
vroman of lette;s should prefer health, life, and glory to the honour of 
folding her Majesty's dresses. But it is when Macaulay comes to the 
history of the Revolution that he hauls to justice and vengeance those 
who had violated the rights of the public, who had hated and betrayed 
the popular cause, who had outraged liberty. He does not speak as a 
historian, but as a contemporary ; it seems as though his life and his 
honour were at stake, that he pleaded for himself, that he was a member 
of the Long Parliament, that he heard at the door the muskets and 
swords of the guards sent to arrest Pym and Hampden. M. Guizot has 
related the same history ; but you recognise in his book the calm judg- 
ment and imj artial emotion of a philosopher. He does not condemn 
the actions of Strafford or Charles ; he explains them ; he shows in 
Strafford the imperious character, the domineering genius wliich feels 
itself born to command and to break through oppositions, A\hom an 
invincible bent rouses against the law or the right which restrains him, 
w\c oppresses from a sort of inner craving, and who is mado to govern 
as a sword is to strike. He shows in Charles the innate respect for 
royalty, the belief in divine right, the rooted conviction that every 
remonstrance or demand is an insult to his crown, an outrage on hii 

* Macaulay, vi. 39 An Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatliam. 



410 MODERTv AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

person, an impi ms and criminal sedition. Thenceforth yon see in tK« 

strife of king and parliament but the strife of two doctrines ; you cease 
to take an interest in one or the other, to tak<i an interest in both ; you 
are spectators of a drama ; you are no lonp^er judges at a trial. But it 
is a trial which Macaulay conducts before us; he takes a side in it; 
his account is the address of a public prosecutor before the court, the 
most entrancing, the most harsh, the best reasoned, that was ever 
written. He approves of the condemnation of Strafford; he honodrs 
and admires Cromwell; he exalts the character of the Puritans; he 
prnises Hampden to such a degree, that he calls him the equal of 
Washington ; he has no words scornful and insulting enough for Laud j 
and Avhat is more terrible, each of his judgments is justified by as 
many quotations, authorities, historic precedents, arguments, conclu- 
sive proofs, as the vast erudition of Hallam or the calm dialectics ol 
]Mackintosh could have assembled. Judge of this transport of passion 
and this withering logic by a single passage : 

* For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were theirs by 
a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by 
the perfidious King who had recognised them. At length circumstances compelled 
Charles to summon another parliament : another chance was given to our fathers : 
were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former ? Were they agaiu 
to be cozened by le Hoi le veut ? Were they again to advance their money on 
pledges which had been forfeited over and over again ? Were they to lay a second 
Petition of Eight at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange 
for aii other unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten 
years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, 
and again repay it with a perjury ? They were compelled to choose whether they 
would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and 
nobly. 

' The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom 
overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the 
facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. Hs had so 
many private virtues ! And had James the Second no private virtues f Was 
Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private 
virtues ? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles ? A religioua 
zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, 
and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in Eng- 
land claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father ! A good husband I 
Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of peisecution, tyranny, and falsehood ! 

* We charge him with having broken his coi-onation oath ; and we are tol l tiat 
he kept his marriage vow ! We accuse him of having given up his people to the 
mejcilcss inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates ; and the 
defence is, that lie took his little son on his knee and kissed him ! We cenaure 
him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good 
and valuable consideration, promised to observe them ; and we are informed that 
he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning ! It is to such 
considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and 
his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with 
the present generation. 



,11 AP. III.] CRITIC .bM AND HISTORY— MACAUL AY 4tl 

* For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase, a gootl 
Ban, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural 
father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in es> 'vmating th« 
character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most 
important of all human relations ; and if in that relation we find him to have been 
selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, it 
spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.' * 

This is for the father ; now the son will receive something. Tlie 
reader will perceive, by the furious invective, what excessive rancoui 
the government of the Stuarts left in the heart of a patriot, a Whig, 
a Protestant, and an Englishman : 

* Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of 
gervitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and 
gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the 
coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might 
trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with com- 
placent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The caresses 
of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the state. The govern- 
ment had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to ].trsecute. 
The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the 
Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was 
paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch : and England propitiated those 
obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime 
succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, tiU the race accursed of God and 
man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be 
a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations. ' ' 

This piece, with all the biblical metaphors, and which has preserved 
something of the tone of Milton and the Puritan prophets, shows to 
what an issue the various tendencies of this great mind were tmming — 
what was its bent — how the practical spirit, science and historic talent, 
the unvaried presence of moral and religious ideas, love of country and 
justice, concurred to make of Macaulay the historian of liberty. 

V. 

In this his talent assisted him; for his opinions are akin to his 

talont. 

What first strikes us in him is the extreme solidity of his mind. 
He proves all that he says, with astonishing vigour and authority. We 
are almost certain never to go astray in following him. If he cites 
a witness, he begins by measuring the veracity and intelligence of the 
authors quoted, and by correcting the errors they may have committed, 
through negligence or partiality. If he pronounces a judgment, ha 
relies on the most certain facts, the clearest principles, the simplest 
and most, logical deductions. If he develops an argument, he never 
loses himself in a digression ; he always has his goal before his eyes ; 

' MacaiLTay, v, 27 ; Milton. ^ Ibid. v. 35 ; Ifilto) 



412 MODERN AUTHORH. [BOOK ^ 

he advances towards it by the surest and straightest road. If he rise§ 
to general consideration, he mounts step by step through all the grades 
•jf generalisation, without omitting one ; he feels the ground every 
instant ; he neither adds nor subtracts from facts ; he desires, at the 
cost of every precaution and research, to arrive at the precise truth. 
He knows an infinity of details of every kind; he owns a great number 
<if philosophic ideas of every species ; but his erudition is as well 
( nnpered as his philosophy, and both constitute a coin worthy of 
circulation, amongst all thinking minds. "We feel that he believes 
nothing without reason ; that if we doubted one of the facts which he 
advances, or one of the views which he propounds, we should at once 
encounter a multitude of authentic documents and a serried phalanx 
of convincing arguments. In France and Germany we are ^oo accus- 
tomed to receive hypotheses for historic laws, and doubtful anecdotes 
for attested events. We too often see whole systems established, from 
day to day, according to the caprice of a writer ; a sort of fantastic 
castles, whose regular arrangement simulates the appearance of genuine 
edifices, and whicli vanish at a breath, when we come to touch them. 
We have all made theories, in a fireside discussion, in case of need, 
when for lack of argument we required a fictitious reasoning, like those 
Chinese generals who, to terrify their enemies, place amongst their 
troops formidable monsters of painted cardboard. We have judged 
men at random, under the impression of the moment, on a detached 
action, an isolated document ; and we have dressed them up with vices 
or virtues, folly or genius, without controlling by logic or criticism the 
hazardous decisions, to which our precipitation had carried us. Thus 
we feel a deep satisfaction and a sort of internal peace, on leaving so 
many doctrines of ephemeral bloom in our books or reviews, to follow 
the steady gait of a guide so clear-sighted, reflective, instructed, able 
to lead us aright. We understand why the English accuse the French 
3f being frivolous, and the Germans of being cliimerical. Macaulay 
brings to the moral sciences that spirit of circumspection, that desire 
for certainty, and that instinct of truth, which make up the practical 
mind, and which from the time of Bacon have constituted the scientific 
meril and power of his nation. If art and beauty are lost, truth and 
certainty are gained ; and no one, for instance, would blame our author 
for inserting the following demonstration in the life of Addison : 

* He (Pope) asked Addison's advice. Addison said that the poem as it stood 
was a delicious Httle thing, and entreated Pope not to run the risk of marring 
what was so excellent in trying to mend it. Pope afterwards declared that thi* 
insidious counsel first opened his eyes to the baseness of him who gave it. 

* Kow there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most ingenious, and that h« 
afterwards executed it with great skill and success. But does it necessarily follow 
that Addison's advice was bad ? And if Addison's advice was bad, does it neces- 
sarily follow that it was given from bad motives? If a friend weie to ask Ufl 
whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of nhich the chant es were 
ten to one against him, we should do our best to dimuade liim from running ^icb 



CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. 413 

a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we 
should not admit that we had counselled him iU ; and we should certainly think 
it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having heen actuated by malice. 
We think- Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound principle, the 
result of long and wide experience. The general rule undoubtedly is that, when a 
successful work of imagination has been produced, it should not be recast. W« 
cannot at this moment call to mind a single instance in which this rule has been 
tra asgressed with happy effect, except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso 
re ust his Jerusalem, Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination and his 
E] /istle to Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with which 
ho liad expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made the same experiment 
on the Dunciad. All these attempts failed. Who was to foresee that Pope would, 
once in his life, be able to do what he could not himself do twice, and what nobody 
else has ever done ? 

* Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why should we pronounce 
it dishonest ? Scott tells us that one of his best friends predicted the failure of 
Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. 
Hume tried to dis:uadc Robertson from writing the History of Charles the Fifth. 
Nay, Pope himself was one of those who prophesied that Cato would never succeed 
on the stage, and advised Addison to print it without risking a representation. 
But Scott, Goetlie, Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and generosity to give 
their advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of the same 
kind with theirs. * ^ 

What does the reader think of this dilemma, and this double series 
of inductions? The demonstration would not be more studied or 
rigorous, if a physical law were in question. 

This demonstrative talent was increased by the talent for develop- 
ment. Macaulay enlightens inattentive minds, as well as he convinces 
opposing minds ; he manifests, as well as he persuades, and spreads as 
much evidence over obscure questions as certitude over doubtful points. 
It is impossible not to understand him ; he approaches the subject under 
every aspect, he turns it over on every side ; it seems as though he ad- 
dressed himself to every spectator, and studied to make himself under- 
stood by every individual ; he calculates the scope of every mind, and 
eenks for each a fit mode of exposition ; he takes us all by the hand, 
and leads us alternately to the end, which he has marked out beforehand. 
I [e sets out from the simplest facts, he descends to our level, he brings 
himself even with our mind ; he spares us the pain of the slightest 
effort ; then he leads us on, and smoothes the road throughout ; we rise 
gradually without perceiving the slope, and at the end we find ourselves 
at the top, after having walked as easily as on the plain. When a sub- 
ject is obscure, he is not content with a first explanation ; he gives a 
second, then a third : he sheds light in abundance from all sides, he 
searches for it in all regions of history ; and the wonderful thing is, that 
he is never long. In reading him we find ourselves in our proper sphere; 
we feel as though we were born to understand ; we are annoyed to hav€ 

' Macaulay, vii. 109 ; Life and Writings of Addison. 



414^ MODERl'^ AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

taken twilight so long for day ; we rejoice to see this abounding light 
rising and leaping forth in streams ; the exact style, the antithesis of 
ideas, the harmonious construction, the artfully balanced paragraphs, the 
vigorous summaries, the regular sequence of thoughts, the frequent com- 
parisons, the fine arrangement of the whole — not an idea or phrase of 
his writings in which the talent and the desire to explain, the character* 
istic of an orator, does not shine forth. Macaulay was a member of Par- 
liament, and spoke so well, we are told, that he was listened to for the 
mere pleasure of listening. The habit of public speaking is perhaps liie 
cause of this incomparable lucidity. To convince a great assembly, we 
must address all the members ; to rivet the attention of absent-minded 
and weary men, we must save them from all fatigue ; tliey must take in 
too much in order to take in enough. Public speaking vulgarises ideas ; 
it drags truth from the height at which it dwells, with some thinkers, to 
bring it amongst the crowd ; it reduces it to the level of ordinary minds, 
who, without this intervention, would only have seen it from afar, and 
high above them. Thus, when great orators consent to write, they are 
the most powerfU of writers; they make philosophy popular; they 
lift all minds a stage higher, and seem to magnify human intelligence. 
In the hands of Cicero, the dogmas of the Stoics and the dialectics 
of the Academicians lose their prickles. The subtle Greek arguments 
become united and easy ; the hard problems of providence, immortality, 
highest good, become public property. Senators, men of business, 
lawyers, lovers of formulas and procedure, the massive and narrow 
intelligence of publicists, comprehend the deductions of Chrysippus ; 
and the book De Officiis has made the morality of Pansstius popular. 
In our days, M. Thiers, in his two great histories, has placed within reach 
of everybody the most involved questions of strategy and finance ; if 
he would write a course of political economy for street-porters, I am 
sure he would be understood ; and pupils of the lower classes at school 
have been able to read M. Guizot's History of Civilisation. 

When, with the faculty for proof and explanation, a man feels the 
desire, he arrives at vehemence. These serried and multiplied argu- 
ments which all tend to a single aim, those reiterated logical points, 
returning every instant, one upon the other, to shake the opponent, 
give heat and passion to the style. Rarely was eloquence more svveep" 
ing than Macaulay's. He has an oratorical impetus; all his phrasei 
have a tone ; we feel that he would govern minds, that he is irritated 
by resistanca, that he fights as he discusses. In his books the discus- 
sion always seizes and carries away the reader ; it adrances evenly, 
with accumulating fone, straightforward, like those great American 
rivers, impetuous as a torrent and wide as a sea. This abundance of 
thought and style, this multitude of explanations, ideas, and facts, this 
vast aggregate of historical knowledge goes rolling on, urged forward 
by internal passion, sweeping away objections in its course, and adding 
to the dash of eloquence the irresistible force of its mass and weight. 



OHAP III.] CRITICI3M AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. Hf 

We might say that the history of James ii. 's a discourse in two volumes, 
pronounced in a breath, with never-failing voice. We see the oppres- 
sion and discontent begin, increase, widen, the partisans of James 
abandoning him one by one, the idea of revolution conceived in ah 
hearts, onfirmed, fixed, the preparations made, the event approacl ing, 
growing imminent ^ then suddenly falling on the blind and unjust 
m<o:iSiTch, and sweeping away his throne and dynasty, with the violence 
i)f a l'>reseen and fatal tempest. True eloquence is that which thus 
perfects argument by emotion, which reproduces the unity of events by 
the imity of passion, which repeats the motion and the chain of facta 
by the motion and the chain of ideas. It is a genuine imitation of 
nature ; more complete than pure analysis ; it reanimates beings ; its 
dash and vehemence form part of science and of truth. Of whatever 
subject he treats, political economy, morality, philosophy, literature, 
history, Macaulay is impassioned for his subject. The current which 
bears away events, excites in him, as soon as he sees it, a current which 
bears forward his thought. He does not set forth his opinion ; he 
pleads it. He has that energetic, sustained, and vibrating tone which 
bows down opposition and conquers belief. His thought is an active 
force ; it is imposed on the hearer ; it attacks him with such supe- 
riority, falls upon him with such a train of proofs, such a manifest and 
legitimate authority, such a powerful impulse, that we never think of 
resisting it ; and it masters the heart by its vehemence, whilst at the same 
time it masters the reason by its evidence. 

All these gifts are common to orators ; they are found in different 
proportions and degrees, in men like Cicero and Livy, Bourdaloue and 
Bossuet, Fox and Burke. These fine and solid minds form a natural 
family, and all have for their chief feature the habit and talent of pass- 
ing from particular to general ideas, orderly and successively, as we 
climb a ladder by setting our feet one after the other on every round. 
The incon-v^nience of this art is the use of common-place. They who 
practise it, do not depict objects with precision ; they fall easily into 
vague rhetoric. They hold in their hands ready-made developments, a 
sort of portative scales, equally applicable on both sides of the same and 
every question. They continue willingly in a middle region, amongst 
the. tirades and arguments of the special pleader, with an indifferent 
knowledge of the human heart, and a fair number of amplifications on 
that which is useful and just. In France and at Rome, amongst the Latin 
races^ especially in the seventeenth century, these men love to hover 
above the earth, amidst grand words or general considerations, in the 
style cf the drawing-room and the academy. They do not descend ta 
minor facts, illustrative details, circumstantial examples of vulgar life. 
They are more inclined to plead than to prove. In this Macaulay is 
distinguished from them. His principle is, that a special fact has more 
hold on the mind than a general reflection. He knows that, to give 
naen a clear and vivid idea, they must be brought back to their personal 



ilG MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 

experience. He remarks ^ that, in order to make them realise a storm, 
the only method is to recall to them some storm which they tuve them- 
Bolves seen and heard, with which their memory is still charged, and 
which still re-echoes through all their senses. He practises in his style 
the philosophy of Bacon and Locke. With him, as well as with them, the 
origin of every idea is a sensation. Every complicated argument, every 
entire conception, has certain particular facts for its only support. It is 
8o for every structure of ideas, as well as for a scientific theory. Beneath 
iong calculations, algebraical formulas, subtle deductions, written volumes 
which contain the combinations and elaborations of learned minds, there 
are two or three sensible experiences, two or three little facts on which 
you may lay your finger, a turn of the wheel in a machine, a scalpel- 
cut in a living body, an unlooked-for colour in a liquid. These are 
decisive specimens. The whole substance of theory, the whole force of 
proof, is contained in this. Truth is here, as a nut in its shell : painful 
and ingenious discussion adds nothing thereto ; it only extracts the nut. 
Thus, if you would rightly prove, you must before all present these 
specimens, insist upon them, make them visible and tangible to the 
reader, as far as may be done in words. This is difHculj;, for words aro 
not things. The only resource of the writer is to employ words which 
bring things before the eyes. For this he must appeal to the reader's 
personal observation, set out from his experience, compare the unknown 
objects presented to him with the known objects which he sees every 
day, place past events beside contemporary events. Macaulay always 
has before his mind English imaginations, full of English images, I 
mean full of the detailed and present recollections of a London street, a 
dram-shop, a wretched alley, an afternoon in Hyde Park, a moist green 
landscape, a white ivy-covered country-house, a clergyman in a white 
tie, a sailor in a sou'-wester. He has recourse to such recollections ; 
he makes them still more precise by descriptions and statistics ; he 
notes colours and qualities ; he has a passion for exactness ; his de* 
scriptions are worthy both of a painter and a topographer ; he writes 
like a man who sees the physical and sensible object, and who at the 
same time classifies and weighs it. You will see him carry his figures 
even to moral or literary worth, assign to an action, a virtue, a book, 
a talent, its compartment and its step in the scale, with such clearness 
and relief, that we could easily imagine ourselves in a classified museum, 
not of stufiPed skins, but of sensitive, suffering living animals. 

Consider, for instance, these phrases, by which he tries to render 
visible to an English public, events in India : 

* During that interval the business of a servant of the Company was simply ta 
wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily jm 
possible, that he might retui-n home before his constitution had suffered from thi 

' See in his JEJssay on tJie Life and Writings of Addison (vii. 7S) Ma^Au 
lay's remarks on the Campaig/i. 



CHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— IV: ACAULAY. 417 

herit, to marry a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to givt 
balls in St. James' Square.^ . . . There was still a nabob of Bengal, who stood to 
the linglish rulers of his country in the same relation in which Augustulus stood 
to OJoacer, or the last Merovingians to Charles Martel and Pepin. He lived at 
Mcorsliedabad, surrounded by princely magnificenca, He was approached with 
outward marks of reverence, and his name was used in public instruments. Bat 
in the government of the country he had less real share than the youngest vrn'til 
OT cadet in the Company's service, ' * 

Of Nuncomar, the native servant of the Company, he writes : 

* Of his moral character it is difficult to give a notion to those who are ao» 
Jjaainted with human nature only as it appears in our island. What the Italian 
is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is to the Italian, what the Bengalee sa 
to other Hindoos, that was Nuncomar to other Bengalees. The physical organiza* 
tion of the Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapoiur 
bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements languid. 
During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more 
hardy breeds. Courage, independence, veracity, are qualities to which his con< 
Btitution and his situation are equally unfavourable. His mind bears a singular 
analogy to his body. It is weak even to helplessness, for purposes of manly 
resistance ; but its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates 
to admiration not unn)ingled with contempt. All those arts which are the 
natural defence of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the 
Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns 
are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what 
beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. 
Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantLal falsehood, 
chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people 
of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of 
the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, 
no class of human beings can bear a comparison with them. ' ' 

It was such men and sucli affairs, which were to provide Burke with 
the amplest and most brilliant subject-matter for his eloquence; and 
when Macaulay described the distinctive talent of the great orator, he 
described his own : 

* He (Burke) had, in the highest degree, that noble faculty whereby man is able to 
live in the past and in the future, in the distant and in the unreal. India and its 
inhabitants were not to him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, 
but a real country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange vegetation of 
the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees, older than th« 
l^Iogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble ; the thatched roof of the 
peasant's hut ; the rich tracery of the mosque where the iniaum prays with his face 
to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the 
»ir, the graceful maiden, with the pitcher on her head, lescending the steps to the 
river-side, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans 
and the flowing rubes, the spears and the silver maces, the ciei hants with their 
canopies of state, xhe gorgeous palanquin of the prince, and the ».bse litter of ths 
Boble lady, all those things were to him as the objects amidst which his own lif< 

' Maca ilay, vi. 549 ; Warren HasHn,r/s. ' Ibid. 553. ^ Ibid. 555. 

VOL. li. 2 D 



il5 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK \ 

had been passed, as the objects which lay on the road between Beaconsfield and St 
James's Street. AW India was present to the ej^e of his mind, from the halls whew 
suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the 
gipsy camp was pitiihed, from the bazar, humming like a bee-hive with the crowd 
of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch ol 
iron rings to scare away the hysenas. He had just as lively an idea of the insurrec- 
tion at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of the execution of Nuncomar 
as of the execution of Dr. Dodd. Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing 
t8 oppression in the streets of London. ' * 

VI. 

Other forms of his talent are more peculiarly English. Macaulay 
has a rough touch ; when he strikes, he knocks down. Beraiiger singf : 

* Chez nous, point, 
Point de ces coups de poing 
Qui font tant d'honneur h FAngleterre.'* 

And the French reader would be astonished if he heard a great historiao 
treat an illustrious poet in this style : 

* But in all those works in which Mr. Southey has completely abandoned nar- 
ration, and has undertaken to argue moral and political questions, his failure has 
been complete and ignominious. On such occasions his writings are rescued from 
utter contempt and derision solely by the beauty and purity of the English. We 
find, we confess, so great a charm in Mr. Southey's style that, even when he writes 
nonsense, we generally read it with pleasure, except indeed when he tries to be 
droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be 
humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has sue* 
ceeded farther than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works ha 
tells us that Bishop Spratt was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very 
small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, th« 
renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name. A wise man mighli 
talk folly like this by his own fireside ; but that any human being, after having 
made such a joke, should write it down, and copy it out, and transmit it to the 
printer, and correct the proof-sheets, and send it forth into the world, is enough 
to make us ashamed of our species.'* 

We may imagine that Macaulay does not treat better the dead than the 
living. Thus he speaks of Archbishop Laud : 

The severest punishment which the two Houses could have inflicted on h'.m 
irould have been to set him at liberty and send him to Oxford. There he might 
ha^e staid, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory 
Rnd mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague, with 
his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, 
continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the 
vices of his heart in the imbecility of his intellect, minuting down his dreams, 
counting "^Jie drops of blood' which fell from his nose, watching the direction of th« 
salt, and listening for the note of the screech-owls. Contemptuous mercy ^ai 

' Macaulay, vi. 619 ; Warren Hastings. 

« Beranger, Chansons, 2 vols. 1853 ; Les Boxeurs, ou L'AngJomaitc. 

' Macaulay, v. 333 ; Southey's Colloquies o:i Society. 



CHM', III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAU I AY. 4Hj 

the only vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridic.iloui 

old bigot. ' ^ 

While he jests he remains grave, as do almost all the writers of hii 
country. Humour consists in saying extremely comical things in a 
Bolemn tone, and in preserving a lofty style and ample phraseology, at 
the very moment when you are making all your hearers laugh. Such 
is the beginning of an article on a new historian of Burleigh : 

* The work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to that whic 
Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in Brobdignag, and saw corn 30 
high as the oaks in the New Forest, thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the 
bulk of turkeys. The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic 
scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface : the prefatory matter would 
furnish out an ordinary book: and the book contains as -much reading as an 
ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper 
which Hes before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand 
closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, 
and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the 
deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpah and Shalum. But un- 
happily the life of man is now threescore years and ten ; and we cannot but think 
it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short 
an existence. ' ^ 

This comparison, borrowed from Swift, is a mockery in Swift's taste. 
Mathematics become in English hands an excellent means of raillery ; 
and we remember how the Dean, comparing Roman and English gene- 
rosity by numbers, overwhelmed Marlborough by an addition. Humour 
employs against the people it attacks, positive facts, commercial argu- 
ments, odd contrasts drawn from vulgar life. This surprises and perplexes 
the reader, without warning ; he falls abruptly in some familiar and 
grotesque detail ; the shock is violent ; he bursts out laughing without 
being much amused ; the hit comes so suddenly and hard, that it is 
like a knock-down blow. For instance, Macaulay is refuting those who 
would not print the indecent classical authors : 

* "We find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptations m this, 
any g( ntlc^man whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes 
and Juvenal wiU be made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all 
the influences of such a state of society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of 
exposing himself to the influence of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, 
much like the felon who begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held 
arer his head from the door of Newgate tc the gallows, because it was a di'izzliiig 
morning, and he was apt to take cold. ' ^ 

Irony, sarcasm, the bitterest kinds of pleasantry, are the rule with 
Englishmen. They tear when they scratch. To be convinced of this, 
we should compare French scandal, as Moliere represents it in thfl 

• Macaulay, v. 204 ; Hallam's Constitut-'vnal History. 
' llnd. v. 587 ; Bwr'kigh and Ms Times. 

* Ibid. vi. 491 ; Comic Dramatist of the Restoration,, 



420 MODERN AUTHORS. T300K V 

Misanthrope^ with English scandal as Sheridan represents it, imitating 
Moliere and the Misanthrope. Celimene pricks, but does not wound; 
Lady Sneerwell's friends wound, and leave bloody marks an all the 
reputations which they handle. The raillery, which I am about to give, 
is one of Macaulay's tenderest : 

* They (the ministers) therefore gave the command to Lord Galway, an expeii* 
nnced veteran, a man who was in war what Moliere's doctors were in medicine, m ha 
thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule, than to succeed l;f 
■.iinovation, and who would have been very much ashamed of himself if he had 
taken Monjuich by means so strange as those which Peterborough employed. Thia 
great commander conducted the campaign of 1707 in the most scientific manner, 
On the plain of Almanza he encountered the army of the Bourbons. He drew up 
his troops according to the methods prescribed by the best writers, and in a few 
hours lost eighteen thousand men, a hundred and twenty standards, all his baggage 
and all his artillery. ' ^ 

These roughnesses are all the stronger, because the ordinary tone ii 
noble and serious. 

Hitherto we have seen only the reasoner, the scholar, the orator, 
and the wit : there is still in Macaulay a poet ; and if we had not read 
his Lai/s of Ancient Rome, it would suffice to read a few of his periods, 
in which the imagination, long held in check by the severity of the 
proof, breaks out suddenly in splendid metaphors, and expands into 
magnificent comparisons, worthy by their amplitude of being introduced 
into an epic : 

* Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her 
nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and 
poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were 
for ever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to 
those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwarda 
revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, 
accompanied their steps, granted all their M'ishes, filled their houses with v/ealth, 
made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At 
times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. 
But woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her ! And happy are those 
who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and friglitful shape, shall at lengr.fe 
be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory ! ' * 

These noble words come from the heart ; the fount is full, and though 
it flows, it never becomes dry. As soon as the writer speaks of a cause 
which he loves, as soon as he seeg Liberty rise betore him, with Humanity 
and Justice, Poetry bursts forth spontaneously from his soul, and sets 
her crown on the brows of her noble sisters : 

* The Reformation is an event long past. That volcano has spent its rage. Thi 
wide waste produced hy its outbreak is forgotten. The landmarks which wera 
swept away have been replaced. The ruined edifices have been repaired. The liv* 

^ Macaulay, v. 672 ; Lord Mahon's War of the Succession in Spairu 
•^ Macaulay, v. 31 ; Milton. 



(:HA.P. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MAC A UL AT. 4'2I 

has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, aflef 
having turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has again turned th« 
desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The second great eruption 
is not yet f-^er. The marks of its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are 
atill hot beneath our feet. In some directions, the deluge of fire still continues to 
■pread. Yet erperience surely entitles us to believe that this explosion, like that 
which preceded it, will fertilise tlie soil Avhich it has devastated. Already, in those 
parts which have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure dwellings have 
begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we read of the history of past ages, 
the more we observe the signs of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts 
, filled and swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human race. ' ' 

] ought, perhaps, in concluding this analysis, to point out the 
imperfections caused by these high qualities ; how ease, grace, kindly 
animation, variety, simplicity, pleasantness, are wanting in this maniy 
eloquence, this solid reasoning, and this glowing dialectic ; why the irt 
of writing and classical purity are not always found in this partisan, 
fighting from his platform ; in short, why an Englishman is not a 
Frencliman or an Athenian. I prefer to transcribe another passage, 
the solemnity and magnificence of which will give some idea of the 
grave and opulent adornments, which Macaulay throws over his nar- 
rative, a sort of potent vegetation, flowers of brilliimt purple, like those 
which are spread over every p:ige of Paradise Lost and Childe Harold, 
Warren Hastings had returned from India, and had just been placed 
on his trial : 

* On the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced. 
There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery 
ar.d cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then 
exhibited at Westminster ; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calcii- 
lated 1o strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. AU the various 
kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to 
the past, were collected on one spot, and in one hour. All the talents and all the ac- 
oomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation, were novy' displayetl, 
with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast 
Every step in the proceedings carried the nund either backward, through many 
tr(ubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid ; 
or far awaj', over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under stTctnga 
btars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. 
The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down frcm the 
days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over tlie 
lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. 

* The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great Hall of William 
R,ufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of 
thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just 
AbsDiution of Soniers the hall v.here the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment 
awed and melted a vi lorious paity inflamed with just resentment, the hall wherfc 
Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage •« hicb 
feii* half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The 

■ Mucanlay, v. .195 ; Burleigh and 7ns Times. 



422 MODEHN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

^▼enues wero iined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear "by cavalry. Th« 
peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garte! 
Eing-at-arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on 
points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper 
House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual plac« 
of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way, George Eliott, 
Lord Heathtield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against 
the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by tlia 
Du1ce of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by th< 
brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspiououa 
by his fine person and noble bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarkt. 
The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the feara 
or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a 
great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, gi-ace and female loveliness, wit 
and learning, the representatives of every science and of erery art. There were 
seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the house of Brunswick. 
There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration 
on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, 
in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all 
the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of 
the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before 
a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the 
oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the 
greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel 
which has preserved to us the thouglitful foreheads of so many writers and states- 
men, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to 
suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted 
a vast treasure of enidition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often 
paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, 
and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of 
the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too Avas she, the beautiful 
mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia whose delicate features, lighted up by 
love and m^asic, art has rescued Ironi the common decay. There were the members 
of that brilliant society which quoted, criticized, and exchanged repartees, under 
the rich, peucock-hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose iips, 
more persu isive than those of Fox himself, had can'ied the "Westminster election 
against paluce and treasuiy, shone round Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire.'^ 

This evocation of the national history, glory, and constitution forms % 
picture of a unique kind. The species of patriotism and poetry tvhich 
it rsveals is an abstract of Macaulay's talent ; and the talent, like the 
picture, is thoroughly English. 

VII. 

Thus prepared, he entered upon the History of England ; aad h% 
chose therefrom the period best suited to his political opinions, his style, 
his passion, his science, the national taste, the sympathy of Europe, 
He has related the establishment of the English constitutiou, and con- 

Macaulty, vi. 628; Warren Hastings. 



CHAP. tU.J CKITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. 425 

centrated all the rest of Ijistory about this unique event, *the finest 
in the world,' to the mind of an Englishman and a politician. He has 
brought to this work a new method of great beauty, extreme power; 
its success has been extraordinary. When the second volume appeared, 
30,000 copies were ordered beforehand. Let us try to describe this 
history, to connect it with that method, and that method to that order 
of mind. 

The history is universal, and not broken. It comprehends events 
of every kind, and treats of them simultaneously. Some have related 
the history of racee, others of classes, others of governments, others of 
sentiments, ideas, and manners ; Macaulay has related all. 

* I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if I wer« 
merely to treat of battles and sieves, of the rise and fall of administrations, of iu' 
trigues in the palace, and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavoui 
to relate the history of the people as well as the history of the government, to trace 
the progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects 
and the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners of successive generations, 
and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which have taken place in 
dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements, I shall cheerfully bear the re- 
proach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing 
before the English of the nineteenth century & true picture of the life of their 
ancestors.'* 

He kept his word. He has separated nothing, and passed nothing by. 
His portraits are mingled with his narrative. Read those of Danby, 
Nottingham, Shrewsbury, Howe, during the account of a session, be- 
tween two parliamentary divisions. Short curious anecdotes, domestic 
details, the description of furniture, intersect, without disjointing, the 
record of a war. Quitting the narrative of important business, we 
gladly look upon the Dutch tastes of William, the Chinese museum, 
the grottos, the mazes, aviaries, ponds, geometrical garden-beds, with 
which he defaced Hampton Court. A political dissertation precedes 
or follows the relation of a battle ; at other times the author is a tourist 
or a psychologist before becoming a politician or a tactician. He de- 
scribes the highlands of Scotland, semi-papistical and semi-pagan, the 
seers wrapped in bulls' hides to await the moment of inspiration, bap- 
tized men making libations of milk or beer to the demons of the place , 
pregnant women, girls of eighteen, working a wretched patch of oatS; 
whilst their husbands or fathers, athletic men, basked in the sun ; robbery 
and barbarities looked upon as honourable deeds ; men stabbed fronj 
behind or burnt alive ; repulsive food, coarse oats, and cakes, made of 
the blood of a live cow, offered to guests as a mark of favour and polite- 
ness ; infected hovels where men lay on the bare ground, and where they 
woke up half smothered, half blind, and half mad with the itch. The 
next instant he stops to mark a change in the public taste, the horrcu 



Aiacaulay, i. 3 ; History of Eiighmd before the Restoration, eh. i. 



1,24 MODERN AUTHORS. [^OOK V 

theo experienced on account of these brigands* retreats, this country? ol 
wild rocks and barren moors ; the admiration now felt for this land c( 
heroic warriors, this country of grand mountains, seething waterfalls, 
picturesque defiles. He finds in the progress of physical welfare th<* 
causes of this moral revolution, and concludes that, if we praise moun- 
tains and a vv'ild life, it is because we are satiated with security. He 
is successively an economist, a literary man, a publicist, an artist, ati 
historian, a biographer, a story-teller, even a philosopher ; by this 
diversity of parts he imitates the diversity of human life, and presents 
to the eyes, heart, mind, all the faculties of man, the complete history 
of the civilisation of his country. 

Others, like Hume, have tried or are trying to do it. They set 
forth now religious matters, a little further political events, then literary 
details, finally general considerations on the change of society and 
government, believing that a collection of histories is history, and 
that parts joined endwise are a body. Macaulay did not believe 
it, and he did well. Though English, he had the spirit of harmony. 
So many accumulated events form with him not a total, but a whole. 
Explanations, accounts, dissertations, anecdotes, illustrations, compari- 
sons, allusions to modern events, all hold together in his book. It is 
because all hold together in his mind. He had a most lively conscious- 
ness of causes ; and causes unite facts. By them, scattered events are 
assembled into a single event ; they unite them because they produce 
them, and the historian, who seeks them all out, cannot fail to perceive 
or to feel the unity which is their effect. Read, for instance, the 
voyage of James ii. to Ireland : no picture is more curious. Is it, how- 
ever, nothing more than a curious picture? When the king arrived 
at Cork, there were no horses to be found. The country is a deser*",. 
No more industry, cultivation, civilisation, since the English and 
Protestant colonists were driven out, robbed, slain. James was received 
between two hedges of Rapparees, armed with skeans, stakes, and half- 
pikes ; under his horse's feet they spread by way of carpet the rough 
frieze mantles, such as the brigands and sliepherds wore. He was offered 
garlands of cabbage stalks for crowns of laurel. In a 'arge district he 
only found two carts. The palace of the lord-lieutenant in Dul lin wa« 
so ill built, that the rain drenched the rooms. The king left fcr Ulster ? 
the French officers thought they were travelling ' tlirough the deserts of 
Arabia. The Count d'Avaux wrote to the French court, that, to get a 
truss of hay, they had to send five or six miles. At Charlemont, with 
great difficulty, as a mark of high favour, they obtained a sack of groats 
for the French embassy. The superior officers lay in dens which they 
would have thought too foul for tlieir dogs. The Irish soldiers wera 
half-savage marauders, who could only shout, cut throats, and disbacd. 
Ill fed on potatoes and sour milk, they cast themselves like starred 
men on the great flocks belonging to the Protestants. They grecaiiy 
tore the flesh of oxen and sheep, jwid swallowed it half raw and 



CHAP IlLj CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. 425 

half rotten. For lack of kettles, they cooked it in the skin. When 
Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, but continued 
to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair 
of brogues. At times a band slaughtered fifty or sixty beasts, took the 
skins, and left the bodies to poison the air. The French ambassador 
reckoned that in six weeks, there had been slain 50,000 horned cattle, 
which were rotting on the ground. They counted the number of the 
sheep and lambs slain at 400,000. Cannot the result of the rebellion 
bo seen beforehand? What could be expected of these gluttonous 
serfs, so stupid and savage ? What could be drawn from a devastated 
land, peopled with robbers ? To what kind of discipline could these 
maraudsrs and butchers be subjected ? What resistance will they make 
on the Boyne, when they see William's old regiments, the furious 
squadrons of French refugees, the enraged and insulted Protestants of 
Londonderry and Enniskillen, leap into the river and run with uplifted 
swords against their muskets ? They will flee, the king at their head ; 
and the minute anecdotes, scattered amidst the account of receptions, 
voyages, and ceremonies, will have announced the victory of the Protes- 
tants. The history of manners is thus seen to be involved in the history of 
events; these cause the others, and the description explains the narrative. 
It is not enough to see causes ; we must also see many. Every 
event has a multitude of them. Is it enough for me, if I wish to under- 
stand the action of Marlborough or of James, to be reminded of a disposi- 
tion or a quality which explains it ? No ; for, since it has for a cause 
a whole situation and a whole character, I must see at one glance and 
in abstract the whole character and situation which have produced it. 
Genius concentrates. It is measured by the number of recollections 
and ideas which it assembles in one point. That which Macaulay has 
assembled, is enormous. I know no historian who has a surer, better 
furnished, better regulated memory. When he is relating the actions of 
a man or a party, he sees in an instant all the events of his history, and 
all the maxims of his conduct; he has all the details present ; he remem- 
bers them every moment, in great numbers. He has forgotten nothing; 
he runs through them as easily, as completely, as surely, as on the day 
vvhon he enumerated or wrote them. No one has so well taught or known 
history. He is as much steeped in it as his personages. The ardent 
Whig or Tory, experienced, trained to business, who rose and shook 
(the House, had not more numerous, better arranged, more precise 
arguments. He did not better know the strength and weakness of his 
cause ; he was not more familiar with the intrigues, rancours, variation 
of parties, the chances of the strife, individual and public interestc. The 
great novelists penetrate the soul of their characters, assume their feel- 
ings, ideas, language ; it seems as if Balzac had b(,'eu a commercial tra- 
veller, a porter, a courtesan, a prude, a poet, and that he had spent h:a 
life in being each of these personages: his existence is multiplied, and 
his name is legion. With a different talent, Macaulay has the sam« 



^26 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 

power: an incomparable advocate, he pleads an infinite number oj 
causes ; and he is master of each cause, as fully as his client. He has 
answers for all objections, explanations for all obscurities, reasons for all 
tiibunals. He is ready at every moment, and on all parts of his case. 
It seems as if he had been Whig, Tory, Puritan, Member of the Privy 
Council, Ambassador. He is not a poet like Michelet ; he is not a 
pliilosopher like Guizot ; but he possesses so well all the oratorical 
powers, he accumulates and arranges so many facts, he holds them so 
closely in his hand, he manages them with so much ease and vigour, 
that he succeeds in recomposing the whole and harmonious woof of 
history, not losing or separating one thread. The poet reanimates the 
dead ; the philosopher formulates creative laws ; the orator knowSj ex- 
pounds, and pleads causes. The poet resuscitates souls, the philosopher 
composes a system, the orator redisposes chains of arguments ; but all 
three march towards the same end by different routes, and the orator, 
like his rivals, and by other means than his rivals, reproduces in his 
work the unity and complexity of life. 

A second character of this history is clearness. It is popular ; no ono 
explains better, or so much, as Macaulay. It seems as if he were making 
a wager with his reader, and said to him : Be as absent in mind, as 
stupid, as ignorant as you please ; in vain you will be absent in mind, 
you shall listen to me ; in vain you will be stupid, you shall Tinder- 
stand ; in vain you will be ignorant, you shall learn. I will repeat the 
same idea in so many different forms. I will make it sensible by such 
familiar and precise examples, I will announce it so clearly at the be- 
ginning, I will resume it so carefully at the end, I will mark the divi- 
sions so well, follow the order of ideas so exactly, I will display so great 
a desire to enlighten and convince you, that you cannot help being 
enlightened and convinced. He certainly thought thus, when he was 
preparing the following passage on the law which, for the first time, 
granted to Dissenters the liberty of exercising their worship : 

* Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration Act 
is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices and the peculiar 
excellences of English legislation. The science of Politics bears in one respect a close 
analogy to the science of Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate 
that a certain power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of 
puU.eys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on 
the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will bend or break. If tha 
engineer, who has to lift a gi'cat mass of real gi-anite by the instrumentality of real 
timber and real hemp, should absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in 
treatises on Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his 
materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon come down 
in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be found a far inferior buildei 
to those painted barbarians who, though they never heard of the parallelogi'am dl 
forces, managed to pile up Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the macsema- 
tician, the active statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most 
Important that legislators and administrators shox:ld be versed in the philosophy 



CTflAP III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAY. ^'Al 

of government, as it is most important tliat the architect, who has tc -ix an obelisls 
on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an estuary, should be versed in 
the philosophy of equilibrium and motion. But, as he who has actually to build 
TOHst bear in mind many things never noticed by D'Alembert and Eulei, so muat 
he who has actually to govern be perpetually guided by considerations to which no 
allusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham." Thw 
perfect lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see 
nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can see nothiug 
but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the speculative element Las 
prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty 
years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and Ameiica have owed 
•cores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long 
enough to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in 
English legislation the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom 
unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and 
much of convenience ; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly ; 
never to innovate except when some gi-ievance is felt ; never to innovate except 
80 far as to get rid of the grievance ; never to lay down any proposition of wider 
extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide ; these are the 
rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided th« 
deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments.' * 

Is the idea still obscure or doubtful? Does it still need proofs, 
illustrations ? Do we wish for anything more ? You answer No ; 
Macaulay answers Yes. After tlie general explication comes the par- 
ticular ; after the theory, the application ; after the theoretical demon- 
stration, the practical. We would fain stop ; but he proceeds : 

* The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English law. 
To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not intimately acquainted with 
the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation was divided at the time 
of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and con- 
tradictious. It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will 
not bear to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle 
undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished by the civil 
magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does not recognise, bnt 
positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against noncon- 
formists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is repealed. Persecution continues to be llie 
general rule. Toleration is the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which 
is given to conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by 
making a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of the Act 
without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independent minister, who is 
perfectly willing to make the declaration required from the Quaker, but who has 
doubts about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. 
Howe is liable to punishment if he preaches befoi-e he has solemnly declared his 
assent to the Anglican doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether re- 
jects the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any declaration 
whatever on the sul)jcct. 

* These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every persou who exa/- 



iSlacaulay, ii. 46o, History/ of England, ch. 



428 MODERN AUTHORS. ' jHOOK, T 

mines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason y^hi^h is the same u. all 

countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits, 
when we take into consideration the passions and prejudices of those for whom th<i 
Toleration Act was framed. This law, abounding with contradictions which evei"y 
smatterer in political philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost 
skill of the greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That 
the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile, inconsistent 
with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of religious liberty, must bt 
acknowledged. All that can be said in their defence is this ; that they remove- i % 
vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice ; that they put an (sttl, 
at once and for ever, without one division in either House of Parliament, without 
one riot in the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classe* 
most deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during foui 
generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made innur.ierabi« 
firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of whom the world wai 
not worthy, which had ch'iven thousands of those honest, diligent, and godfearing 
yeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond 
the ocean among the wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a 
defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably ha 
thought complete by statesmen. ' ^ 

For my part, that which I find complete in this, is the art of develop- 
ment. This antithesis of ideas, sustained by the antithesis of words, 
the symmetrical periods, the expressions designedly repeated to attract 
the attention, the exhaustion of proof, set before our eyes the special- 
pleader's and oratorical talent, which we just beforo encountered in the 
art of pleading all causes, of employing an infinite number of methods, of 
mastering them all and always, during every incident of the lawsuit. The 
final manifestation of a mind of this sort are the faults into which its 
talent draws it. By dint of development, he protracts. More than once 
his explications are commonplace. He proves what all allow. He en- 
lightens what is light. There is a passage on the necessity of reactioni 
which reads like the verbosity of a clever schoolboy. Others, excellent 
and novel, can only be read with pleasure once. On the second reading 
they appear too true; we have seen it all at a glance, and are wearied. 
I have omitted one-third of the passage on the Act of Toleration, an<i 
acute minds will think that I ought to have omitted another third. 

The last feature, the most singular, the least English of this Historj, 
is, that it is interesting. Macaiday wrote, in the Edinburgh Revie'dt^, 
several volumes of Essays ; and every one knows that the first merit of a 
reviewer or a journalist, is to make himself readable. A thick vclume 
naturally bores us ; it is not thick for nothing ; its bulk demands at 
the outset the attention of him who opens it. The solid binding, the 
table of contents, the preface, the substantial chapters, drawn up like 
soldiers in battle-array, all bid us take an arm-chair, put on a dressing- 
guwn, place our feet on the bars, and study ; we owe no less to the 
gra'^e man who presents himself to us, armed with 600 pages of text 

' Macaulay.ii. 405, History of EnglarrJ, ch. ^i. 



JHAP. III.] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MAC AUL AY. 429 

and three years of reflection. But a newspaper which we glance at in 
a club, a review which we finger in a drawing-room in the evening, 
before sitting down to dinner, must needs attract the eyes, overcome 
absence of mind, conquer newspaper readers. Macaulay attained, 
through practice, this gift of readableness, and he retains in his History 
tJie habits which he had acquired in the newspapers. He employs every 
meins of keeping up attention, good or indiffejent, worthy or unworthy 
of a gieat talent; amongst others, allusion to actual circumstances. Yon 
uiMy have heard the saying of an editor, to whom Pierre Leroux offered 
an article on God. * God ! thare is no actuality about it I ' Macaulay 
profits by this remark. He never forgets the actual. If he mentions 
fi regiment, he points out in a lew lines the splendid deeds which it has 
done since its formation up to our own day : thus the officers of this 
regiment, encamped in the Crimea, stationed at Malta, or at Calcutta, 
are obliged to read his History. He relates the reception of Schomberg 
in the House : who is interested in Schomberg? Forthwith he adds that 
Wellington, a hundred years later, was received, under like circumstances, 
with a ceremony copied from the first : what Englishman is not interested 
in ^yellington ? He relates the siege of Londonderry, he points out 
the spot which the ancient bastions occupy in the present town, the 
field which was covered by the Irish camp, the well at which the be- 
siegers drank : what citizen of Londonderry can help buying his book ? 
Whatever town he comes upon, he notes the changes which it has under- 
gone, the new streets added, the buildings repaired or constructed, the 
increase of commerce, the introduction of new industries : hence all the 
aldermen and merchants are constrained to subscribe to his work. Else- 
where we find an anecdote of an actor and actress : as the superlative 
degree is interesting, he begins by saying that William Mountford was 
the most agreeable comedian, that Anne Bracegirdle was the most 
popular actress, of the time. If he introduces a statesman, he always 
announces him by some great word : he was the most insinuating, or 
the most equitable, or the best informed, or the most eager and the 
most debauched, of all the politicians of the day. But his great qualitiof 
serve him as well in this matter as his literary machinery, a little too 
ninnifest, a little too copious, a little too coarse. The astonishing number 
»f details, the medley of psychological and moral dissertations, descrip- 
tions, relations, opinions, pleadings, portraits, beyond all, good composition 
and the continuous stream of eloquence, seize and retain the attention 
to the end. We have hard work to finish a volume of Lingard ol 
Robertson; we should have hard work not to finish a volume of jNIacaulay 
Here is a detached narration which shows very v/ell, and in the 
abstract, the means of interesting which he employs, and the great 
interest which he excites. The subject is the Massacre of Glencoe. 
Macaulay begins by describing the spot like a traveller who has seen it, 
and points it out to the bands of tourists and dilettanti, historians and 
antiquarians, who yearly issue from London : 



430 MODERN AUTHCRS. [EOOK 1 

* Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated nat far from the 8ontli<»rB 
shore of Loch Levin, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the western coast ol 
Scotland, and separates Arsjyleshire from Inverness-shire. Near his honse were two 
or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. The whole population which he 
governed was not supposed to exceed two hundred souls. In the neighbourhood 
of the little cluster of villages was some copsewood and some pasture land : bat • 
littlo further up the defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. 
In the Gaelic tongue, Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping : and, in truth, that 
pass IS the most dreary and melancholy of aU the Scottish passes, the very Valley 
c f the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it through the greater part 
of the finest summer ; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and 
when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is sad 
and awful. The path lies along a stream which issues from the most sullen and 
gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both viidea. 
Even in July the streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the sum- 
mits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths ol 
the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, or 
for one human form WTapped in a plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shep- 
herd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates 
life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The 
progress of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with 
harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate. All 
the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from 
that wilderness : but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itself waa 
valued on account of the shelter which it afibrded to the plunderer and Ma 
plunder.** 

The description, though very beautiful, is written for a demonstration. 
The final antithesis explains it ; the author has made it to show that 
the Campbells were the greatest brigands of the country. 

The Master of Stair, who represented William in Scotland, relying 
on the fact that Mac Ian had not taken the oath of allegiance on the 
appointed day, determined to destroy the chief and his clan. He was 
not urged by hereditary hate nor by private interest ; he was a man ol 
taste, polished and amiable. He did this crime out of humanity, per- 
suaded that there was no other way of pacifying the Highlands. There- 
upon Macaulay inserts a dissertation of four pages, very well written, 
full of interest and knowledge, whose diversity affords us rest, whiclj. 
leads us over all kinds of historical examples, and moral lessons : 

* "We daily see men do for their party, for their sect, for their country, for thei? 
favourite schemes of political and social reforu, what they would not do to enrich 
or to avenge themselves. At a temptation directly addressed to our private 
cupidity or to om: private animosity, whatever virtue we have takes the alarm 
But virtue itself may contribute to the fall of him who imagines that it is in biij 
power, by violating some general rule of morality, to confer an important benefit 
on a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the remonstrances oi 
conscience, and hardens his hes^rt against the most touching spectacles of misery, 
Vy repeating to himself that his intentions are pure, that his objects are nobl<v 

• Macaulay, iii. 513 ; History of Ev^land, ch. xviii. 



CHAP. IILl CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MACAULAV 433 

Vhat he is doing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees lie come* 
altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the excellence -yi tlie end, and at 
length perpetrates without one internal twinge acts which would shock a buc- 
eaneer. There is no reason to believe that Dominic would, for the best archbishopric 
in Christendom, have incited ferocious marauders to plunder and slaughter a 
peaceful and industrious populatiorx, that Everard Digby would, for a dukedom, 
have blown a large assembly of people into the air, or that Robespierre would 
have murdered for hire one of the thousands whom he murdered from philair 
thropy. ' ^ 

Do we not recognise here the Englishman brought up m psychologicaj 
and moral essays and sermons, who involuntarily and every instant 
spreads one over the paper ? This species is imknown in French lec- 
ture-rooms and reviews ; this is why it is unknown in French histories. 
When we wish to enter English history, we have only to step down 
from the pulpit and the newspaper. 

I do not transcribe the sequel of the explanation, the examples of 
James v., Sixtus v., and so many others, whom Macaulay cites to find 
precedents for the Master of Stair. Then follows a very circumstantial 
and very solid discussion, to prove that William was not responsible for 
the massacre. It is clear that Macaulay's object, here as elsewhere, is 
less to draw a picture than to suggest a judgment. He desires that 
we should have an opinion on the morality of the act, that we should 
attribute it to its real authors, that each should bear exactly his own 
share, and no more. A little further, when the question of the punish- 
ment of the crime arises, and William, having severely chastised the 
executioners, contents himself with recalling the Master of Stair, 
Macaulay writes a dissertation of several pages to consider this in- 
justice and to blame the king. Here, as elsewhere, he is still the 
orator and the moralist ; no means has more power to interest an 
English reader. Happily fur us, he at length becomes once more a 
narrator ; the petty details which he then selects fix the attention, and 
place the scene before our eyes : 

* The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety amorg the 
population of the valley. John, the eldest son of the Chief, came, accompanied 
by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and asked what this visit meant. 
Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the soldiers came as friends, and wanted 
nothing but quarters. They were kindly received, and were lodged under the 
thatched roofs of the little community. Glenlyon and several of his men were 
taken into the house of a tacksman who was named from the cluster of cabins 
over which he exercised authority, Inverriggen. Lindsay was accommodated 
nearer to the abode of the old chief. Auchintriater, one of the princip'sl men of 
the clan, who governed the small hamlet of Auchnaion, found room theia for a 
party commanded by a serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally 
supplied. There was no want of beef, which had probably fattened in distant 
pastures : nor was any payment demanded : for in hospitality, as in thievery, 
the Gaelic marauders rivalled the Bedouins. During twelve days the soldierj 

' Macaulay, iii. 519 ; History of England, eh. xviii. 



432 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

lived familiarly \ritli the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before felt 
many misgivings as to the relation in which he stood to the government, seems 
to have been jileased with the visit. The officers passed much of their time wi*-b 
him and his family. The long evenings were cheerfully spent by the peat fire 
with the help of some packs of cards which had found their way to that remote 
comer of the world, and of some French brandy which was probably pa:t of 
James' farewell gift to his Highland supporters. Glenlyon appeared to be v\armly 
attached to his niece and her husband Alexander. Everj' day he came to tholi 
house to take his morning draught. Meanwhile he observed with minute atten* 
tion aU the avenues by which, when the signal for the slaughter should be given, 
the Macdonalds might attempt to escape to the hills ; and he reported the result 
of his observations to Hamilton. . . . 

* The night was rough. Hamilton and his troops made slow progress, and 
were long after their time. While they were contending with the wind and snow, 
Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with those whom he meant to butcher 
before daybreak. He and Lieutenant Lindsay had engaged themselves to dine 
with the old Chief on the morrow. 

' Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intended crossed 
the mind of the Chief's eldest son. The soldiers were evidently in a restless state ; 
and some of them uttered strange exclamations. Two men, it is said, were overheard 
whispering. ** 1 do not like this job," one of them muttered ; ** I should be glad 
to fight the Macdonalds. But to kill men in their beds — " " "We must do as we 
are bid," answered another voice. " If there is anything wrong, our officers must 
answer for it." John Macdonald was so uneasy, that, soon after midnight, he 
went to Glenlyon's quarters. Glenlyon and his men were all up, and seemed to 
be getting their arms ready for action. John, much alarmed, asked what these 
preparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse of friendly assurances. *' Some of 
Glengarry's people have been harrying the country, \^"e are getting ready to 
march against them. You are quite safe. Do you think that, if you were in 
any danger, I should not have given a hint to your brother Sandy and his wife ?. " 
John's suspicions were quieted. He returned to his house, and lay down to rest.' * 

.On the next day, at five in the morning, the old chieftain was assas- 
sinated, his men shot in their beds or by the fireside. Women were 
butchered ; a boy, twelve years old, who begged his life on his knees, 
was slain ; they who fled half-naked, women and children, died of 
cold and hunger in the snow. 

These precise details, these soldiers' conversations, this picture ot 
evenings by the fireside, give to history the animation and life of a novel. 
And still the historian remains an orator : for he has chosen all thesi 
facts to exhibit the perfidy of the assassins and the horrible nature 
of the massacre ; and he will make use of them later on, to demand, 
with all the power and passion of logic, the punishment of the 
criminals. 

VIII. 

Thus this History, whose qualities seem so little English, bean 
throughout the mark of a genuinely English talent. Universal, con- 



Macaulav. iii. 520; History of England, ch. xviii. 



CHAP. TIL] CRITICISM AND HISTORY— MAC AUL AT. 433 

nected, it embraces all the facts in its vast, undivided, and unbroken 
woof. Developed, abundant, it enlightens obscure facts, and opens to 
the most ignorant the most complicated questions. Interesting, varied, 
it attracts and preserves the attention. It has life, clearness, unity, • 
qualities which appear to be wholly French. It seems as if the author 
w^re a populariser like Thiers, a philosopher like Guizot, an artist 
like Thierry. The truth is, that he is an orator, and that after the 
fa'jhion of his country ; but, as he possesses in the highest degree the 
oratoricai faculties, and possesses them with a national tendency and 
instincts, he seems to supplement through them the faculties which he 
liiis not. He is not genuinely philosophical: the mediocrity of his 
earlier chapters on the ancient history of England proves this suffi- 
ciently ; but his force of reasoning, his habits of classification and 
order, bestow unity upon his History. He is not a genuine artist: 
when he draws a picture, he is always thinking of proving some- 
tliing; he inserts dissertations in the most interesting and touching 
places ; he has neither grace, lightness, vivacity, nor refinement, but 
a marvellous memory, vast knowledge, an ardent political passion, a 
great legal talent for expounding and pleading every cause, a precise 
knowledge of precise and petty facts which rivet the attention, charm, 
diversify, animate, and warm a narrative. He is not simply a popu- 
hiriser ; he is too ardent, too eager to prove, to conquer bplief, to beat 
down his foes, to have only the limpid talent of a man who explains 
and expounds, with no other end than to explain and expound, which 
spreads light throughout, and never spreads heat; but he is so well 
provided with details and reasons, so anxious to convince, so rich in 
developments, that he cannot fail to be popular. By this breadth 
of knowledge, this power of reasoning and passion, he has produced 
one of the finest books of the age, whilst manifesting the genius of hia 
nation. This solidity, this energy, this deep political passion, these 
moral prejudices, these oratorical habits, this limited philosophical 
power, this partially uniform style, without flexibility or sweetness, this 
eternal gravity, this geometrical proaress to a settled end, announce 
in him the English mind. But if he is English to the French, he is not 
so to his nation. The animation, interest, clearness, unity of his narra- 
tive, astonish them. They think him brilliant, rapid, bold ; it is, they 
say, a French mind Doubtless he is so in many respects : if he under- 
itands Racine badly, he admires Pascal and Bossuet ; his friends say 
that he used daily to read Madame de Sevigne. Nay more, by the struc 
ture of his mind, by his eloquence and rhetoric, he is Latin ; so that the 
inner structure of his talent places him amongst the classics : it is only 
by his lively appreciation of special, complex, and sensible facts, by his 
energy and rudeness, by the rather heavy richness of his imagination, 
by the depth of his colouring, that he belongs to his race. Like 
Addison and Burke, he resembles a strange graft, fed and transformed 
by the sap of the national stock. At all events, this judgment ii 
VOL. U. 2 S 



4:34 MODERN AQTHOliS. [BOOK V 

the atrongest mark of the difference between the twc lations. To 
reach the English intellect, a Frenchman must make two voyages. 
When he has crossed the first interval, which is wide, he comes upon 
Macaiilay. Let him re-embark ; he must accomplish a second passage, 
just as long, to arrive at Carlyle for instance, — a miud fjndaroeDtsiJf 
QermaQiCy on the genuine English soil. 



CRAI^. iV.i PHILOSOrHY A2?D UlSTOi; V— CARLYLE. 436 



CHAPTER IV. 

^bllosophy and History.— Carlyl® 

§ 1.— Style and Mind. 
■gcektrio and important posmon of carlyle in bnglai^. 
L His strangenesses, obscurities, violence — Fancy and enthusiasm — Budeneci 

and buffooneries. 
II. Humour — Wherein it consists — It is Germanic — Grotesque and tragic 
pictures — Dandies and Poor Slaves — The Pigs' Catechis'ix — Extremi 
tension of his mind and nerves. 
ill. Barriers which hold and direct him — Perception of the real and of th« 

sublime. 
IV. His passion for exact and demonstrated fact — His search after extinguished 
feelings — Vehemence of his emotion and sympathy — Intensity of belief 
and vision — Past and Present — Cromwell's Letters and Speeches — His- 
torical mysticism — Grandeur and sadness of his visions — How he r«» 
presents the world after his own mind. 
V. Every object is a group, and every employment of human thought is the 
reproduction of a group — Two principal modes of reproducing it, and 
two principal modes of mind — Classification — Intuition — Inconvenience 
of the second process — It is obscure, hazardous, destitute of proofs — 
It tends to affectation and exaggeration — Hardness and presumptii^a 
which it provokes — Advantages ol this kind of mind — Alone capable 
of reproducing the object — Most favourable to original invention — The 
nee made of it by Carlyle. 

§ 2. — Vocation, 
ojtroduction of german ideas in europe and england — german studies 0» 

CARLYLE, 

L Appearance of original forms of mind — How they act and result — Artistic 
genius of the Renaissance — Oratorical genius of the classic age^* l*hiio- 
sopliical genius of the modern age — Probable analogy of the three ages. 
II. Wherein consists the modern and German form of nnnd — How the apt, tudu 
for universal ideas has renewed the science of language, mythology, 
aesthetics, history, exegesis, theology, and metaphysics — How the meta- 
physical bent has transformed poetry. 
Til. Capital idea derived thence — Conception of essential and complementary 

parts — New conception of nature and man. 
rV. Inconvenience of this aptitude — Gratuitous hypothesis and vague abstracticn 

— Transient discredit of German speculations. 
"¥• How each nation may re-forge them — Ancient examples : Spain in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries — The Puritans and Jansenists in th» 



436 MODERN AUTHORS [BOOK V 

seventeenth centnry — France in the eighteenth centnry^-By wha.t roa«ie 

these ideas may enter France — Positi^dsm — Criticism. 
VI. By what roads these ideas may enter England — Exact and positive mind— 
Impassioned and poetic inspiration— Road followed by Carlyle. 

§ 3. — Philosophy, Morality, and Criticism. 
mim method is moral, not scientific — wherein he resembles the pimitan8 
— sartor resartus. 
I. Sensible things are but appearances— Divine and mysterious character ol 

existence — His metaphysics. 
II, How we may form into one another, positive, poetic, spiritualistic, and 
mystical ideas — How in Carlyle German metaphysics are altered into 
English Puritanism. 

III. Moral character of this mysticism — Conception of duty — Conception of God. 

IV. Conception of Christianity — Genuine and conventional Christianity — Otlier 

religions — Limit and scope of doctrine. 
V. Criticism — What weight it gives to writers — ^What class of writers it exalts 
— What class of writers it depreciates — His aesthetics — His judgment of 
Voltaire. 
VI. Future of criticism — Wherein it is contrary to the prejudices of the age and 
of its vocation — Taste has but a relative authority. 

§ 4. — Conception of History. 

I. Supreme importance of great men — They are revealers — They miis,t be 

venerated. 
il. Connection between this and the German conception — ^Wherein Carlyle is 
imitative — Wherein he is original — Scope of his conception. 

III. How genuine history is that of heroic sentiments — Genuine historians are 

artists and psychologists. 

IV. His history of Cromwell — Why it is only composed of texts connected 

by a commentary — Its novelty and worth — How we should consider 
Cromwell and the Puritans — Importance of Puiitanism in modern civilisa- 
tion — Carlyle admires it unreservedly. 
V. His history of the French Revolution — Severity of his judgment — Wherein 
he has sight of the truth, and wherein he is unjust. 

VI His judgment of modern England — Against the taste for comfort and the 
lukawarmness of convictions — Gloomy forebodings for the future of modern 
democracy — Against the authority of votes — Monarchical theory. 

?II. Criticism of these theories — Dangers of enthusiasm — Comparison of Carlyle 
and Macaulay. 

WHEN you ask Englishmen, especially those under forty, who 
amongst them are the thinking men, they first mention 
Carlyle ; but at the same time they advise you not to read him, warn- 
ing you that you will not understand him at all. Then, of course, 
we hasten to get the twenty volumej of Carlyle — criticism, history, 
pamphlets, fantasies, philosophy; we read them with very strangr^j 
emotions, contradicting every morning our opinion of the night before, 



CHAP. I V.J PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARL YI<E. 437 

We discover at last that we are in presence of an extraordinary animal, 
a relic of a lost family, a sort of mastodon, lost in a world, not made 
for him. We rejoice in this zoological good luck, and dissect him with 
minute curiosity, telling ourselves that we shall probably never find 
Another animal like him. 

§ 1. — Style and Mind. 
We are at first put out. All is new here — ideas, style, tone, the 

•liape of the phrases, and the very vocabulary. He takes everything 
in a contrary meaning, does violence to everything, expressions and 
things. With him paradoxes are set down for principles ; common 
sense takes the form of absurdity. We ar€. as it were, carried into 
an unknown world, whose inhabitants walk head downwards, feet in 
the air, dressed in motley, as great lords and maniacs, with contortions, 
jerks, and cries ; we are grievously stunned by these extravagant and 
discordant sounds ; we want to stop our ears, we have a headache, we 
are obliged to decipher a new language. We see upon the table 
volumes which ought to be as clear as possible — The History of the 
French Revolution, for instance ; and there we read these headings to 
the chapters: 'Realised Ideals — Viaticum — Astraea Redux — Petition in 
Hieroglyphs — Windbags — Mercury de Brez^ — Broglie the War-God.* 
We ask ourselves what connection there can be between these riddles 
and such simple events as w^e all know. We then perceive that 
Carlyle always speaks in riddles. 'Logic-choppers' is the name he 
gives to the analysts of the eighteenth century ; * Beaver science ' is 
his word for the catalogues and classifications of our modern men of 
science. 'Transcendental moonshine' signifies the philosophical and 
sentimental dreams imported from Germany. The religion of the 
'rotatory calabash' means external and mechanical religion.' He can- 
not be contented with a simple expression ; he employs figures at every 
f tep ; he embodies all his ideas ; he must touch forms. We see that 
iAie is besieged and haunted by sparkling or gloomy visions ; every 
thought with him is a shock ; a stream of misty passion comes bubbling 
into his overflowing brain, and the torrent of images breaks forth and 
rolls on amidst every kind of mud and magnificence. He cannot 
reason, he must paint. If he wants to explain the embarrassment of 
a young man obliged to choose a career amongst the lusts and doubts 
of the age, in which we live, he tells you of: 

* A world all rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when the measure 
of its iniquities was full ; the abysses, and subterranean and supernal deluges, 
plainly broken loose ; in the wild dim -lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out 
No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to any man ; the pestiferous fogs and foul 
exhalations gTown contmual, have, except on the highest mountain-tops, blotted 

* Because the Kalmucks put written prayers into a calabash turned by 
the wind, which in their opinion produces a perpetual adoration. In th« 
««i"fi.e way are the prayer-mills of Thibet used. 



438 MODfiiiN AUTHOKS. [BOOK \ 

out all stars : will-o -wisps, of various course and colour, take the p.Ase of stara 
Oyer the; wild surging chaos, in the leaden air, are only sudden glares of revolu* 
tionary lightning ; then mere darkness, with philanthropistic phosphorescences^ 
empty meteoric lights ; here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hcivering^ 
hanging on to its old quaking fixtures, pretending stiU to be a Moon or Sun,— 
tho'igh visihly it is but a Chinese Lantern made oi paper mainlyi with 3andle-fii4 
foully dying in the heart of it. ' ^ 

Imagine a volume, twenty volumes, made up of such pictures, united 
by exclamations and apostrophes ; even history — that of the French 
Revolution — is like a delirium. Carlyle is a Puritan seer, before whose 
eyes pass scaffolds, orgies, massacres, battles, and who, besieged by 
furious or bloody phantoms, prophesies, encourages, or curses. If you 
do not throw down the book from anger or weariness, you will lose 
your judgment ; your ideas depart, nightmare seizes you, a medley of 
contracted and ferocious figures whirl about in your head ; you hear 
the howls of insurrection, cries of war ; you are sick ; you are like 
those listeners to the Covenanters, whom the preaching filled with dis- 
gust or enthusiasm, and who broke the head of their prophet, if they 
did not take him for their leader. 

These violent outbursts will seem to you still more violent if yoa 
mark the breadth of the field which they traverse. From the sublime 
to the ignoble, from the pathetic to the grotesque, is but a step with 
Carlyle. With the same stroke he touches the two extremes. His 
adorations end in sarcasms. The Universe is for him an oracle and a 
temple, as well as a kitchen and a stable. He moves freely about, 
and is at his ease in mysticism, as well as in brutality. Speaking oi 
the setting sun at the North Cape, he writes : 

* Silence as of death ; for Midnight, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its charac- 
ter : nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow« 
heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the great Sun hangs lo'W 
and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson 
and cloth-of-gold ; yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a 
tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my 
feet. In such moments. Solitude also is invaluable ; for who would speak, or b« 
looked on, when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except th« 
watchmen ; and before him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the Etenzal, 
whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp ? ' ' 

Such splendours he sees whenever he is face to face with nature. No 
one has contemplated with a more powerful emotion the silent starfi 
which roll eternally in the pale fiiniament and envelop our little 
w^orld. No one has conttmplated with more of religious awe the 
infinite obscurity in which our slender thought appears for an instani 
like a gleam, and by our side the gloomy abyss in which the hot frenzy 
of life is to be extinguished. His eyes are habitually fixed on thii 

^ The Life of John Sterling, ch. v. ; A Profession. 

^ f^artor Resartus, 1888, bk. ii, ch. viii. ; Centre of Indifference, 



CRAP. IV. j PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— GARLYLE. ^3^ 

vast Darkness, and he paints with a shudder of veneration and hoj t th« 
effort which religions have made to pierce them : 

* In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk ; the Dead all 
slumbering round it, under their white memorial stones, "in hope of a happy 
resurrection : " — duU wert thou, Reader, if never in any hour (say of moaning 
midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed 
op of Darkness) it spoke to thee — things unspeakable, that went to thy soul's soul, 
Strong was he that had a Church, what we can call a Church : he stood thereby, 
though "in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities," yet manlike 
towards God and man : the vague shoreless Universe had become for him a firm 
city, and dwelling which he knew. ' * 

Rembrandt alone has beheld these sombre visions drowned in shade, 
traversed by mystic rays : look, for example, at the church which he 
has painted; glance at the mysterious floating apparition, full of radiant 
forms, which he has set in the summit of the sky, above the stormy 
night and the terror which shakes mortality.^ The two imaginations 
have the same painful grandeur, the same scintillations, the same 
agony, and both sink with like facility into triviality and crudity. No 
ulcer, no filth, is repulsive enough to disgust Carlyle. On occasion, 
he will compare the politician who seeks popularity to 'the dog that 
was drowned last summer, and that floats up and down the Thames 
with ebb and flood. . . . You get to know him by sight . . . with a 
painful oppression of nose . . . Daily you may see him, . . . and 
daily the odour of him is getting more intolerable." Absurdities, 
incongruities, abound in his style. When the frivolous Cardinal de 
Lomenie proposed to convoke a Plenary Court, he compares him to 
* trained canary birds, that would fly cheerfully with lighted matches 
and fire cannon ; fire whole powder magazines.' * At need, he turns to 
clownish images. He ends a dithyramb with a caricature: he bespatters 
magnificence with wild fooleries : he couples poetry with rude jests : 

* The Genius of England no longer soars Sunward, world defiant, Hke an Eagle 
through the storms, "mewing her mighty youth," as John Milton saw her do : the 
Genius of England, much Hker a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a whole 
skin mainly, stands with its other extremity Sunward ; with its Ostrich-head stuck 
into the readiest bush, of old Church-tippets, King-cloaks, or what other "shelter- 
irg Fallacy " there may be, and so aAvaits the issue. The issue has been slow ; 
but it is now seen to have been inevitable. No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene 
provender, and sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,— in 
a terrible d-posteriori manner, if not otherwise ! * * 

With such buffoonery he concludes his best book, never quitting his 
tone of gravity and gloom, in the midst of anathemas and prophecies, 

* History of the French Revolution, bk. i. ch. ii. ; Realized Ideals. 
In the Adoration of the Magi. 

* Latter-Bay Pamphlets, 1850 ; Stump Orator, 35. 

* The French Revolution, i. bk. iii. ch. vii. ; Internecine. 

* Ch'omwiWs Letters and Speeches, iii. x. ; the end. 



440 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK 1 

He needs these great shocks. He cannot remain quiet, cr stick to one 
literary province at a time. He leaps in unimpeded jerks from one end 
of the field of ideas to the other ; he confounds all styles, jumbles ail 
forms, heaps together pagan allusions, Bible reminiscences, German 
abstractions, technical terms, poetry, slang, mathematics, physiology, 
archaic words, neologies. There is nothing he does not tread down 
and ravage. The symmetrical constructions of human art and thought, 
dis])ersed and upset, are piled under his hands into a vast mass ol 
shapeless ruins, from the top of which he gesticulates and fights, like 
a conquering savage. 

n. 

This kind of mind produces humour, a word untranslateable in 
French, because in France they have not the idea. Humour is a 
species of talent Avhich amuses Germans, Northmen ; it suits their 
mind, as beer suits their palate. For men of another race it is dis- 
agreeable ; they often find it too harsh and bitter. Amongst other 
things, this talent embraces a taste for contrasts. Swift jokes with the 
serious mien of an ecclesiastic, performing religious rites, and develops 
the most grotesque absurdities, like a convinced man. Hamlet, shaken 
with terror and despair, bristles with buiFooneries. Heine mocks his 
own emotions, even whilst he displays them. These men love travesties, 
put a solemn garb over comic ideas, a clown's jacket over grave ones. 
Another feature of humour is that the author forgets the public for 
whom he writes. He declares that he does not care for it, that he 
needs neither to be understood nor approved, that he thinks and 
amuses himself by himself, and that if his taste and ideas displease it 
it has only to disappear. He wishes to be refined and original at his 
ease ; he is at home in his book, and with closed doors, he gets into his 
Slippers, dressing-gown, often with his feet in *.he air, sometimes with- 
out a shirt. Carlyle has a style of his own, and marks his idea in his 
own fashion ; it is our business to understand it. He alludes to a 
saying of Goethe, of Shakspeare, an anecdote which strikes him at the 
moment ; so much the worse for us if we do not know it. He shouts 
when the fancy takes him ; the worse for us if our ears do not like it. 
He writes on the caprice of his imagination, with all the starts of inven- 
tion ; the worse for us if our mind goes at a different pace. He catches 
on the wing all the shades, all the oddities of his conception ; the worse 
for us if ours cannot reach them. A last feature of humour is the 
irruption of violent joviality, buried under a heap of sadnesses. Absurd 
indecency appears unannounced. Physical nature, hidden and oppressed 
under habits of melancholic reflection, is laid bare for an instant 
You see a grimace, a clown's gesture, then everything resumes its 
wonted gravity. Add lastly the unforeseen flashes of imagination. The 
humorist covers a poet ; suddenly, in the monotonous mist of prose, at 
the end of an argument, a vista shines ; beautiful or ugly, it matter! 



mAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARL YLE. 44.^ 

not ; it is enough that it strikes our eyes. These inequalities fairly paini 
the solitary, energetic, imaginative German, a lover of violent contrasts, 
confirmed in personal and gloomy reflection, with sudden up-wellings 
of physical instinct, so different from the Latin and classical races, races 
of orators or artists, where they never write but with an eye to the 
public, where they relish only consequent ideas, are only happy in the 
spectacle of harmonious forms, where the fancy is regulated^ and Tolup- 
tuousness appears natural. Carlyle is profoundly German, nearer to the 
primitive stock than any of his contemporaries, strange and unexampled 
in his fancies and his pleasantries ; he calls himself ' a bemired aurochs 
or uras of the German woods, . . . the poor wood-ox so bemired in 
the forests.' ^ For instance, his first book. Sartor Besartus^ which is a 
clothes-philosophy, contains, a propos of aprons and breeches, a meta- 
physics, a politics, a psychology. Man, according to him, is a dressed 
animal. Society has clothes for its foundation. * How, without Clotlies, 
could we possess the master- organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of 
the Body Social: I mean, a Purse:'* 

* To the eye of vulgar Logic, ' says he, * what is man ? An omnivorous Biped 
that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spirit, 
and divine Apparition. Round Lis mysterious Me, there lies, imder all those wool- 
rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven ; 
whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in Union and Division ; 
and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with aziue Starry Spaces, and long 
Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment ; amid Sounds 
and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded : 
yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. ' ^ 

The paradox continues, at once irregular and mystical, hiding theories 
und,er follies, mixing together fierce ironies, tender pastorals, love-stories, 
explosions of rage, and carnival pictures. He says well : 

* Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History is not the Diet of 
"Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Wagram, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any 
other Battle ; but an incident ptissed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated 
with some degree of ridicide by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself 
a suit of Leather. ' * 

For, thus clothed for the rest of his life, lodging in a tree and eating 
wild berries, man could remain at peace and invent Puritanism, that is, 
conscience -worship, at his leisure. This is how Carlyle treats the ideas 
which are dearest to him. He jests in connection with the doctrine, 
which was to employ his life and occupy his whole souL 

Would you like an abstract of his politics, and his opinion about his 
country ? He proves that in the modern transformation of religions 
two principal sects have risen, especially in England ; the one of * Poof 
SiaTes.' the other of Dandies. Of the first he says : 

* Zdfe cf Sterling. * Sartor Besartus, bk. i. oh. x. ; Pure Reason. 

8 Ibid. •* Ibid. bk. iii. ch. i. : Incident in Modern History. 



442 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

* Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitution ; "we find then 
bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and Obedience ; which Vows, espe« 
eially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I han 
understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination OJ 
not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, even before birth. That the third Monastic 
Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to conjecture. 

* Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle 
ci wearing a peculiar Costume. . . . Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, 
lappets, and irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colours ; through the laby- 
riathic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. 
1 i is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums, and skewers ; 
to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, 
round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by 
way of sandals. • . • 

* One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth : for they dig 
and affectionately work continually in her bosom ; or else, shut up in private 
Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her ; seldom look- 
ing-up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. 
Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings ; often even break- 
ing their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces oi 
raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. . . . 

* In respect of diet they have also their observances. All Poor Slaves are 
Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; a few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings: 
other animal food they abstain from ; except indeed, with perhaps some strange 
inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. 
Their universal sustenance is the root named Potato, cooked by fire alone. . . ♦ 
In all their Eeligious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, 
and largely consumed. ' ^ 

Of the othei sect he says : 

* A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shaj/O, is discernible 
enough : also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not- 
inconsiderable resemblance to that Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting 
from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own 
navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. 
To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modifica- 
tion, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Superstition, Self -worship. . . . 

* They affect great purity and separatism ; distinguish themselves by a parti- 
cular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this Volume) ; 
likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken Lingua- 
franca, or English -French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene 
deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world.' 

* They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands 
in their metropolis ; and is named Almack's, a word of uncertain et3rmology. They 
worship principally by night ; and have their Highpriests and Highpriestesses, 
who, however, do not continue for life. The rites, by seme supposed to be of the 
Menadic sort, or perhaps with an EleupJnian or Cabiric character, are held strictly 
secret. Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect ; tl ese they call FashionahU 
Novels : however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and otherg 
ftot.'« . . . 

afartar Besartits, bk. iii. ch. x. ; The Dandiacal Body. * Ibid. 



CHAP. IT I PHILOSOPHl AND HISTORY— CARLYI.B 443 

Tbeir chief articles of faith are : 

* 1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them ; at the same tim% 
wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided, 

* 2. The collar is a very important point : it should be low behind, and slightlj 
rolled. 

* 3. No licence of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste to adopt the post©- 
rial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 

* 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

* 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely developed than ia 
his rings. 

'- 6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, to wear white waist- 
coats. 

* 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the hips. 

* All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself with modestly but 
peremptorily and irrevocably denying. ' ^ 

This premised, he draws conclusions : 

* I might call them two boundless and indeed unexampled Electric Machines 
(turned by the " Machinery of Society "), with batteries of opposite quality ; 
Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Positive : one attracts hourly towards it 
and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation (namely, the Money 
thereof) ; the other is equally busy with the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), 
which is equally potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and 
sputters : but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state ; till your 
whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated por- 
tions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger) ; and stands there 
bottled-up in two World-Batteries ! The stirring of a child's finger brings the two 
together ; and then — "What then ? The Earth is but shivered into impalpable 
smoke by that Doom's-thunderpeal : the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, 
and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon. Or better still, I might 
liken — ' * 

He stops suddenly, and leaves you to your conjectures. This bitter 
pleasantry is that of a furious or despairing man, who designedly, and 
simply by reason of his passion, would restrain it and force himself to 
laugh ; but whom a sudden shudder at the '^nd reveals just as he is. 
In one place Carlyle says that there is, at the bottom of the English 
character, under all its habits of calculation and coolness, an inextin- 
guishable furnace : 

* Deep hidden it lies, far down in the centre, like genial central fire, with 

stratum after stratum of arrangement, traditionary method, composed pioductive- 
ness, all built above it, vivified and rendered fertile by it : justice, clearness, 
siler ce, perseverance unhasting, unresting diligence, hatred of disorder, hatred ol 
injustice, which is the worst disorder, characterise this people : the inward file we 
say, as all such fires would be, is hidden in the centre. Deep hidden, but awaken* 
able, but immeasurable ; let no man awaken it. ' 

It is a fire of extraordinary fierceness, as the rage of devoted Berserkirs, 
who, once rushing to the heat of the battle, felt no more their wounds, and 

* Sartor Resartus, bk. iii. ch. x. ; TJie Dandiacal Body, * Ibid, 



4:44 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

lived, fought, and killed, pierced with strokes, the least of which would 
have been mortal to an ordinary man. It is this destructive phrmzy 
this rousing of inward unknown powers, this loosening of a ferocity, 
enthusiasm, and imagination disordered and not to be bridled, which 
appeared in these men at the Renaissance and the Reformation, and a 
remnant of which still endures in Carlyle. Here is a vestige of it, in a 
passage almost worthy of Swift, which is the abstract of his customafy 
emotions, and at the same time his conclusion on the age in which w« 
live: 

* Supposing swine (I mean four-footed swine), of sensibility and superior logical 
parts, had attained such culture ; and could, after survey and reflection, jot down 
for us their notion of the Universe, and of their interests and duties there, — might 
it not well interest a discerning public, perhaps in unexpected ways, and give a 
stimulus to the languishing book-trade ? The votes of all creatures, it is under- 
stood at present, ought to be had ; that you may " legislate " for them with better 
insight. "How can you govern a thing," say many, "without first asking its 
vote ? " Unless, indeed, you already chance to know its vote, — and even something 
more, namely, what you are to think of its vote : what it wants by its vote ; and, 
still more important, what ITature wants,, — which latter, at the end of the account, 

the only thing that will be got ! — — Pig Propositions, in a rough form, ar« 
somewhat as follows : 

* 1. The Universe, so far as sane conjecture can go, is an immeasurable Swine's- 
trough, consisting of solid and liquid, and of other contrasts and kinds ;— especially 
consisting of attainable and unattainable, the latter in immensely greater quantitiea 
for most pigs. 

* 2. Moral evil is nnattainability of Pig's-wash ; moral good, attainability o( 
ditto. 

* 3. " What is Paradise, or the State of Innocence ?" Paradise, called also State 
of Innocence, Age of Gold, and other names, was (according to Pigs of weak judg- 
ment) unlimited attainability of Pig's-wash ; perfect fulfilment of one's wishes, so 
that the Pig's imagination could not outrun reality ; a fable and an impossibility, 
as Pigs of sense now see. 

* 4. ** Define the Whole Duty of Pigs. " It is the mission of universal Pighood, 
and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, to diminish the quantity of unattainable and 
increase that of attainable. AU knowledge and device and efi'ort ought to be 
directed thither and thither only : Pig science, Pig enthusiasm and Devotion have 
this one aim. It is the Whole Duty of Pigs. 

' 5. Pig Poetry ought to consist of universal recognition of the excellence ol 
Pig's-wash and ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough is in order, 
and who have had enough : Hrumph ! 

* 6. The Pig knows the weather ; he ought to look out what kind of wealliei 
it will be. 

* 7. " Who made the Pig ? " Unknown ; — perhaps the Pork- butcher. 

* 8. *' Have you Law and Justice in Pigdom ? " Pigs of observation have dis« 
earned that there is, or was once supposed to be, a thing called justice. UndO' 
niably at least there is a sentiment in Pig-nature called indignation, revenge, 
etc., which, if one Pig provoke anotlier, comes out in a more or less destructive 
jaanner : hence laws are necess2.iy, amazing quantities of laws. For quarrelling 
Is attended with loss of blood, of life, at any rate with frightful efliision of the 
general atock of Hog's-wash, and ruin (temporary ruin) to large sections of th« 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLTLE 446 

universal Swine's trough ; wherefore let justice be observed, that so quarrfcJling b« 
avoided. 

* 9. ** What is justice ? ** Your own share of the general Swine's trough, noi 
any portion of my share. 

* 10. " But what is * my * share ? " Ah ! there, in fact, lies the grand diffi- 
cultj ; upon which Pig science, meditating this long while, can settle absolutely 
nothing. My share— hrumph ! — my share is, on the whole, whatever I can contiiT« 
fa. get vvithcut being hanged or sent to the hulks. ' * 

Such is the mire in which he plunges modern life, and, beyond all 

others, English life ; drowning with the same stroke, and in the same 
filth, the positive mind, the love of comfort, industrial science, Church, 
State, philosophy, and law. This cynical catechism, thrown in amidst 
furious declamations, gives, I think, the dominant note of this strange 
mind : it is this mad tension which constitutes his talent; which pro- 
duces and explains his images and incongruities, his laughter and his 
rages. There is an English expression which cannot be translated into 
French, but which depicts "this condition, and illustrates the whole 
physical constitution of the race : His blood is up. In fact, the cold 
and phlegmatic temperament covers the surface ; but when the roused 
blood has swept through the veins, the fevered animal can only be 
glutted by devastation, and only be satiated by excess. 

IIL 

It seems as though a soul so violent, so enthusiastic, so savage, so 
abandoned to imaginative follies, so void of taste, order, and measure, 
would be capable only of rambling, and expending itself in hallucina- 
tions, fuU of gloom and danger. In fact, many of those who have had 
this temperament, and who were his genuine forefathers — the Norse 
pirates, the poets of the sixteenth century, the Puritans of the seven- 
teenth — -were madmen, pernicious to others and themselves, bent on 
devastating things and ideas, destroying the public security and their 
own heart. Two entirely English barriers have restrained and directed 
Carlyle : the sentiment of actuality, which is the positive spirit, and 
of the sublime, which makes the religious spirit ; the first has turned 
iiiri- to real things, the other has furnished him with the interpretation 
of real things : instead of being sickly and visionary, he has become » 
philosopher and a historian. 

IV. 

We must read his history of Cromwell to understand how far this 
§eiitiment of actuality penetrates him ; with what knowledge it endows 
liim ; how he rectifies dates and texts ; how he verifies traditions and 
genealogies ; hew he visits places, examines the trees, look? at the 
brooks, knows the agriculture, prices, the whole domestic and rural 
economy, all the political and literary circumstances ; with what minute- 

* Latter-Day Pamphlets, 1850 ; Jemitism, 28. 



446 MODERN AUTHCRS. fBOOK T 

ness, precision, and vehemence he reconstrucis before his ey*>s and 
before our own the external picture of objects and affairs, the internal 
picture of ideas and emotions. And it is not simply on his part con- 
science, habit, or prudence, but need and passion. In this great 
obscure void of the past, his eyes fix upon the rare luminous points 
as on a treasure. The black sea of oblivion has swallowed up tlie 
rest : the million thoughts and actions of so many million beings havp 
disappeared, and no power will make them rise again to the light. 
These few p:)ints subsist alone, like the tops of the highest rocks of a 
submerged continent. With what ardour, w^hat deep feeling for the 
destroyed worlds, of which these rocks are the remains, does the 
historian lay upon them his eager hands, to discover from their nature 
and structure some revelation of the great drowned regions, which no 
eye shall ever see again I A number, a trifling detail about expense, 
a petty phrase of barbarous Latin, is priceless in the sight of Carlyle. 
I should like you to read the commentary -^ith which he surrounds the 
chronicle of the monk Jocelin of Brakelond,^ to show you the impres- 
sion which a proved fact produces on such a soul ; all the attention 
and emotion that an old barbarous word, a kitchen list, summons up : 

* Beliokl therefore, this England of the Year 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or 
dreamland, peopled with mere vaporous Fantasms, Rymer's Foedcra, and Doctrines 
of the Constitution ; but a green solid place, that grew com and several other 
things. The sun shone on it ; the vicissitude of seasons and human fortunes. 
Cloth was woven and worn ; ditches were dug, fm'row-fields ploughed, and houses 
built. Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by night returned 
home weary to their several lairs. . . . The Dominus Rex, at departing, gave us 
** thirteen sterlingii," one shilling and one penny, to say a mass for him. . . . For 
king Lackland was there, vorily he. . . . There, we say, is the grand peculiarity ; 
the immeasurable one ; distinguishing, to a really infinite degree, the poorest his- 
torical Fact from all Fiction whatsoever. * * Fiction, " " I magination, " * ' Imaginative 
poetry," &c. &c.. excejjt as the vehicle for tnith, or is fact of some sort . . . what is 
it ? 2 . . . And yet these gi'im old walls are not a dilettantism and dubiety ; they 
are an earnest fact. It was a most real and serious purpose they were built for I 
Yes, another world it was, when these black ruins, white in their new mortar and 
fresh chiselling, first saw the sun as walls, long ago. . . . Their architecture, 
belfries, land-carucates ? Yes, — and that is but a small item of the matter. Does 
it never give thee pause, this other strange item of it, that men then had a soul, — 
ml by Irearsay alone, and as a figure of speech ; but as a truth that they knew, and 
practically went upon ! ' ' 

And then he tries to resuscitate this soul before our eyes ; for this is 
his special feature, the special feature of every historian who has the 
sentiment of actuality, to understand that parchments, walls, dress, 
bodies themselves, are only cloaks and documents ; that the true fact 
b the inner feeling of men who have lived, that the only important 

* In Past and Present, bk. ii. ' Ibid. bk. ii. eh. i. ; Jocelin of T 'akeiond 

' 3'd. ch. ii. ; St. Edmondsbura. 



CEAP. IV.J PHILOSCPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 447 

fact is the state and structure of their soul, that the first and unique 
business is to reach that inner feeling, that all diverges from it. We 
must tell ourselves this fact over and over again : history is but the 
history of the heart; we have to search out the feelings of past 
generations, and nothing else. This is what Carlyle perceives ; man is 
before him, risen from the dead ; he penetrates within him, sees that 
he feels, suffers, and wills, in that special and individual manner, cov? 
absolutely lost and extinguished, in which he did feel, suffer, and will. 
And he looks upon this sight, not coldly, like a man who only half sees 
things in a gray mist, indistinctly and uncertain, but with all the force 
of his heart and sympathy, like a convinced spectator, for whom past 
things, once proved, are as present and visible as the corporeal objects 
which his hand handles and touches, at the very moment. He feels 
this fact so clearly, that he bases upon it all his philosophy and history. 
In his opinion, great men, kings, writers, prophets, and poets are only 
great in this sense : 

* It is the property of the hero, in every time, in every place, in every situation, 
that he comes back to reality ; that he stands upon things, and not shows of 
things. ' * 

The great man discovers some unknown or neglected fact, proclaims it ; 
men hear him, follow him ; and this is the whole of history. And not 
only does he discover and proclaim it, but he believes and sees it. He 
believes it, not as hearsay or conjecture, like a truth simply probable 
and handed down ; he sees it personally, face to face, with absolute and 
indomitable faith ; he deserts opinion for conviction, tradition for intui- 
tion. Carlyle is so steeped in his process, that he applies it to all great 
men. And he is not wrong, for there is none more potent. Wherever 
he penetrates with this lamp, he carries a light not known before. He 
pierces mountains of paper erudition, and enters into the hearts of men. 
Everywhere he goes beyond political and conventional history. He 
divines characters, comprehends the spirit of extinguished ages, feels 
better than an Englishman, better than Macaulay himself, the great re- 
volutions of the souL He is almost German in his force of imagination, 
bia antiquarian perspicacity, his broad general views, and yet he iy no 
iealer in guesses. The national common sense and the energetic crav- 
ing for profound belief retain him on the limits of supp'.>sition; when he 
does guess, he gives it for what it is worth. He has no taste for hazardous 
history. He rejects hearsay and legends ; h*^, accepts only partially, 
and under reserve, the Germanic etymologies and hypotheses. He 
wishes to draw from history a positive and active law for himself and us. 
He expels and tears away from it, all the doubtful and agreeable addi- 
tions which scientific curiosity and romantic imagination accumulate, 
He puts aside this parasitic growth to seize the useful and solid wood. 
And when he has seized it, lie drags it so energetically before us, in ordei 

* Lecturee on Heroes, 1888. 



448 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V. 

to make us touch it, he handles it in so violent a manner, he places it 
under such a glaring light, he illuminates it by such coarse contrasts oi 
extraordinary images, that we are infected, and in spite of ourselves 
reach the intensity of his belief and vision. 

He goes beyond, or rather is carried beyond this. The facts sd/^rd 
upon by this vehement imagination, are melted in it as in a fire. Beneath 
this fury of conception, all vacillates. Ideas, changed into hailucinii- 
tions, lose their solidity, beings are like dreams; the world, appearing 
in a nightmare, seems no more than a nightmare; the attestation of the 
bodily senses loses its weight before inner visions as lucid as itself, 
Man finds no more difference between his dreams and his perceptiona 
Mysticism enters like a smoke within the overheated walls of a coU 
lapsing imagination. It was thus that it once penetrated into the 
ecstasies of ascetic Hindoos, and into the philosophy of our first two 
centuries. Throughout, the same state of the imagination has produced 
the same doctrine. The Puritans, Carlyle's true ancestors, were all 
inclined to it. Shakspeare reached it by the prodigious tension of 
his poetic dreams, and Carlyle ceaselessly repeats after him that * we 
are such stuff as dreams are made of.' This real world, these events 
so harshly followed up, circumscribed, and handled, are to him only 
apparitions ; the universe is divine. * Thy daily life is girt with wonder, 
and based on wonder ; thy very blankets and breeches are miracles. , . , 
TJie unspeakable divine significance, full of splendour, and wonder, and 
terror, lies in the being of every man and of every thing ; the presence 
of God who made every man and thing.* 

* Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific noTnenclatures, oxperi- 
ments, and what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled up in Lcyden 
jars, and sold over counters : but the natural sense of man, in all times, if he wu 
honestly apply his sense, proclaims it to be u living thing, — ah, an unspeakable, 
godlike thing ; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, 
is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul ; worship if not in words, then in 
silence.'^ 

In fact, this is the ordinary position of Carlyle. It ends in wonder. 
Beyond and beneath objects, he perceives as it were an abyss, and ii 
int-^rrupted by shuddorings. A score of times, a hundred times in the 
History of the French devolution, we have him suspending his account, 
and dreaming. The immensity of the black night in which the human 
apparitions rise for an instant, the fatality of the crime which, once 
committed, remains attached to the chain of events as by a link of iron, 
the mysterious conduct which impels these floating masses to an unknown 
but inevitable end, are the great and sinister images which haunt him. 
He dreams anxiously of this focus of existence, of which we are only 
the reflection. He walks fearfully amongst this people of shadows, and 
tells himself, that he too is a shadow. He is troubled by the thoughl 

* LectuT '9 on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity, 



:CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 449 

that these human phantoms have their substance elsewhere, and will 
answer to eternity for their short passage. He cries and trembles at 
the idea of this motionless world, of which ours is but the mutable 
figure. He divines in it something august and terrible. For he 
shapes it, and he shapes our world according to his own mind ; ho 
defines it by the emotions which he draws from it, and figures it by the 
impressions which he receives from it. A moving chaos of splendid 
visions, of infinite pc i spectives, stirs and boils within him at the least 
event which he touches ; ideas abound, violent, mutually jostling, driven 
from all sides of the horizon amidst darkness and the flashes of light- 
ning : his thought is a tempest, and he attributes to the universe the 
magnificence, the obscurities, and the terrors of a tempest. Such a 
conception is the true source of religious and moral sentiment. The 
man who is penetrated by them passes his life, like a Puritan, in 
veneration and fear. Carlyle passes his in expressing and impressing 
veneration and fear, and all his books are preachings. 

V. 

Here truly is a strange mind, and one which makes us reflect. 
Nothing is more calculated to manifest truths than these eccentric 
beings. It will not be time misspent to discover the true position of 
this mind, and to explain for what reasons, and in what measure, he 
must fail to possess, or must attain to, beauty and truth. 

As soon as we wish to begin to think, we have before us a whole 
and distinct object — that is, an assemblage of details connected amongst 
themselves, and separated from their surroundings. Whatever the 
object, tree, animal, sentiment, event, it is always the same ; it always 
has parts, and these parts always form a whole : this group, more or 
less vast, comprises others, and is comprised in others, so that the 
smallest portion of the universe is, like the entire universe, a group. 
Thus the whole employment of human thought is to reproduce groups. 
According as a mind is fit for this or not, it is capable or incapable. 
According as it can reproduce great or small groups, it is great or 
small. According as it can produce complete groups, or only certain 
if their paifs, it is complete or partial. 

What is it, then, to reproduce a group ? It is first to separate there- 
from all the parts, then to arrange them in ranks according to their 
ieH<»mblances, then to form these ranks into families, lastly to combina 
the whole under some general and dominant mark ; in short, to imitate 
the hierarchical classifications of science. But the task is not ended 
there : this hierarchy is not an artificial and external arrangement, but a 
natural and internal necessity. Things are not dead, but living ; there 
IS in them a force which produces and organises this group, which 
binds together the details and the whole, which repeats the type in all 
its parts. It is this force which the mind must reproduce in itself, with 
ttU its eflects ; it must perceive it by rebound and sympathy : this forc« 

VOL. n. 2 ¥ 



450 MOr ERN AUTHORS. [BOOR It 

must engender in tlie mind tlie entire group, and must be developed 
within it as without it : the series of internal ideas must imitate tlie 
series of external; the emoticn must follow the conception, vision must 
complete analysis ; the mind must become, like nature, creative. Then 
only can we say. We know. 

All minds take one or other of these routes, and are divided by 
thorn into two great classes, corresponding to opposite temperaments. 
In the first are the plain men of science, the popularisers, orators, 
writers — in general, the classical ages and the Latin races ; in the second 
are the poets, prophets, commonly the inventors — in general, the roman- 
tic ages and the Germanic races. The first proceed gradually from one 
idea to the next : they are methodical and cautious ; they speak for the 
world at large, and prove what they say ; they divide the field which 
they would traverse into sections to begin wirh, in order to exhaust 
their subject ; they march by straight and level roads, so as to be sure 
against a fall ; they proceed by transitions, enumerations, summaries ; 
they advance from general to still more general conclusions ; they form 
the exact and complete classification of a group. When they go beyond 
simple analysis, their whole talent consists in eloquently pleading a 
thesis. Amongst the contemporaries of Carlyle, Macaulay is the most 
complete model of this species of mind. The others, after having 
violently and confusedly rummaged amongst the details of a group, 
plunge with a sudden spring into the mother-notion. They see it then 
in its entirety ; they perceive the powers which organise it ; they repro- 
duce it by divination ; they depict it in miniature by the most expressive 
words, the strangest ideas ; they are not capable of decomposing it 
into regular series, they always perceive in a lump. They think only 
by sudden concentrations of vehement ideas. They have a vision of 
dijitant effects or living actions ; they are revealers or poets. Michelet, 
amongst the French, is the best example of this form of intellect, and 
Carlyle is an English Michelet. 

He knows it, and argues plausibly that genius is an intuition, an 
insight : 

* Our Professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school Logic, 
where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the other ; but 
tt best that of practical Reason, proceeding by laige Intuition over whole syste- 
matic groups and kingdoms ; w^hereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost 
like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Natrre '■ » 
mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan.' ^ 

Doubtless, but disadvantages nevertheless are not wanting ; and, in the 
first place, obscurity and barbarism. In ord'^r to understand him, we 
must study laboriously, or else have precisely the same kind of mini as 
he. But few men are critics by profession, or natural seers ; in general^ 
an author writes to be understood, and it is annoying to end in enigmas 



r-.rrt>r Bcs:,Ttu^. I'k. i. cl:. fill. ; rite W&^-lo. out of Cloth! , 



VhAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 45;j 

On the other hand, this visionary process is hazardous : when we wish tc 
leap immediately into the familiar and generative idea, we run the risk 
of falling short ; the gradual progress is slower, but more sure. Th^ 
methcdical people, so much ridiculed by Carlyle, have at least the 
advantage over hiir. in being able to verify all their steps. Moreover, 
these vehement divinations and assertions are very often void of procf 
Carlyle leaves the reader to search for them : the reader at times does 
not search for them, and refuses to believe the soothsayer on his 
word. Consider, again, that affectation infallibly enters into this style^ 
It must assuredly b'* inevitable, since Shakspeare is full of it. The 
pimple writer, prosaic and rational, can always reason and stick to his 
prose ; his inspiration has no gaps, and demands no efforts. On the 
contrary, prophecy is a violent condition which does not sustain itself. 
When it fails, it is replaced by grand gesticulation. Carlyle warms him- 
^If up in order to continue glowing. He struggles hard ; and this forced 
perpetual epilepsy is a most shocking spectacle. We cannot endure a 
man who wanders, repeats himself, returns to oddities and exaggerations 
already worn bare, makes a jargon of them, declaims, exclaims, and 
makes it a point, like a wretched bombastic comedian, to upset our 
nerves. Finally, when this species of mind coincides in a lofty mind with 
the habits of a gloomy preacher, it results in objectionable manners. 
Many will find Carlyle presumptuous, coarse ; they will suspect from his 
theories, and also from his way of speaking, that he looks upon himself 
as a great man, neglected, of the race of heroes ; that, in his opinion, the 
human race ought to put themselves in his hands, and trust him with 
their business. Certainly he lectures us, and with contempt. He de- 
spises his epoch ; he has a sulky, sour tone ; he keeps purposely on stilts. 
He disdains objections. In his eyes, opponents are not up to his form 
He bullies his predecessors : when he speaks of Cromwell's biographers^ 
he takes the tone of a man of genius astray amongst pedants. He has 
the superior smile, the resigned condescension of a hero who feels 
himself a martyr, and he only quits it, to shout at the top of his voice, 
like an ill-taught plebeian. 

All this is redeemed, and more, by rare advantages. Ha speaks 
truly : minds like his are the most fertile. They are almost the only 
ones which make discoveries. Pure classifiers do not invent ; they 
are too dry. * To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man 
must first love the thing, sympathise with it.' * Fantasy is the organ 
of the Godlike, the understanding is indeed thy window ; too clear 
thou canst not make it ; but fantasy is thy eye, with its colour-giving 
retina, healthy or diseased.' Ic more simple language, this means that 
every object, animate or inanimate, is gifted with powers which con- 
stitute its nature and produce its development ; that, in order to know 
it, we must recreate it in ourselves, with the train of its potentialities, 
and that we only know it entirely by inwardly perceiving all its ten* 
dencies, and inwardly seMng all its effects. And verily this procesa, 



452 MODERN AUTHORS. . tJiUUK ^> 

V7hicli is the imitation of nature, is tlie only one by whicli we can 
penetrate nature ; bhakspeare had it as an instinct, and Goethe as a 
method. There is none so powerful or delicate, so fitted to the com- 
plexity of things and to the structure of our mind. There is non€ 
more proper to renew our ideas, to withdraw us from formulas, to 
deliver us from the prejudices with which education involves us, U 
overthrow the barriers in which our surroundings enclose us. It is by 
this that Carlyle escaped from conventional English ideas, penetrated 
into the philosophy and science jof Germany, to think out again in his 
own manner the Germanic discoveries, and to give an original theory 
of man and of the universe. 



§ 2. — ^Vocation. 

It is from Germany that Carlyle has drawn his greateat ideas. He 
studied there, he knows perfectly its literature and language, he sets 
this literature in the highest rank, he translated Wilhelm Meister, he 
wrote upon the German writers a long series of critical articles, he has 
just written a life of Frederick the Great. He has been the most 
recognised and most original of the interpreters who have introduced 
the German mind into England. This is no mean work, for it is in a 
like work that every thinking person is now labouring. 



From 1780 to 1830 Germany has produced all the ideas of our 
historic age ; and for half a century still, perhaps for a whole century, 
our great work will be to think them out again. The thoughts which 
have been born and have blossomed in a country, never fail to pro- 
pagate themselves in the neighbouring countries, and to be engrafted 
there for a season. That which is happening to us has happened twenty 
times already in the world ; the growth of the mind has always been 
the same, and we may, with some assurance, foresee for the future what 
we observe in the past. At certain times appears an original form of 
mind, which produces a philosophy, a literature, an art, a science, and 
which, having renewed human thought, slowly and infallibly renew* 
all human thoughts. All minds which seek and find are in the currenij 
they only progress through it: if they oppose it, they are checked', if 
they deviate, they are slackened ; if they assist it, they are carried 
beyond the rest. And the movement goes on so long as there remains 
anything to be discovered. When art has given all its works, philo- 
sophy all its theories, science all its discoveries, it stops ; another 
form of mind takes the sway, or man ceases to think. Thus at the 
Renaissance appeared the artistic and poetic genius, which, born in 
Italy and carried into Spain, was there extinguished after a century 
and a half, in universal extinction, and which, with other characteris- 
tics, transplanted into France and England, ended after a hundred 



CHAP. IV.J PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 45| 

years in the refinements of mannerists and the follies of sectarians, 
having produced the Reformation, confirmed free thought, and founded 
science. Thus with Dryden and Malherbe was born the oratorical and 
classical spirit, which, having produced the literature of the seventeenth 
century and the philosophy of the eighteenth, dried up under the suc- 
cessors of Voltaire and Pope, and died after two hundred years, having 
polished Europe and raised the French Revolution. Thus at the end 
of the last century arose the philosophic German genius, which, having 
engendered a new metaphysics, theology, poetry, literature, linguistic 
icience, an exegesis, erudition, descends now into the sciences, and 
continues its evolution. No more original spirit, more universal, more 
fertile in consequences of every scope and species, more capable of 
transforming and reforming everything, has appeared for three hundred 
years. It is of the same order as that of the Renaissance and of the 
Classical Age. It, like them, connects itself with the great works of 
contemporary intelligence, appears in all civilised lands, is propagated 
with the same inward qualities, but under different forms. It, lik3 
them, is one of the epochs of the world's history. It is encountered in 
the same civilisation and in the same races. We may then conjecture 
without too much rashness, that it will have a like duration and destiny. 
We thus succeed in fixing with some precision our place in the endless 
stream of events and things. We know that we are almost in the 
midst of one of the partial currents which compose it. We can detach 
the form of mind which directs it, and seek beforehand the ideas to 
which it conducts us. 

IL 

Wherein consists this form ? In the power of discovering general 
ideas. No nation and no age has possessed it in so high a degree as 
the Germans. This is their governing faculty ; it is by this power 
that they have produced all they have done. This gift is properly 
that of comprehension (pegreifen). By it we find the aggregate concep- 
tions (Begriffe) ; we reduce under one ruling idea all the scattered parts 
of a subject ; we perceive under the divisions of a group the common 
bond which unites them ; we conciliate objections ; we bring down 
apparent contrasts to a profound unity. It is the pre-eminent philo- 
sophical faculty ; and, in fact, it is the philosophical faculty which has 
impressed its seal on all their works. By it, they have vivified dry 
studies, which seemed only fit to occupy pedants of the academy or 
seminary. By it, they have divined the involuntary and primitive 
logic which has created and organised languages, the great ideas which 
are hidden at the bottom of every work of art, the dull poetic emotions 
and vague metaphysical intuitions which have engendered religions 
and myths. By it, they have perceived the spirit of ages, civilisations, 
and races, and transformed into a system of laws the history wljich 
was but a heap of facts. By it, they have rediscovered or renewed the 



4.54 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

sense of dogmas, comiected God with the world, man with nature, spirit 
with matter, perceived the successive chain and the original necessity ol 
the forms, whereof the aggregate is the universe. By it, they have 
created a science of linguistics, a mythology, a criticism, an sesthetics, 
an exegesis, a history, a theology and metaphysics, so new that they 
continued long incomprehensible, and could only be expressed by a 
separate language. And this bent was so dominant, that it subjected 
to its empire arts and poetry themselves. The poets by it have become 
erudite, philosophical ; they have constructed their dramas, epics, and 
odes after prearranged theories, and in order to manifest general ideas. 
They have rendered moral theses, historical periods, sensible ; they have 
created and applied jesthetics ; they had no artlessness, or made their 
artlessness an instrument of reflection; they have not loved their 
characters for themselves ; they have ended by transforming them 
into symbols ; their philosophical ideas have broken every instant out 
of the poetic shape, in which they tried to enclose them ; they have 
been aU critics,^ bent on constructing or reconstructing, possessing 
erudition and method, attracted to imagination by art and study, 
incapable of producing living beings unless by science and artifice, 
really systematical, who, to express their abstract conceptions, have 
employed, in place of formulas, the actions of personages and the 
Tflusic of verse. 

m. 

From this aptitude to conceive the aggregate, one sole idea could 
be produced — the idea of aggregates. In fact, all the ideas worked out 
for fifty years in Germany are recfuced to one only, that of development 
{Entwickelung\ which consists in representing all the parts of a group aa 
jointly responsible and complemental, so that each necessitates the rest, 
and that, all combined, they manifest, by their succession and their con- 
trast.?, the inner quality which assembles and produces them. A score 
of systems, a hundred dreams, a hundred thousand metaphors, have 
variously figured or disfigured this fundamental idea. Despoiled of its 
trappings, it merely affirms the mutual dependence which unites the 
terms of a series, and attaches them all to some abstract property within 
them. If we apply it to Nature, we come to consider the world as a 
scale of forms, and, as it were, a succession of conditions, having in 
themselves the reason for their succession and for their existence, con- 
taining in their nature the necessity for their decay and their limita 
tion, composing by their union an indivisible whole, which, sufficing for 
itself, exhausting all possibilities, and connecting all tilings, from time 
and space to existence and thought, resemble by its harmony and its 
magnificence some omnipotent and immortal god. If we apply it to 
man, we come to consider sentiments and thoughts as natural and 

* Goetlie, tne greatest of them all. 



CHAP. IV.j PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 4.55 

necessary products, linked amongst themselves like the transformations 
of an animal or plant ; which leads us to conceive religions, philosophies, 
literatures, all human conceptions and emotions, as necessary series of 
a state of mind which carries them away on its passage, which, if it 
returns, brings them back, and which, if we can reproduce it, gives us 
indirectly the means of reproducing them at will. These are the two 
doctrines which run through the writings of the two chief thinkers of 
the century, Hegel and Goethe. They have used them throughout as 
a method, Hegel to grasp the formula of everything, Goethe to obtain 
the vision of everything; they have steeped themselves therein so 
thoroughly, that they have drawn thence their inner and habitual sen- 
timents, their morality and their conduct. We may consider them to 
be the two philosophical legacies which modern Germany has left to 
the human race. 

IV. 

But these legacies have not been unmixed, and this passion for 
aggregate views has marred its proper work by its excess. It is rarely 
that our mind can grasp aggregates : we are imprisoned in too narrow 
a corner of time and space ; our senses perceive only the surface of 
things ; our instruments have but a small scope ; we have only been 
experimentalising for three centuries ; our memory is short, and the docu- 
ments by which we dive into the past are only doubtful lights, scattered 
over an immense region, which they show by glimpses without illumi- 
nating them. To bind together the small fragments which we are able 
to attain, we have generally to guess the causes, or to employ general 
ideas so vast, that they might suit all facts ; we must have recourse 
either to hypothesis or abstraction, invent arbitrary explanations, or be 
lost in vague ones. These, in fact, are the two vices which have cor- 
rupted German thought. Conjecture and formula have abounded. 
Systems have multiplied, some above the others, and broken out into 
an inextricable growth, into which no stranger dare enter, having found 
that every morning brought a new budding, and that the definitive dis- 
covery proclaimed over-night was about to be choked by another infal- 
lible discovery, capable at most of lasting till the morning after. The 
public of Europe was astonished to see so much imagination and so 
little common sense, pretensions so ambitious and theories so hollow, 
sucii an invasion of chimerical existences" and such an overflow of use- 
less abstractions, so strange a lack of discernment and so great a luxu- 
riance of irrationality. The fact was, that folly and genius flowed from 
the same source ; a like faculty, excessive and all-powerful, produced 
di&coveriee and errors. If to-day we behold the workshop of human 
ideas, overcharged as it is and encumbered by its works, we may com- 
pare it to some blast-furnace, a monstrous machine which day and night 
has flamed unwearingly, half darkened by choking vapours, and in 
which the raw ore, piled heaps on heaps, has descended bubbling In 



456 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK P 

glowing streams into the channels in which it has become hard. No 
other furnace could have melted the shapeless mass, crusted over with 
the primitive scoriae; this obstinate elaboration and this intense heat 
were necessary to overcome it. Now the sluggish tappings burden the 
earth ; their weight discourages the hands which touch thera ; if we 
would turn them to some use, they defy us or break : as they are, I hey 
are of no use ; and yet as they are, they are the material for every tool, 
and the instrument of every work ; it is our business to cast them ovei 
again. Every mind must carry them back to the forge, purify them, tem- 
per them, recast them, and extract the pure metal from the rough mass. 



But every mind will re-forge them according to its own innei 
warmth ; for every nation has its original genius, in which it moulds 
the ideas elsewhere derived. Thus Spain, in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, renewed in a different spirit the Italian painting 
and poetry. Thus the Puritans and Jansenists thought out in new 
times the primitive Protestantism ; thus the French of the eighteenth 
century widened and put forth the liberal ideas, which the English had 
applied or proposed in religion and politics. It is so in the present 
day. The French cannot at once reach, like the Germans, lofty 
aggregate conceptions. They can only march step by step, starting 
from concrete ideas, rising gradually to abstract ideas, after the pro- 
gressive methods and gradual analysis of Condillac and Descartes. But 
this slower route leads almost as far as the other ; and in addition, 
it avoids many wrong steps. It is by this route that we succeed in 
correcting and comprehending the views of Hegel and Goethe ; and if 
we look around us, at the ideas which are gaining gtound, we find that 
we are already arriving thither. Positivism, based on all modern ex- 
perience, and freed since the death of its founder from his social and 
religious ft\ncies, has assumed a new life, by reducing itself to noting 
the connection of natural groups and the chain of established scier ces. 
On the other hand, history, romance, and criticism, sharpened by the 
refinements of Parisian culture, have clearly brought forward the laws 
of human events ; nature has been shown to be an order of facts, man 
a continuation of nature ; and we have seen a superior mind, the most 
delicate, the most lofty of our own time, resuming and modifying the 
German divinations, expounding in the French manner everything 
which the science of myths, religions, and languages had stored up, 
beyond the Rhine, during the last sixty years.^ 

VI. 

The growth in England is more difficult; for the aptitude foi 
general ideas is less, and the mistrust of general ideas is greater : they 

I 

' M. Renan. 



^^HAP. IV.l PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARL 1 LE. 457 

reject at once all that remotely or nearly seems capable of injuring 
practical morality or established dogma. The positive spirit seems as 
if it must exclude all German ideas ; and yet it is the positive spirit 
which introduces them. Thus theologians,^ having desired to repre- 
sent to themselves with entire clearness and certitude the characters of 
the New Testament, have suppressed the halo and mist in which dis 
lance enveloped them ; they have figured them with their garments, 
gestures, accent, all the shades of emotion which their style has marked, 
with, the species of imagination which their age has imposed, amidst the 
scenery which they have looked upon, amongst the relics before which 
they have spoken, w^ith all the circumstances, physical or moral, which 
learning and travel can render sensible, with all the comparisons 
which modern physiology and psychology could suggest ; they have 
given us their precise and demonstrated, coloured and graphic idea ; 
they have seen these personages, not through ideas and as myths, but 
face to face and as men. They have applied Macaulay's art to exegesis ; 
and if German erudition could pass unmutilated through this crucible, 
its solidity, as well as its value, would be doubled. 

But there is another wholly Germanic route by which German ideas 
may become English. This is the road which Carlyle has taken ; by this, 
religion and poetry in the two countries are correspondent ; by it the 
two nations are sisters. The sentiment of internal things (insight) is 
in the race, and this sentiment is a sort of philosophical divination. At 
need, the heart takes the place of the brain. The inspired, impassioned 
man penetrates into things ; perceives the cause by the shock which he 
feels from it ; he embraces aggregates by the lucidity and veloci'-,y of 
his creative imagination ; he discovers the unity of a group by the unity 
of the emotion which he receives from it. For, as soon as you create, 
you feel within yourself the force which acts in the objects of your 
thought; your sympathy reveals to you their sense and connection; 
intuition is a finished and living analysis ; poets and prophets, Shak- 
speare and Dante, St. Paul and Luther, have been systematic theorists, 
without wishing it, and their visions comprise general conceptions of 
man and the universe. Carlyle's mysticism is a power of the same kind. 
He translates into a poetic and religious style German philosophy. He 
speaks, like Fichte, of the divine idea of the world, the reality whicli 
lies at the bottom of every apparition. He speaks, like Goethe, of the 
spirit which eternally weaves the living robe of Divinity. He borrows 
their metaphors, only he takes them literally. He considers the god, 
which they consider as a form or a law, as a mysterious and sublime 
being. He conceives by exaltation, by painful reverie, by a confused 
sentiment of the interweaving of existences, that unity of nature which 
they arrive at by dint of reasonings and abstractions. Here is a last 
route, steep doubtless, and little frequented, for reaching the summits 

' In particular, Stanley and Jowett. 



458 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

from which German thought at first issued forth. Methodictl analysu 
added to the co-ordination of the positive sciences ; French criticism 
refined by hterary taste and worldly observation; English criticism 
supported by practical common sense and positive intuition ; lastly, 
in a niche apart, sympathetic and poetic imagination : these are the 
four routes by which the human mind is now proceeding to reconquer 
the sublime heights to which it believed itself carried, and which it 
has lost. These routes all conduct to the same summit, but by four 
ditferent distances. That by which Carlyle has advanced, being the 
lengtliiest, has led him to the strangest perspective. I will let him 
speak for himself; he will tell the reader what he has seen. 

§ 3. — Philosophy, Morality, and Criticism. 

• However it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract Science origiTjatiiig 
in the Head {Ver stand) alone, no Life -Philosophy {LebenspJiilosophie), such as this 
of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the Character {Oemuth), and 
equally speaks thereto, can attain its significance till the Charactor itself is known 
and seen. ' ^ 

Carlyle has related, under the name of Teufelsdroeckh, all the succession 
of emotions which lead to this Life-Philosophy. They are those of a 
modern Puritan; the same doubts, despairs, internal conflicts, exalta- 
tions, and lacerations, by which the old Puritans arrived at faith : it 
is their faith under other forms. With him, as with them, the spiritual 
and inner man is distinguished from the exterior and carnal ; extri- 
cates duty from the solicitations of plejtsure ; discovers God through 
the appearances of nature ; and, beyond the world and the instincts of 
sense, perceives a supernatural world and instinct. 

I. 

The specialty of Carlyle, as of every mystic, is to see a double mean- 
ing in everything. For him texts and objects are capable of two iliter- 
pretations : the one gross, open to all, serviceable for ordinary life ; the 
other sublime, open to a few, serviceable to a higher life, Carlyle says : 

• To the eye of vulgar Logic, what is man ? An omnivorous Biyed that wears 
Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spuit, and divine 
Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, s 
Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven. . , . Deep, 
hidden is he under that strange Garment ; amid. Sounds and Colours and Forms, 
as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over-shrouded : yet it is skywoven, and 
worthy of a God. ' * 

• For Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the mftnifsstation of Spirit : 
were it never so honourable, can it he more ? The thing Visible, nay, the thing 
Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a Garment, 
a Clothing of the higher, celestial, Invisible, "unimaginable, formless, dark with 
«xcess of bright ? " ' ^ 

' Sartor Resartus, bk. i. eh. xi. ; P'^ospective. 

2 Ibid. bk. i, eh. x. Pure Reason. ' Ibid. 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 455 

* All visible things are emblems ; what thou seestis not there on itiown account j 

strictly taken, is not there at all : Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent 
some Idea, and body it forth. ' ^ 

Language, poetry, arts, church, state, are only symbols : 

' In the Symbol proper, what we can caU a Symbol, there is ever, more or less 
distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite ; the 
Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, 
ittainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made 
bappy, made wi'etched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, 
recognised as such or not recognised : the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God ; 
nay, if thou wD* hare it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God ; is not all 
that he does symbolical ; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given force that 
is in him ? ' * 

Let us rise higher still, and regard Time and Space, those two abysses 
which it seems nothing could fill up or destroy, and over which hover 
our life and our universe. ' They are but forms of our thought. . . . 
There is neither Time nor Space ; they are but two grand fundamental^ 
world-enveloping appearances, Space and Time. These, as spun and 
woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for 
dwelling here, and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal 
canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor illusions, in this Phantasm 
Existence, weave and paint tliemselves.' ^ Our root is in eternity ; we 
seem to be born and to die, but actually, we are, 

* Know of a ti-uth that only the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable ; 
that the real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, is even 
now and for ever. . . . Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an 
Appearance ; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility ? '* * Heaven, 
it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost 
within him ; but are, in very deed. Ghosts ! These Limbs, whence had we them ; 
this stormy Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion ? They are dust and 
shadow ; a Shadow-system gathered round our ]\Ie ; wlierein, through some mo- 
ments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. 

* And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish 
debalings and recriminatings) ; and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; or 
aproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead, — tiU the scent of tlie 
morning air summons us to our still Home ; and di'eamy Night becomes awake &nd 

What is there, then, beneath all these vain appearances ? What is 
this motionless existence, whereof nature is but the * changing and 
living robe ? ' None knows ; if the heart divines it, the mind perceives 
it not. * Creation,' says one, ' lies before us like a glorious rainbow ; 
but the Sim that made it lies behind us, hidden from us.' We lia^« 

' Sirtor Resartus, bk. i. eh. xi. ; Prospective. 

3 Ibid. bk. iii. ch. iii. ; Symbols. 

3 Ibid. bk. iii. ch. viii. , Natural Supernaturaliam. 

* /t^i. * lUd. 



460 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK IF 

only the sentiment thereof, not the idea. We feel that this universe ia 
beautiful and terrible, but its essence will remain ever unnamed. We 
have only to fall on our knees before this veiled face ; wonder and 
adoration are our true attitude : 

' The man who cannot wonder, who does not hahitually wonder (and worship), 

were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole MdcaniqvA 
Celeste and HegeVs Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observa- 
tories, with their results, in his single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles behind 
which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may 
be usehd. 

* Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk through thy world by 
the sunshine of what thou callest Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call 
Attorney-Logic : and ** explain " all, " account" for all, or believe nothing of it. 
Kay, thou wilt attempt laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading 
domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under our feet and among our hands ; to 
whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall, 
— he shall be a delirious Mystic ; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt pro- 
trusively proffer thy Hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot 
through it. ' 1 

* We speak of the Volume of Nature ; and truly a Volume it is, — whose Author 
and Writer is God. To read it ! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know the 
Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, 
poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands ol 
Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the 
true Sacred-writing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a 
line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and Academies of Science, they 
strive bravely ; and from amid the thick -crowded, inextricably intertwisted hiero- 
glyphic writing, pick out, by dextrous combination, some Letters in the vulgar 
Cliaracter, and therefrom put together this and the other economic Recipe, of high 
avail in Practice.'* 

Do you believe, perhaps, 

• That Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or Jxuge, 
well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole secret will in 
bhis manner one day evolve itself? '^ . . . 

* And what is that Science, which the scientific head alone, were it screwed ofl^ 
Mui (like the Doctor's in the Arabian tale) set in a basin, to keep it alive, could 
prosecute without shadow of a heart, but one other of the mechanical and menial 
baf i^crafts, for which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble aa 
•organ ? I mean that Thought without Reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous. ' * 

Let the scales drop from your eyes, and look : 

* Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest provinc* 
thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God ; that through every star, 
through every grass -blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of • 
l^resent God stUl beams. ' * 

^ Sarior Bemrtus, bk. i. eh. x. ; P'ure Reason. 

2 Ibid. bk. ill. ch. viii. ; Natural Suiwrv.aturali&rii. 

3 lUd. * Ibid. bk. i. ch. x. : Pure Reason 

* Ibid. bk. iii. ch. viii. ; Natural Supernaturalw?^. 



CHAP IV. 1 PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLli.. 461 

* Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body ; and forth- 
issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission appeat.s. What Force and 
Fire is in each he expends : one grinding in the mill of Industry ; one, hunter- 
like, climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed in pieces 
en the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow :— and then the Heaven-sent is 
recalled ; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon e\en to Sense becomes a vanished 
Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Ar- 
dJ lery, does this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick- 
*\cceeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire, 
breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane ; haste stoi-mfully across the 
astonished Earth, then plunge again into the Inane. . . . But whence ? — 
Heaven, whither ? Sense knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through 
Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.'* 

a 

This vehement religious poetry, charged as it is with memories of 
Milton and Shakspeare, is but an English transcription of German ideas. 
There is a fixed rule for transposing, — that is, for converting into one 
another the ideas of a positivist, a pantheist, a spiritualist, a mystic, a 
poet, a head given to images, and a head given to formulas. We may 
mark all the steps which lead simple philosophical conception to its 
extreme and violent state. Take the world as science shows it ; it is 
a regular group, or, if you will, a series which has a law ; according 
to science, it is nothing more. As from the law we deduce the series, 
you may say that the law engenders it, and consider this law as a force. 
If you are an artist, you will seize in the aggregate the force, the series 
of effects, and the fine regular manner in which the force produces the 
series. To my mind, this sympathetic representation is of all the most 
exact and complete : knowledge is limited, as long as it does not 
arrive at this, and it is complete when it has arrived there. But 
beyond, there comn.ence the phantoms which the mind creates, and 
by which it dupes itself. If you have a little imagination, you will 
make of this force a distinct existence, situated beyond the reach of 
experience, spiritual, the principle and the substance of. concrete 
things. That is a metaphysical existftice. Add one degree to your 
imagination and enthusiasm, and you will say that this spirit, situated 
beyond time and space, is manifested through these, that it subsists 
ftnd animates everything, that we have in it motion, existence, and 
life. Push to the limits of vision and ecstasy, and you will declare 
that this principle is the only reality, that the rest is but appearance : 
tlienceforth you are deprived of all the means of defining it ; you can 
affirm nothing of it, but that it is the source of things, and that nothing 
can be affirmed of it ; you will consider it as a grand unfathomable 
abyss ; you seek, in order to come at it, a path other than that of deal 
ideas; you recognise sentiment, exaltation. If you have a gloomy 

' Sartor Resartus, bk. iij. eh, viii. ; Natural SivpernaturalUm. 



462 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

temperament, you seek i*, like the sectarians, gloomily, amongst prostra- 
tions and agonies. By this scale of transformations, the general idea 
becomes a poetic, then a philosophical, then a mystical existence ; and 
German metaphysics, concentrated and heated, is changed into EnglLih 
Puritanism. 

III. 
What distinguishes this mysticism from others is its practicability 
The Puritan is troubled not only about what he ought to believe, but 
about what he ought to do ; he craves an answer to his do\ibts, bui 
especially a rule for his conduct ; he is tormented by the notion of his 
Ignorance, but also by the horror of his vices ; he seeks God, but duty 
also. In his eyes the two are but one ; moral sense is the promoter 
and guide of philosophy : 

* Is there no God, then ; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the 
first Sabbath, at the outside of his Universe, and seeing it go ? Has the word 
Duty no meaning ; is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and Guide, but a 
false earthly Fantasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emanations from the gallows 
and from Dr. Graham's Celestial-Bed ? Happiness of an approving Conscience ! 
Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named Saint, feel that Tve. 
was the "chief of sinners;" and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit {wohlgemitth), 
spend much of his time in fiddling ? Foolish Word-monger and Motive-grinder, 
who in thy Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and 
wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of pleasui-e, — I tell thee, Nay ! ' * 

There is an instinct within us which says Nay. We discover within 
us something higher than love of happiness, — the love of sacrifice. 
That is the divine part of our souk We perceive in it and by it the 
God, who otherwise would continue ever unknown. By it we penetrate 
an unknown and sublime world. There is an extraordinary state of 
the soul, by which it leaves selfishness, renounces pleasure, cares no 
more for itself, adores pain, comprehends holiness : 

* Only thia I know. If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are 
we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. But 
what, ia these dull, unimaginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the 
diseases of'the Liver ! Not on Morality, but on Cookery, let us build our strong- 
liold : there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to th« 
Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his Elect ! ' ' 

This obscure beyond, which the senses cannot reach, the reason cannot 
define, which the imagination figures as a king and a person ; this ia 
holiness, this is the sublime. ' The hero is he who lives in the inward 
sphere of things, in the True, Divine, Eternal, which exists always, 
unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial ; his being is in that. . . . 
His life is a piece of ihe everlasting heart of nature itself.'* Virtue is 
a revelation, heroism is a light, conscience a philosophy ; and we slialj 

■ Sartor Resartus, bk. ii. ch. vii. ; The Ed&r lasting No. 
^ Ibid. 3 Lectures on heroes. 



CHAP IV.] PHILOSOPHI AND HISTORY- ^GARLYLE. 45*3 

express in the abstract this moral mysticism, by sayiag that God, fo2 
Carlyle, is a mystery, whose only name is The Ideal. 

IV. 

This faculty for perceiving the inner sense of things, and this dis- 
position to search out the moral sense of things, have produced in liim 
all his doctrines, and first his Christianity. This Christianity is very 
free : Carlyle takes religion in the German manner, after a symbolical 
lashion. This is why he is called a Pantheist, which in plain language 
means a madman or a rogue. In England, too, he is exorcised. His 
friend Sterling sent him long dissertations to bring him back to a per- 
sonal God. Every moment he wounds to the quick the theologians, 
who make the prime cause into an architect or an administrator. He 
shocks them still more when he touches upon dogma ; he considers 
Christianity as a myth, of which the essence is the Worship of Sorrow : 

*Knowest thou that " Worship of sorrow?" The Temple thereof, founded 
Bome eighteen centuries ago, now lies in i-uins, overgi-own with jungle, the habita- 
tion of doleful creatures : nevertheless, venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched 
out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar stiU there, and its sacred Lamp 
perennially burning. ' 1 

But its guardians know it no more. A frippery of conventional adorn- 
ments hides it from the eyes of men. The Protestant Church in the 
nineteenth century, like the Catholic Church in the sixteenth, needs 
a reformation. We want a new Luther : 

* For if Government is, so to speak, the outward skin of the Body Politic, 
holding the whole together and protecting it ; and if all your Craft-Guilds and 
Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, themusculai 
and osseous Tissues (lying under such skin), whereby Society stands and works ; 
— then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and Nervous Tissue which ministers Life 
and warm Circulation to the whole . . . 

* Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church Clothes have gone 
sorrowfully out-at-elbows : nay, far worse, many of them have become mere 
hollow Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells ; 
but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade ; 
tnd tlu; mask stiU glares on you wdth its glass-eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life, 
--so lie generation and half after Religion has quite withdi^awn from it, and in 
unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, wherewith to reappear and 
bless as, or our sons or gi'andsons. ' * 

Christianity once reduced to the sentiment of abnegation, other 
religions resume, in consequence, dignity and importance. They are, like 
Christianity, forms of universal religion. * They have all had a truth 
in them, or men would net have taken them up.' ^ They are no quack'i 

* Sfirtor Resartus, bk. ii. eh ix. ; The Everlasting Tea. 
Ibid. bk. ill. eh. ii. ; Church Clothes. 

• Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. 



464 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK \ 

imposture or poet's dream. They are an existence more or less troubled 
by the mystery, august and infinite, which is at the bottom o^ the uni- 
verse : 

* Canopus shining down over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that 
wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would 
pierce into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through 
the solitar}'' waste there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech 
for any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing-out on him from 
the great deep Eternity ; revealing the inner Splendour to him. ' ^ 

' Grand Lamaism,* Popery itself, interpret after their fashion the senti- 
ment of the divine ; therefore Popery itself is to be respected. * While 
a pious life remains capable of being led by it, . . . let it last as long 
as it can.' * What matters if they call it idolatry ? 

* Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a symbol of God. 
... Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by eidola, or things seen ? 
. . . The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Repre- 
sentation of Divine things, and worships thereby. ... All creeds, liturgies, reli- 
gious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, 
things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols : — we may 
say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous.' ' 

The only detestable idolatry is that from which the sentiment has de- 
parted, which consists only in learned ceremonies, in mechanical repeti- 
tion of prayers, in decent profession of formulas not understood. The 
deep veneration of a monk of the twelfth century, prostrated before the 
relics of St. Edmund, was worth more than the conventional piety and 
cold philosophical religion of a Protestant of to-day. Whatever the 
worship, it is the sentiment which gives it its whole value. And this 
sentiment is that of morality : 

* The one end, essence, and use of all religion past, present, and to come, was 
this only : To keep that same Moral Conscience or Inner Light of ours alive and 
shining. . . . All religion was here to remind us, better or worse, of what we 
already know better or worse, of the quite infinite difference there is between a Good 
man and a Bad ; to bid us love infinitely the one, abhor and avoid infinitely the 
other,— strive infinitely to be the one, and not to be the other. ** All religion issuea 
in due Practical Hero-worship." ' * 

' All true Work is religion ; and whatsoever religion is not Work may go and 
d^iTell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will; 
with me it shall have no harbour. ' * 

With y{fU it may not ; but it has elsewhere. We touch here the Eng- 
lish and narrow feature of this German and broad conception. Tliere 
are many religions which are not moral ; there are more still which are 
Bot practical. Carlyle would reduce the heart of man to the English 

* Lectures on Heroes, i. ; T7ie Hero as Divinity. 

^ Ibid. iv. ; The Hero as Priest. ^ Ibid. 

* Past and Present, bk. iii. eh. xv. ; Mor 'ison Again. 
' Ibid. bk. iii. ch. xii. : Heward. 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 465 

sentiment of duty, and liis imagination to the English sentiment of 
respect. The half of human poetry escapes his grasp. For if a part 
of ourselves raises us to abnegation and virtue, another part leads us to 
enjoyment and pleasure. Man is pagan as well as Christian ; nature 
has two faces : several races, India, Greece, Italy, have only compre- 
hended the first, and have had for religions merely the adoiaticn ol 
overflowing force and the ecstasy of a grand imagination ; or, again, the 
admiration of harmonious form, with the culture of pleasure, beauty, 
and happiness. 



His criticism of literary works is of the same character and violence, 
and has the same scope and the same limits, the same principle and the 
same conclusions, as his criticism of religious works. Carlyle has intro- 
duced the great ideas of Hegel and Goethe, and has confined them under 
the narrow discipline of Puritan sentiment.^ He considers the poet, the 
writer, the artist, as an interpreter of ' the Divine Idea of the World, that 
which lies at the bottom of Appearance;' as a revealer of the infinite, as 
representing his century, his nation, his age : we recognise here all the 
German formulas. They signify that the artist detects and expresses 
better than any one, the salient and durable features of the world which 
surrounds him, so that we might draw from his work a theory of man 
and of nature, together with a picture of his race and of his time. This 
discovery has reneAved criticism. Carlyle owes to it his finest views, hia 
lessons on Shakspeare and Dante, his studies on Goethe, Johnson, Burns, 
and Rousseau. Thus, by a natural process, he becomes the herald of 
German literature ; he makes himself the apostle of Goethe ; he has 
praised him with a neophyte's fervour, to the extent of lacking on this 
subject skill and perspicacity ; he calls' him a Hero, presents his life as an 
example to all the men of our century ; he will not see his paganism, 
manifest as it is, and so repellent to a Puritan, Through the same 
causes, he has made of Jean-Paul, the affected clown, the extravagant 
humorist, * a giant,' a sort of prophet ; he has heaped eulogy on Novalis 
and the mystics ; he has set the democrat Burns above Byron ; he has 
exalted Johnson, that honest pedant, the most grotesque of literary 
behemoths. His principle is, that in a work of the mind, form is little, 
the basis is alone important. As soon as a man has a profound senti- 
ment, a strong conviction, his book is beautiful. A writing, be it what it 
will, only manifests the soul : if this soul is serious, if it is intimately 
and habitually shaken by the grave thoughts which ought to preoccupy 
a soul ; if it loves whai is good, is devoted, endeavours with its whole 
effort, without a lingering thought of self-interest or self-love, to pub- 
lish the truth which strikes it, it has reached its goal. We have nothing 
to do with the talent ; we do not need to be pleased by beautiful forms j 

* Lectures on Heroes : Miscellanies, pmisuit. 
V(>[.. II. 2 n 



406 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ? 

our sole object is to find ourselves face to face with the sublime ; the 
whole destiny of man is to perceive heroism ; poetry and art have no other 
employment or merit. You see how far and with what excess Carlylf 
possesses the Germanic sentiment, why he loves the mystics, humorists 
prophets, illiterate writers, and men of action, spontaneous poets, all whe 
violate regular beauty through ignorance, brutality, folly, or deliberately. 
He goes so far as to excuse the rhetoric of Johnson, because Jolvnsou 
was loyal and sincere ; he does not distinguish in him the literary man 
from the practical : he ceases to see the classic declaimer, a strange 
compound of Scaliger, Boileau, and La Harpe, majestically decked out in 
the Ciceronian gown, to see only the religious man of convictions. Such 
a habit shuts the eyes to one half of things. Carlyle speaks with scorn- 
ful indifference^ of modern dilettantism, seems to despise painters, ad- 
mits no sensible beauty. Wholly on the side of the writers, he neglects 
the artists ; for the source of arts is the sentiment of form ; and the 
greatest artists, the Italians, the Greeks, did not know, like their priests 
and poets, any beauty beyond that of voluptuousness and force. Thence 
also it comes that he has no taste for French literature. The exact 
order, the fine proportions, the perpetual regard for the agreeable and 
proper, the harmonious structure of clear and consecutive ideas, tlie 
delicate picture of society, the perfection of style, — nothing which 
moves us, has attraction for him. His mode of comprehending life is 
too far removed from ours. In vain he tries to understand Voltaire ,* 
aU he can do is to slander him : 

* "We find no heroism of character in him, from first to last ; nay, there is not, 
that we know of, one great thought in all his six-and-thirty quartos. ... He sees 
but a little way into Nature ; the mighty All, in its beauty and infinite mysterious 
grandeur, humbling the small me into nothingi^ess, has never even for momenta 
been revealed to him ; only this and that other atom of it, and the diirerencos and 
discrepancies of these two, has he looked into and noted down. His theory of the 
world, his picture of man and man's life is little ; for a poet and philosopher, even 
pitiful. " The Divine idea, that which lies at the bottom of appearance," waa 
never more invisible to any man. He reads history not with the eyes of a devout 
seer, or even of a critic, but through a pair of mere anticathoHc spectacles. It is 
not a mighty drama enacted on the theatre of Infinitude, with suns for lamps and 
Eternity as a background, . . . but a poor wearisome debating-club dispute, spun 
tla-ough ten centuries, between the EncydopMie and the Sorhonne, . . . God'a 
Universe is a larger patrimony of St. Peter, from which it were well and phasant 
ty hunt out the Pope. . . . The still higher praise of having had a right or noble 
aim cannot be conceded him without many limitations, and may, plausibly 
enough, be altogether denied. . . . The force necessary for him was nowise a great 
and noble one ; but small, in some respects a mean one, to be nimbly and season- 
ably put into use. The Ephesian temple, which it had employed many wise heads 
and strong arms for a lifetime to build, could be wwbuilt by one madman, in a 
single hour. * * 
These are big words; we will not employ the like. I will simply 

Life of Sterling. ^ Critical and Miscellaneous Eswiys, 4 vols. ; ii. Voltaire 



CHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLE. 461 

say, that if a rmn were to judge Carlyle, as a Frenchman, as he ji iges 
Voltaire as an Englishman, he would draw a different picture o/ 
Carlyle from that which I am trying here to draw. 

VI. 
This trade of calumny was in vogue fifty years ago ; in fifty mor« 
it will probably have altogether ceased. The French are beginning to 
comprehend the gravity of the Puritans; perhaps the English will end 
by comprehending the gaiety of Voltaire : the first are labouring to 
appreciate Shakspeare ; the second will doubtless attempt to appreciate 
Racine. Goethe, the master of all modern minds, knew well how to 
appreciate both.^ The critic must add to his natural and national soul 
five or six artificial and acquired souls, and his flexible sympathy must 
introduce him to extinct or foreign sentiments. The best fruit of criticism 
is to detach ourselves from ourselves, to constrain us to make allowance 
for the surroundings in which we live, to teach us to distinguish objects 
tliemselves from the transient appearances, with which our character 
and our age never fail to clothe them. Each one regards them through 
glasses of diverse focus and hue, and no one can reach the truth save 
by taking into account the form and tint which the composition of hia 
glasses imposes on the objects which he sees. Hitherto we have 
been wrangling and pummelling one another, — this man declaring that 
things are green, another that they are yellow; others, again, that 
they are red ; each accusing his neighbour of seeing wrong, and being 
disingenuous. Now, at last, we are learning moral optics; we are 
finding that the colour is not in the objects, but in ourselves ; we 
pardon our neighbours for seeing differently from us ; we recognise 
tliat they may see red what to us appears blue, green what to us 
appears yellow ; we can even define the kind of glasses which produces 
yellow, and the kind which produces green, divine their effects from 
their nature, predict the tint under which the object we are about to 
present to them will appear, construct beforehand the system of every 
mind, and perhaps one day free ourselves /' :m every system. * As a 
poet,' said Goethe, * I am a polytheist ; as a naturalist, a pantheist ; as 
a moral man, a deist ; and in order to express my mind, I need all these 
forms.' In fact, all these glasses are serviceable, for they all show us 
some new aspect of things. The important point is to have not one, but 
several, to employ each at the suitable moment, not to take into account 
the particular colour of these glasses, but to know that behind these mil- 
lion moving poetical tints, optics affirm only law-abiding transformations. 

§ 4. — Conception of Histort. 

I. 

• ITniversal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this worll, 
b at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were th« 

' See this double praise in Wllhelm Mcister. 



4^8 MODERN AUTHORS.; [BOOK V, 

leaders of men, these great ones ; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sensfl 
creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain ; all 
things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outei 
material result, the practical realisation and embodiment of Thoughts that d\v<lt 
in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's historic, i'. 
may justly be considered, were the history of these.' * 

Whatever they be, poets, reformers, writers, men of action, reveali/Sj 
be gives them all a mystical character: 

* Such a man is what we call an original man ; he comes to us at first-hand. 
A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. . . . Direct 
from the Inner Fact of things ;— he lives, and has to live, in daily communion 
with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him ; he is blind, homeless, miserable, 
following hearsays ; it glares-in upon him. ... It is from the heart of the world 
that he comes ; he is portion of the primal reality of things. ' '^ 

In vain the ignorance of his age and his own imperfections mar the 
purity of bis original vision ; be ever attains some immutable and life- 
giving truth ; for this truth he is listened to, and by this truth he is 
powerful. That which be has discovered is immortal and efficacious : 

* The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene 
owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what ol 
Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very gi-eat exactness added to 
ths Eternities ; remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things.' ^ 

* No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells 
in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence 
in man's life. Religion I find stand upon it. . . . What therefore is loyalty 
proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero-worship, submissiA e 
admiration for the truly great ? Society is founded on Hero-worship.' * 

This feeling is the very bottom of man. It exists even in this levelling 
and destructive age : 

* I seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the everlasting adamant 
lower than which the confused wi'eck of revolutionary things cannot fall. ' ^ 

II. 

We have here a German theory, but transformed, made precise, 
thickened after the English manner. The Germans said that eveiy 
nation, period, civilisation, had its idea ; that is its chief feature, from 
which the rest were derived ; so that philosophy, religion, arts, and 
morals, all the elements of thought and action, could be deduced from 
some original and fundamental quality, from which all proceeded and in 
which all ended. Where Hegel proposed an idea, Carlyle proposes a 
heroic sentiment. It is more palpable and morah To complete big 
escape from the vague, be considers this sentiment in a hero. He musi 

* Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Bimnity. 

* Ibid. ii. ; The Hero as Prophet, 

8 CromweU's Letters and Speeches, iii. part x. ; Death of the Protector. 

* Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Divinity. ® Md. 



CHAP. IV.l PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARITLE. 469 

give to abstractions a body and a soul ; he is not at^ease m pure con* 

ceptions, and wishes to touch a real being. 

But this being, as he conceives it, is an abstract of the rest. For, 
according to him, the hero contains and represents the civilisation in 
which he is comprised ; he has discovered, proclaimed or practised an 
original conception, and in this his age has followed him. The know 
ledge of a heroic sentiment thus gives us a knowledge of a whole age. 
By this method Carlyle has emerged beyond biography. He has redis- 
covered the grand views of his masters. He has felt, like them, that a 
civilisation, vast and dispersed as it is over time and space, forms an 
indivisible whole. He has combined in a system of hero-worship the 
scattered fragments which Hegel united by a law. He has derived 
from a common sentiment the events v/hich the Germans derived from 
a common definition. He has comprehended the deep and distant con- 
nection of things, such as bind a great man to his time, such as connect 
the works of accomplished thought with the stutterings of infant 
thought, such as link the wise inventions of modern constitutions to 
the disorderly furies of primitive barbarism : 

* Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially 
brave ; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men and things ; — pro* 
genitors of our own Blakes and Nelsons. . . . Hrolf or Rollo, Duke of Normandy, 
the wild Sea-king, has a share in governing England at this hour. ' ^ 

' No wild Saint Dominies and Thebaid Eremites, there had been no melodioug 
Dante ; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Waltei 
Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Sliakspeare to speak. Nay, the finished 
Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfec- 
tion and is finished ; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers 
needed.'* 

His great poetic or practical works only publish or apply this dominant 
idea ; the historian makes use of it, to rediscover the primitive senti- 
men4 which engenders them, and to form the aggregate conception 
which unites them. 

III. 

Hence a new fashion of writing history. Since the heroic sentiment 
rfs the cause of the other sentiments, it is to this the historian must 
devote himself. Since it is the source of civilisation, the mover of revolu- 
tions, the master and regenerator of human life, it is in this that he must 
f.bserve civilisation, revolutions, and human life. Since it is the spring 
of every movement, it is by this that we shall understand every move- 
ment. Let the metaphysicians draw up deductions and formulas, or 
the politicians expound situations and constitutions. Man is not an 
inert being, moulded by n. constitution, nor a lifeless being expressed by 
formula ; he is an active and living soul, capable of acting, discover - 
ing, creating, devoting himself, and before all, of daring; genuine 

' Lectures on Heroes, i. ; The Hero as Dirir4iy. 
■ Ibid. iv. • TJie Hero as Priest. 



470 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ^ 

hi^ory is an epic of heroism. This iiea is, in my opinion, as i. were, 
a brilliant light. For men have not done great things without great 
emotions. The first and sovereign motive of an extraordinary re- 
^ludon is an extraordinary sentiment. Then we see appear and 
swell a lofty and all-powerful passion, which has burst the old dykes, 
and hurled the current of things into a new bed. All starts from this, 
and it is this which we must observe. Leave metaphysical formulas 
and political considerations, and regard the inner state of every mind . 
quit the bare narrative, forget abstract explanations, and study im- 
passioned souls. A revolution is only the birth of a great sentimentx 
What is this sentiment, how is it bound to others, what is its degree, 
source, effect, how does it transform the imagination, understanding, 
common inclinations ; what passions feed it, what proportion of folly 
and reason does it embrace — these are the main questions. If you 
wish to represent to me the history of Buddhism, you must show me 
the calm despair of the ascetics who, deadened by the contemplation 
of the infinite void, and by the expectation of final annihilation, attain 
in their monotonous quietude the sentiment of universal fraternity. If 
you wish to represent to me the history of Christianity, you must show 
me the soul of a Saint John or Saint Paul, the sudden renewal of the 
conscience, the faith in invisible things, the transformation of a soul 
penetrated by the presence of a paternal God, the irruption of tender- 
ness, generosity, abnegation, trust, and hope, which rescued the 
wretches oppressed under the Roman tyranny and decline. To explain 
a revolution, is to write a partial psychology ; the analysis of critics 
and the divination of artists are the only instruments which can attain 
to it : if we would have it precise and profound, we must ask it of 
those who, through their profession or their genius, possess a know- 
ledge of the soul — Shakspeare, Saint-Simon, Balzac, Stendhal. This is 
why we may occasionally ask it of Carlyle. And there is a history 
which we may ask of him in preference to all others, that of the revolu- 
tion which had conscience for its source, which set God in the councils 
of the state, which imposed strict duty, which provoked severe heroism. 
1 he best historian of Puritanism is a Puritan. 

IV. 

This history of Cromwell, Carlyle's masterpiece, is but a coilection 
ol letters and speeches, commented on and united by a continuous 
narrative. The impression which they leave is extraordinary. Grave 
constitutional histories hang heavy after this compilation. The author 
wished to make us comprehend a soul, the soul of Cromwell, the greatest 
Df the Puritans, theii chief, their abstract, their hero, and their model. 
His narrative resembles that of an eye-witness. A covenanter who should 
have collected letters, scraps of newspapers, and had daily added reflec- 
tions, interpretations, notes, and anecdotes, might have written just such 
B book. At last we are face to face v/ith Cromwell. We have his worda, 



[CHAP. IV. \ PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CAUL YLE. 471 

we can hear his tone of voice ; we seize, around any object, the circiim< 
stances which have produced it ; we see him in his tent, in council, with 
the proper background, with his face and costume: every detail, the most 
rninute, is here. And the sincerity is as great as the sympathy ; the 
biographer confesses his ignorance, the lack of documents, the uncer- 
taiiity ; he is perfectly loyal, though a poet and a sectarian. With him 
wo simultaneously restrain and push our conjectures ; and we feel at 
every step, through our affirmations and our reservations, that we are 
firmly planting our feet upon the truth. Would that all history were 
like this, a selection of texts provided with a commentary I I wouJ.d 
exchange for such a history all the regular arguments, all the beautiful 
colourless narrations, of Robertson and Hume. I can verify, whilst 
reading this, the judgment of the author ; I no more think after him, 
but for myself; the historian does not obtrude himself between me and 
his subject. I see a fact, and not; the account of a fact ; the oratorical 
and personal envelope, with which the narrative covers the truth, dis- 
appears ; I can touch the truth itself. And this Cromwell, with his 
Puritans, comes forth from the test, reformed and renewed. We 
divined pretty well already that he was not a mere man of ambition, a 
hypociite, but we took him for a fanatic and hateful wrangler. We 
considered these Puritans as gloomy madmen, shallow brains, and full 
of scruples. Let us quit our French and modern ideas, and enter intc 
these souls : we shall find there something else than hypochondria, 
namely, a grand sentiment — am I a just man? And if God, who 
is perfect justice, were to judge me at this moment, what sentence 
would he pass upon me ? — Such is the original idea of the Puritans, 
and through them came the Riivolution in England. The feeling of the 
difference there is betwec^n good and evil, had filled for them all time 
and space, and had become incarnate, and expressed for them, by such 
words as Heaven and Hell. They were struck by the idea of duty. 
They examined themselves by this light, without pity or shrinking; 
they conceivt?d the suljlime model of infallible and complete virtue ; 
they were imbued therewith ; they drowned in this absorbing thought 
all worldly prejudices and all inclinations of the senses; they conc'^jived a 
horror even of imperceptible faults, which an honest man will excuss 
in himself; they exacted from themselves absolute and continuous per- 
fection, and they entered into life with a fixed resolve to suffer and 
do all, rather than deviate one step. We laugh at a revolution about 
surplices and chasubles ; there was a sentiment of the divine underneath 
all these disputes of vestments. These poor folk, shopkeepers and 
farmers, believed, with all their heart, in a sublime and terrible God, 
and the manner how to worship Him was not a trifling thing for them : 

* Suppose now it were some matter of vital concernment, some transcendent 
matter (as Divine worship is), about which your whole soul, struck dumb with iti 
excess of feeling, knew not how to form itself into utterance at all, and preferre.-l 
foi-mlt'Sf silence to any utterance there possible,— what should we say of a mau 



472 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

combg forward to represent or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer-mnnv 
mery ? Such a man, — let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! You have lost 
your only sou ; are mute, struck down, without even tears : an importunate man 
importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games for him in the manner of thi 
Greeks ! ' * 

This has caused the Revolution, and not the Writ of Shipmoney, or an^ 
other political vexation. 

* You may take my purse, . . . but the Self is mine and God my Maker's ' ' 
And the same sentiment which made them rebels, made them con 
querors. Men could not understand how discipline could surTive in ar 
army in which an inspired corporal would reproach a lukewaim gene- 
ral. They thought it strange that generals, who sought the Lord wi^h 
tears, had learned administration and strategy in the Bible. They 
wondered that madmen could be men of business. The truth is, thai 
they were not madmen, but men of business. The whole difference 
between them and practical men whom we know, is that they had a 
conscience ; this conscience was their flame ; mysticism and dreams 
were but the smoke. They sought the true, the just ; and their long 
prayers, their nasal preachings, their Bible criticisms, their tears, their 
anguish, only mark the sincerity and ardour with which they applied 
themselves to the search. They read their duty in themselves ; the 
Bible only aided them. At need they did violence to it, when they 
wished to verify by texts the suggestions of their own hearts. It was 
this sentiment of duty which united, inspired, and sustained them, 
which made their discipline, courage, and boldness ; which raised to 
ancient heroism Hutchinson, Milton, and Cromwell ; which instigated 
all decisive deeds, grand resolves, marvellous successes, the decla- 
ration of war, the trial of the king, the purge of Parliament, tlie 
humiliation of Europe, the protection of Protestantism, the sway of the 
seas. These men are the true heroes of England ; they display, in high 
relief, the original characteristics and noblest features of England — 
practical piety, the rule of conscience, manly resolution, indomitable 
energy. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts 
and the relaxation of modern manners, by the exercise cS duty, by 
the practice of justice, by obstinate foil, by vindication of right, by 
resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression 
of vice. They founded Scotland, they founded the United States : at thij 
day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonising the 
world. Carlyle is so much their brother, that he excuses or admires 
their excesses — the execution of the king, the mutilation of Parliament, 
their intolerance, inquisition, the despotism of Cromwell, the theocracy 
of Knox. He sets them before us as models, and judges both past and 
present by them alone. 

V. 
Hence he saw nothing but evil in the French Revolution. H« 



* IieHures on ffefoes, vi. ; 'I'he Hero as King. * Ihid. 



UHAP. IV.] PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CAELYLE. 4,73 

judges it as unjustly as he judges Voltaire, and for the same reasons. 
He understands our manner of acting no better than our manner of 
thinking. He looks for Puritan sentiment ; and, as he does not find it, 
he condemns us. The idea of duty, the religious spirit, self-govern- 
ment, the authority of an austere conscience, can alone, in his opinion, 
reform a corrupt society ; and none of all these are to be met with in 
Fri nch society. The philosophy which has produced and guided the 
Revolution was simply destructive, proclaiming no other gospel but, 
* that a lie cannot be believed ! Philosophy knows only this: Her other 
relief is mainly that in spiritual, supra-sensual matters, no belief is 
possible.' The theory of the Rights of Man^ borrowed from Rousseau, 
is only a logical game, a pedantry almost as opportune as a ' Theory 
of Irregular Verbs.' The manners in vogue were the epicurism of 
Faublas. The morality in vogue was the promise of universal happv • 
ness. Incredulity, hollow rant, sensuaHty, were the mainsprings of tliis 
reformation. Men let loose their instincts and overturned the barriers. 
They replaced corrupt authority by unchecked anarchy. In what could 
a jacquerie of brutalised peasants, impelled by atheistical arguments, end? 

* For ourselves, we, answer that French Revolution means here the open vio- 
lent Piebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt, worn-out 
Authority. ^ . . . 

* So tliousandfold complex a Society ready to burst up from its infinite depths ; 
and these men its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves — other life- 
rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques ! To the wisest of them, what we 
Liust call the wisest, man is properly an accident under the sky. Man is without 
duty round him, except it be to make the Constitution. He is without Heaven 
above him, or Hell beneath him ; he has no God in tlie world. 

* While hollow languor and vacuity is the lot of the upper, and want and stag- 
nation of the lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing ia 
certain ? . . . What will remain ? The five unaatiated senses will remain, the 
sixth insatiable sense (of vanity) ; the whole demoniac nature of man will remain. 

' Man is not what we call a happy animal ; his appetite for sweet victual is too 
enormous. . . . (He cannot subsist) except by girding himself together for con- 
tinual endeavour and endurance.'^ 

But set the good beside the evil ; put down virtues beside vices I These 
sceptics believed in demonstrated truth, and would have her alone 
(or mistress. These logicians founded society only on justice, and 
risked their lives rather than renounce an established theorem. These 
epicureans embraced in their sympathies entire humanity. These furious 
men, these workmen, these hungry, threadbare peasants, fought in the 
van for humanitarian interests and abstract principles. Generosity and 
enthusiasm abounded in France, as well as in England ; acknowledge 
them under a form which is not TCnglish. These men were devoted to 
abstract truth, as the Puritan to divine truth ; they followed philosophy, 
&s the Puritans followed religion; they had for their aim universal sal- 

' The French Revolution, i. bk. vi. ch. i. ; Mahe the CorMitution. ' IMd. > 



47'i MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

vation, as the Puritans had individual salvation. They fought against 
evil in society, as the Puritans fought it in the soul. They were gene- 
rous, as the Puritans were virtuous. They had, like them, a heroism, 
but sympathetic, sociable, ready to proselytise, which reformed Europe, 
whilst the English one only served England. 

VI. 

This extravagant Puritanism, which revolted Carlyle against the 
French Revolution, revolts him against modern' England : 

* We have forgotten God ; — in the most modern dialect and very truth of th« 
matter, we have taken up the Fact of this Universe as it is not. We have quietly 
closed our eyes to the eternal Substance of things, and opened them only to the 
Shows and Shams of things. We quietly believe this Universe to be intrinsically 
a great unintelligible PEniiAPS ; extrinsical ly, clear enough, it is a great, most 
extensive Cattlelbld and Workhouse, with most extensive Kitchen-ranges, Diniiig- 
tables, — whereat he is wise who can find a place ! All the Truth of this Universe 
is uncertain ; only the profit and loss of it, the pudding and praise of it, are and 
remain very visible to the practical man. 

* There is no longer any God for us ! God's Laws are become a Greatest-Happi- 
ness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency ; the Heavens overarch us only as an 
Astronomical Time-keeper ; a butt for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science at, to 
shoot sentimentalities at : — in our and old Jonson's dialect, man has lost the soul 
out of him ; and now, after the due period, — begins to find the want of it ! This is 
verily the plague-spot ; centre of the universal Social Gangrene, threatening all 
modern things with frightful death. To him that will consider it, here is the 
stem, with its roots and taproot, with its world-wide upas-boughs and accursed 
poison-exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. 
You touch the focal-centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, 
when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion ; there is no God ; man has 
lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly : in killing Kings, in 
passing Reform bills, in French Revolutions, Manchester Insurrections, is found 
no remedy. The foul elepliantine leprosy, alleviated for an hour, reax)pears in new 
force and desperateness next hour.'' 

Since the return of the Stuarts, we are utilitarians or sceptics. Wu 
believe only in observation, statistics, gross and concrete truths ; or 
else we doubt, half believe, on hearsay, with reserve. We have no 
moral convictions, and we have only floating convictions. We have 
lost the mainspring of action ; we no longer set duty in the midst of our 
rt'soh';, as the sole and undisturbed foundation of life ; we are caught 
by all kinds of little experimental and positive receipts, and we amuse 
ourselves with all kinds of pretty pleasures, well chosen and arranged. 
We are egotists or dilettanti. We no longer look on life as an august 
temple, but as a machine for solid profits, or as a hall for refined 
amusements. We have our rich, our working-classes, our bankers, who 
preach the gospel of gold ; we have gentlemen, dandies, lords, who preach 
the gospel of manners. We overwork ourselves to heap up gu'iieas, 



* Past and Present, bk. iii. ch. i. ; Phenomdia. 



CHAP. IV .1 PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY— CARLYLK 47| 

or else we make ourselves insipid to attain an elegant dignity. Oiii 
hell is no longer, as under Cromwell, the dread of being found guiltj 
before the just Judge, but the dread of making a bad speculation, oi 
of transgressing- etiquette. We have for our aiistocracy greedy shop- 
keepers, who reduce life to a calculation of profits and prices; and 1<1 o 
amateurs, whose great business is to preserve the game on their est^ites. 
We are no longer governed. Our government has no other ambition 
than to preserve the public ppace, and to j^et in the tnxes. Our con- 
ptitutiou lays it down as a principle, that, in order to discover the true 
and the good, we have only to make two million imbeciles vote. Our 
Parliament is a great word-mill, where plotters out-bawl each other for 
the sake of making a noise.* 

Under this thin cloak of conventionalities and phrases, ominously 
growls the irresistible democracy. England perishes if she ever ceases 
to be able to sell a yard of cotton at a farthing less than others. At 
the least check in the manufactures, 1,500,000 v%'orkmen,^ without 
work, live upon public charity. The formidable masses, given up to 
the hazards of industry, iirged by lust, impelled by hunger, oscillates 
between the fragile cracking barriers ; we are nearing the final 
breaking-up, which will be open anarchy, and the dem/icracy will heave 
amidst the ruins, until the sentiment of the divine and of duty has 
rallied them around the worship of heroism ; until it has discovered the 
means of calling to power the most virtuous and the most capable ; * 
until it has given its guidance into their hands, instead of making them 
subject to its caprices ; until it has recognised and reverenced its 
Luther and its Cromwell, its priest and its king. 

* * It is his effort and desire to teach this and the other thinking British man 
that said finale, the advent namely of actual open Anarchy, cannot be distant, 
now when virtual disguised Anarchy, long-continued, and waxing daily, has got 
to such a height ; and that the one method of staviup; off the fatal consummation, 
and steering towards the Continents of the Future, lies not in the direction of 
reforming Parliament, hut of what he calls refonning Downing Street ; a thing 
infinitely urgent to he begun, and to be strenuously carried on. To find a Parlia- 
ment more and more the express image of the People, could, unless the People 
chanced to be wise as well as miserable, give him no satisfaction. Not tliis at all ; 
but to find some sort of King, made in the image of God, who could a little achieve 
for the People, if not their spoken wishes, yet their dumb wants, and what they 

would at last find to have been their instinctive will, — which is a far different 

matter usually, in this babbling world of ours.' — Parliaments, in Latler-Day 

Pamphlets, 

'A king or leader, then, in all bodies of men, there must be; be^ tiieir work 

what it may, there is one man here who by character, faculty, })osition. is fittest 

of all to do It. 

• He who is to be iny ruler, whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen 
for me in Heaven. Neither, except in such obedience to the Heaven -chosen, ii 
f'-eedom so much as conceivable.' 

' Ofiicia RvDort. 1842. ^ Latter-Day PampJilets; Parliamenzs^ 



ITO MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ? 



VII. 

Now-a-days, doubtless, in the whole civilised world, democracr i» 
swelling or overflowing, and all the channels in which it ilows, are fra- 
gile or temporary. But it is a strange offer to present for its issue th<] 
fanaticism and tyranny of the Puritans. The society and spirit which 
Carlyle proposes, as models for human nature, lasted but an hour, and 
could not last longer. The asceticism of the Republic produced the 
debauchery of the Restoration ; the Harrisons brought the Rochester s, 
the Bunyans raised the Hobbes' ; and the sectarians, in instituting the 
despotism of enthusiasm, established by reaction the authority of the 
positive mind and the worship of gross pleasure. Exaltation is not 
stable, and it cannot be exacted from man, without injustice and 
danger. The sympathetic generosity of the French Revolution ended 
in the cynicism of the Directory and the slaughters of the Empire. 
The chivalric and poetic piety of the great Spanish monarchy emptied 
Spain of men and of thoughts. The primacy of genius, taste, and in- 
tellect in Italy, reduced her at the end of a century to voluptuous sloth 
and political slavery. * What makes the angel makes the beast ; ' and 
perfect heroism, like all excesses, ends in stupor. Human nature has 
its explosions, but with intervals : mysticism is serviceable but when 
it is short. Violent circumstances produce extreme conditions ; great 
evils are necessary in order to raise great men, and you are obliged to 
look for shipwrecks when you wish to behold rescuers. If enthusiasm 
is beautiful, its results and its origins are sad ; it is but a crisis, and 
a healthy state is better. In this respect Carlyle himself may serve 
for a proof There is perhaps less genius in Macaulay than in Carlyle ; 
but when we have fed for some time on this exaggerated and demoniac 
style, this marvellous and sickly philosophy, this contorted and pro- 
p.hetic history, these sinister and furious politics, We gladly return to 
the continuous eloquence, to the vigorous reasoning, to the mc derate 
prognostications, to the demonstrated theories, of the generous and solid 

mind which Europe has just lost, wUo brought honour to England, asi 

wh< ee place none can fill. 



CHAP V.I PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 477 



CHAPTER V. 

Philosophy.— Stuart Mill. 

I. Philosophy in England — Organization of positive science — ^Lji^k of general 
ideas. 

fl. Why metaphysics are wanting — Anthority of Religion. 
il tl Indications and splendour of free thought — New exegesis — Stuart J\Iill — • 
His works — His order of mind — To what school of philosophers he belongs 
— Value of higher speculation in human civilisation. 

§ 1. — Exposition of Mill's Philosophy. 
I. Object of logic — ^Wherein it is distinguished from psychology and meta- 
physics. 
II. What is a judgment? — What do we know of the external and inner 
worlds ? — The whole object of science is to add or connect facts. 

III. The system based on this view of the nature of our knowledge. 

I V. Theory of definitions — Its importance — Refutation of the old theory — There 

are no definitions of things, but of names only. 
V. Theory of proof — Ordinary theory— Its refutation— What is the really 
fundamental part of a syllogism ? 
VI. Theory of axioms — Ordinary theory — Its refutation — Axioms are only truths 

of experience of a certain class. 
VII. Theory of induction — The cause of a fact is only its invariable antecedent 
— Experience alone proves the stability of the laws of nature — What is a 
law ? — By what methods are laws discovered ? — The methods of agreement, 
of diflferences, of residues, of concomitant variations. 
VIII. Examples and applications — Theory of dew. 
IX. Deduction — Its province and method. 

X Comparison of the methods of induction and deduction — Ancient emjrloy* 
ment of the first — Modern use of the second — Sciences requiring the firsi 
— Sciences requiring the second — Positive character of ilill's work —Hit 
predecessors. 
U. Limits of our knowledge — It is not certain that all events happen according 
to laws — Chance in nature. 

§ 2. — Discussion. 
L Agreement of this philosophy with the English mind — Alliance of the 
positive and religious spuits — By what faciQty we arrive at the know* 
ledge of causation. 
II. There are no substances or forces, but only facts and laws — Abstraction- 
Its nature — Its pai't in science. 
III. Theory of definitions— They explain tlie abstract generating elementa 
oX things. 



478 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK f 

IV. Theory of proof— The basis of proof in syllogism is an abstract law. 
v. Tlieory of axioms— Axioms are relations between abstract truths— Thej 
, may be reduced to the axiom of identity. 
VI. Theory of induction— Its methods are of elimination or abstraction. 
VII. The two great operations of the mind, experience and abstraction— The Uq 
great manifestations of things, sensible facts and abstract laws— Why wa 
ought to pass from the first to the second— Meaning and extent of thf 
axiom of causation. 
VUl It is possible to arrive at the knowledge of first elements— Error of German 
metaphysicians— They liave neglected the element of chance, and of local 
perturbations— What might be known by a philosophising ant—Idea and 
limits of metaphysics— Its state in the three thinking nations— A raornino- 
in Oxford.^ 



I. 

WHEN at Oxford some years ago, during the meeting of the British 
Association, I met, amongst the few students still in residence, 
a young Englishman, »mau of intelligence, witli whom I became inti- 
mate. He took me in the evening to the New Museum, well filled with 

1 M. Taine has published this * Study on Mill' separately, and preceded it by 
the following note, as a preface :— * When this Study first appeared, Mr. Mill did 
me the honour to write to me that it would not be possible to give in a few pages a 
more exact and complete notion of the contents of his work, considered as a body 
of philosophical teaching. " But," he added, " I think you are wrong in regard- 
ing the views I adopt as especially English. They were so in the first half of the 
eighteenth century, from the time of Locke to that of the reaction against Hume. 
This reaction, beginning in Scotland, assumed long ago the German form, and 
ended by prevailing universally. When I -vsTote my book, I stood almost alone in 
my opinions ; and though they have met with a degree of sympathy which I by no 
means expected, we may still count in England twenty a priori and spiritualist 
philosophers for every partisan of the doctrine of Experience." 

' This remark is very true. I myself could have made it, having been brought 
up in the doctrines of Scotch philosophy and the writings of Reid. I simply 
answer, that there are philosophers whom we do not count, and that all such, 
whether English or not, spiritualist or not, may be neglected without much harm. 
Once in a half century, or perhaps in a century, or two centuries, some thinker 
appeals ; Bacon and Hume in England, Descartes and Condillac in France, Kant 
and Hegel in Germany. At other times the stage is unoccupied, or ordinary men 
come forward, and ofi'er the public that which the public likes — Sensualists or 
ld(}alists, according to the tendency of the day, with sufficient instruction and skill 
to play leading parts, and enough capacity to re-set old airs, well drilled in the 
works of their predecessors, but destitute of real invention— simple execu-^aui 
musicians, who stand in the place of composers. In Europe, at present, the stage 
is a blank. The Germans adapt and alter eff"ete French materialism. The French 
lister from habit, but somewhat wearily and distractedly, to the scraps of melody 
and eloquent commonplace which their instructors have repeated to them for tha 
last thirty years^ In this deep silence, and from among these dull mediocritiee, 
a maat'ir comes forward to speak. Nothing of the sort has been seen since Hege' 



jCHAP. v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 479 

specimens. Here short lectures were delivered, new models of machinery' 
were set to work ; ladies were present and took an interest in the ex- 
periments ; on the last day, full of enthusiasm, God save the Queen was 
sung. I admired this zeal, this solidity of mind, this organisation of 
science, these voluntary subscriptions, this aptitude for association and 
for labour, this great machine pushed on by so many arms, and so well 
ftted to accumulate, criticise, and classify facts. But yet, in this abun- 
dance, there was a void ; when I read the Transactions, I thought I was 
present at a congress of heads of manufactories. All these learned met 
verified details and exchanged recipes. It was as though I listened to 
foremen, busy in communicating their processes for tanning leather oi 
dyeing cotton : general ideas were wanting. I used to regret this to my 
friend; and in the evening, by his lamp, amidst that great silence in which 
tlie university town lay wrapped, we both tried to discover its reasons. 

II. 

One day I said to him : You lack philosophy — I mean, what thti 
Germans call metaphysics. You have learned men, but you have no 
thinkers. Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and 
you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for him. He is the most 
important personage in England, and I see clearly that he merits his 
position ; for he forms part of your constitution, he is the guardian o/ 
your morality, he judges in final appeal on all questions whatsoever, 
he replaces with advantage the prefects and gendarmes with whom the 
nations on the Continent are still encumbered. Yet, this high rank has 
the inconvenience of all official positions ; it produces a cant, prejudices, 
intolerance, and courtiers. Here, close by us, is poor ]\Ir. Max Miiller, 
who, in order to acclimatise the study of Sanscrit, was compelled to 
discover in the Vedas the worship of a moral God, that is to say, the 
religion of Paley and Addison. Some time ago, in London, I read a 
proclamation of the Queen, forbidding people to play cards, even in 
their own houses, on Sundays. It seems that, if I were robbed, I could 
not bring my thief to justice without taking a preliminary religious 
oath ; for the judge has been known to send a complainant away who 
refused to take the oath, deny him justice, and insult him into the bar- 
gain. Every year, when we read the Queen's speech in your papers, 
we find there the compulsory mention of Divine Providence, which 
comes in mechanically, like the apostrophe to the immortal gods on the 
fourth page of a rhetorical declamation ; and you remember that once, 
the pious phrase having been omitted, a second communication was 
made to Parliament for the express purpose of supplying it. All these 
cavillings and pedantry indicate to m.y mind a celestial monarchy; 
naturally it resembles all others; I mean that it relies mere will- 
ingly on tradition and custom than on examination and reason. A 
monarchy never invited men to verify its credentials. As yours ij, 
however, useful, well adapted to you, and moral, you are not revoke:^ 



480 MODERN AIITHOES. [BOOK V 

by it; you submit to it without difficulty, you are, at heart, attach3d 
to it ; you would fear, in touching it, to disturb the constitution and 
morality. You leave it in the clouds, amidst public homage. You 
fall back upon yourselves, confine yourselves to matters of fact, to 
minute dissections, to experiments in the laboratory. You go culling 
plants and collecting shells. Science is deprived of its head ; but all is 
for the best, for practical life is improved, and dogma remains intact 

IIL 

You are truly French, he answered , you leap over facts, and all at 
once find yourself settled in a theory. I assure you that there are 
thinkers amongst us, and not far from hence, at Christ Church, fol 
instance. One of them, the professor of Greek, has spoken so deeply on 
inspiration, the creation and final causes, that he is out of favour. Look 
at this little collection which has recently appeared, Essays and Reviews ; 
your philosophic freedom of the last century, the latest conclusions cf 
geology and cosmogony, the boldness of German exegesis, are here in 
abstract. Some things are wanting, amongst others the waggeries of 
Voltaire, the misty jargon of Germany, and the prosaic coarseness of 
Comte; to my mind, the loss is small. Wait twenty years, and you 
will find in London the ideas of Paris and Berlin. — But they will still 
be the ideas of Paris and Berlin. Whom have you that is original ? — 
Stuart Mill. — Who is he? — A political writer. His little book On 
Liberty is as admirable as Rousseau's Contrat Social is bad. — That is a 
bold assertion. — ^No, for Mill decides as strongly for the independence 
of the individual as Rousseau for the despotism of the State. — Very 
well, but that is not enough to make a philosopher. What besides is 
he ?— An economist who goes beyond his science, and subordinates 
production to man, instead of man to production. — Well, but this is 
not enough to make a philosopher. Is he anything else ? — A logician. 
Very good ; but of what school ? — Of his own. I told you he was 
original. — Is he Hegelian ? — By no means ; he is too fond of facts and 
proofs. — Does he follow Port-Royal ? — Still less ; he is too well ac- 
quainted with modern sciences. — Does he imitate Condillac ? — Certainly 
not ; Condillac has only taught him to write well. — Who, then, are hit 
friends? — Locke and Comte in the first rank; then Hume and Newton. 
— Is he a system-monger, a speculative reformed ? — He has too much 
sense for that ; he only arranges the best theories, and explains the 
best methods. He does not attitudinise majestically in the charactei 
of a restorer of science ; he does not declare, like your Germans, that 
his book will open up a new era for humanity. He proceeds gradually^ 
somewhat slowly, often creepingly, through a multitude of particular 
facts. He excels in giving precision to an idea, in disentangling a 
principle, in discovering it amongst a number of different facts ; in 
refuting, distinguishing, arguing. He has the astuteness, patience, 
method, and sagacity of a lawyer. — Very well, you admit t: at 1 was 



CHAP, v.] PHILOb'C>7*nv -tstTJART MILL. 4g] 

right. A lawyer, an ally of Locke, Nev/ton, Comte, and Hume ; we 
have here only English philosophy ; but no mntter. Has he reached 
a grand conception of the universe ? — Yes. — Has he an individual and 
complete idea of nature and the mind ? — Yes. — Has he combined the 
op-?rations and discoveries of the intellect under a single principle 
which puts them all in a new light? — Yes ; but we have to discover 
this principle. — That is your business, and I hope you will undertake 
it — But I shall fall into abstract generalities. — There is no harm in that ? 
•-—But this close reasoning will be like a quick-set hedge. — We will 
pric'k our fingers with it. But three men oat of four would cast aside 
such speculations as idle. — So much the worse for them. For in what 
does the life of a nation or a century consist, except in the formation 
of gjch theories? "We are not thoroughly men unless so engaged. 
If some dweller in another planet were to come down here to ask us 
the nature of our race, we should have to show him the five or six 
great ideas which we have formed of the mind and the world. That 
alone would give him the measure of our intelligence. Expound to 
nie your theory, and I shall go away better instructed than after having 
seen the masses of brick, which you call London and Manchester. 

1.- — Experience. 

I. 

Let us begin, then, at the beginning, like logicians. Mill has written 
on logic. What is logic ? It is a science. What is its object ? The 
sciences ; for, suppose that you have traversed the universe, and that 
you know it thoroughly, stars, earth, sun, heat, gravity, chemical 
affinities, the species of minerals, geological revolutions, plants, animals, 
human events, all that classifications and theories explain and embrace, 
there still remain these classifications and theories to be learnt. Not 
only is there an order of beings, but also an order of the thoughts 
which represent them ; not only plants and animals, but also botany 
and .'^oology; not only lines, surfaces, volumes, and numbers, but also 
geometry and arithmetic. Sciences, then, are as real things as facts 
themselves, and therefore, as well as facts, become the subject of study. 
We can analyse them as we analyse facts, investigate their elements. 
CGinposition, order, relations, and object. Theie is, therefore, a science 
of sciences ; this science is called logic, and is the subject of Mill's work. 
It is no part of logic to analyse the operations of the mind, memory, 
the association of ideas, external perception, etc. ; that is the business 
of psychology. We do not discuss the value of such operations, the 
veracity of our consciousness, the absolute certainty of our elementary 
knowledge ; this belongs to metaphysics. We suppose our faculties 
to be at work, and we admit their primary discoveries. We t^ke the 
instrument as nature has provided it, and we trust to its accuracy. 
We leave to others the task of taking its mechanism to pieces, and th« 
VOL. XL 2 H 



4S2 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK 9 

curiosity which criticises its results. Setting out frcm its piimitive 
operations, we enquire how they are added to each other ; how they 
are combined ; how one is convertible into another ; how, by dint of 
additions, combinations, and transformations, they finally compose a 
system of connected and increasing truths. We construct a theory of 
science, as others construct theories of vegetation, of the mind, or cf 
numbers. Such is the idea of logic ; and it is plain that it has, aa 
other sciences, a real subject-matter, its distinct province, its Tianiffst 
importance, its special method, and a certain future, 

II. 

Having premised so much, we cbserve that all these scifnces which 
form the subject of logic, are but collections of propositions, and that 
each proposition merely connects or separates a subject and an attribute, 
that is, two names, a quality and a substance ; that is to say, a thing 
and another thing. We must then ask what we understand by a thing, 
what we indicate by a name ; in other words, what it is we recognise 
in objects, what we connect or separate, what is the subject-matter of 
all our propositions and all our science. There is a point in which all 
our several items of knowledge resemble one another. There is a 
common element v/hich, continually repeated, constitutes all our ideas. 
There is, as it were, a minute primitive crystal which, indefinitely and 
variously added to itself, forms the whole mass, and which, once known, 
teaches us beforehand the laws and composition of the complex bodies 
which it has formed. 

Now, when we attentively consider the idea which we form of any- 
thing, what do we find in it ? Take first substances, that is to say, 
Bodies and Minds.-^ This table is brown, long, wide, three feet high, 
judging by the eye : that is, it forms a little spot in the field of vision ; 
in other words, it produces a certain sensation on the optic nerve. It 
weighs ten pounds : that is, it would require to lift it an effort less 
than for a weight of eleven pounds, and greater than for a weight of 

* * It is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body consists of the notion 
of a number of sensations of our own or of other sentient beings, habitually occur- 
ring simultaneously. My conception of the table at which I am writing is coni' 
pounded of its visible form aud size, which are complex sensations of sight ; its 
tangible, form and size, which are complex sensations of our organs of tou( h ar.d 
of our muscles ; its weight, which is also a sensation of touch and of the musclfs ; 
its colour, which is a sensation of sight ; its hardness, which is a sensation of the 
muscles ; its composition, which is another word for all the varieties of sei:?.' tioa 
which we receive, under various circumstances, from the wood of which it li midej 
and so forth. All or most of these various sensations frequently are, and, as wt 
learn by experience, always might be, experienced simultaneously, or in many 
diflerent orders of succession, at our own clioice : and hence the thought of anj 
one of tiiem makes us think of the others, and the whole becomes mentally amah 
gamated into one mixed state of consciousness, which, in the language of Locke 
tind Hartley, is termed a Complex Idea.' — Mill's System of Logic, 4th cd. 3 
^ ols.. i. 62, 



UHAP. v.] PHILOSOPHY— ST UAKT MILL. 4S3 

nme pounds ; in other words, it produces a certain muscular S€nsation. 
It is hard and square, which means that, if first pushed, and then ruu 
ov3r by the hand, it will excite two distinct kinds of muscular sensa- 
tions. And so on. When I examine closely what I know of it, I find 
that I know nothing else except the impressions it makes upon me- 
Our idea of a body comprises nothing else than this : we know nothing 
tjf it but the sensations it excites in us; we determine it by the nature, 
number, and order of these sensations ; we know nothing of its inner 
nature nor whether it has one ; we simply affirm that it is the un- 
known cause of these sensations. When we say that a body has 
existed in the absence of our sensations, we mean simply that if, during 
that time, we had been within reach of it, we should have had sensa- 
tions which we have not had. We never define it save by our present 
or past, future or possible, complex or simple impressions. This is so 
true, that philosophers hke Berkeley have maintained, with some show 
of truth, that matter is a creature of the imagination, and that the 
whole universe of sense is reducible to an order of sensations. It is at 
least so, as far as our knowledge is concerned ; and the judgments which 
compose our sciences, have reference only to the impressions by which 
things are manifested to us. 

So, again, with the mind. We may well admit that there is in us a 
soul, an * ego,* a subject or recipient of our sensations, and of our other 
modes of being, distinct from those sensations and modes of existence ; 
but we know nothing of it. Mr. ]\Iill says : 

* For, as our conception of a body is that of an unknown exciting cause of sen- 
sations, so om* conception of a mind is that of an unknown recipient, or percipient, 
of them ; and not of them alone, but of all our other feelings. As body is the 
mysterious something which excites the mind to feel, so mind is the mysterious 
something which feels, and thinks. It is unnecessary to give in the case of mind, 
as we gave in the case of matter, a particular statement of the sceptical system by 
which its existence as a Thing in itself, distinct from the series of what are deno- 
minated its states, is called in question. But it is necessary to remark, that on 
the mmost nature of the thinking principle, as well as on the inmost nature of 
matter, we are, and with our faculties must always remain, entirely in the dark. 
All which we are aware of, even in our own minds, is a certain ** thread of con- 
3cii.usness ;" a series of feelings, that is, of sensations, thoughts, emotions, and 
vslitions, more or less numerous and complicated. ' ^ 

We have no clearer idea of mind than of matter ; we can say nothing 
more about it than about matter. So that substances, of whatevei 
kind, bodies or minds, within or without us, are never for us more than 
tissues, more or less complex, more or less regular, of which our im- 
pressions and modes of being form all the threads. 

This is still more evident in the case of attributes than of substances. 
When I say that snow is white, I mean that, when snow is presented 
to my sight, I have the sensation of whiteness. When I say tltsi ir« 



Mill's Logic, I QH. 



iS^ MODERN AUTHORS. IBOOK H 

is hot, I mean that, when near the fire, I have the sensation cf heat. 
We call a mind devout, superstitious, meditative, or gay, simply mean- 
ing that the ideas, the emotions, the volitions, designated by thesa 
words, recur frequently in the series of its modes of being.^ When w^ 
say that bodies are heavy, divisible, moveable, we mean simply that, 
left to themselves, they will fall ; when cut, they will separate ; or when 
pusiied, they will move: that is, under such and such circumstances 
Ihey will produce such and such a sensation in cur muscles, or our 
sight. An attribute always designates a mode of being, or a series of 
our n odes of being. In vain we disguise these modes by grouping, 
concealing them under abstract words, dividing and transforming them, 
so that we are frequently puzzled to recognise them : whenever we 
look at the bottom of our words and ideas, we find them, and nothing 
but them. Mill says : 

* Take the following example ; A generous person is worthy of honour. "Who 
would expect to recognise here a case of coexistence between phenomena ? But so 
it is. The attribute which causes a person to be termed generous, is ascribed to 
him on the ground of states of his mind, and particulars of his conduct ; both are 
phenomena ; the former are facts of internal consciousness, the latter, so far as 
distinct from the former, are physical facts, or perceptions of the senses. Worthy 
of honour, admits of a similar analysis. Honour, as here used, means a state of 
approving and admiring emotion, followed on occasion by corresponding outward 
acts. "Worthy of honour " connotes all this, together with an approval of the act 

* * Every attribute of a mind consists either in being itself affected in a certain 
way, or affecting other minds in a certain way. Considered in itself, we can pre- 
dicate nothing of it but the series of its own feelings. When we say of any mind, 
that it is devout, or superstitious, or meditative, or cheerful, we mean that the 
ideas, emotions, or volitions implied in those words, form a frequently recurring 
part of the series of feelings, or states of consciousness, which fiU up the sentient 
existence of that mind. 

* In addition, however, to those attributes of a mind which are grounded on itf 
own states of feeling, attributes may also be ascribed to it, in the same manner as 
to a body, grounded on the feelings which it excites in other minds. A mind does 
not, indeed, like a body, excite sensations, but it may excite thoughts or emotions. 
The most important example of attributes ascribed on this groimd, is the employ- 
ment of terms expressive of approbation or blame. When, for example, we say of 
an}' character, or (in other words) of any mind, that it Is admirable, we mean that 
the con templation of it excites the sentiment of admiration ; and indeed somewhat 
more, for the word imphes that we not only feel admiration, but approve that sen- 
timent in ourselves. In some cases, under the semblance of a single attribute, 
two are really predicated : one of them, a state of the mind itself ;, the other, a state 
with which other minds are affected by thinking of it. As when we say of any 
one that he is generous. The word generosity expresses a certain state of mind, but 
being a term of praise, it also expresses that this state of mind excites in us another 
mental state, called approbation. The assertion made, therefore, is twofold, and 
of the following purport : Certain feelings form habitually a part of this person'i 
sentient existence ; and the idea of those feelings of his, excites the sentiment d 
approbation in ourselves or others.' — Mill's Logic, h 80, 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 485 

of showing honour. All these are phenomena ; states of internal ccns:i3usnesi», 
accompanied or followed by physical facts. When we say, A generous person ia 
worthy of honour, we affirm coexistence between the two complicated phenom-ena 
connoted by the two terms respectively. We affirm, that wherever and whenever 
the inward feelings and outward facts implied in the word generosity, have place, 
then and there the existence and manifestation of an inward feeling, honour, would 
be followed in our minds by another inward feeling, approval. ' ^ 

In vain we turn about as we please, we remain still in the same circle 
Whethei the object be an attribute or a substance, complex or abstract, 
compound or simple, its material is to us always the same ; it is made up 
©Ely of our modes of being. Our mind is to nature what a thermometer 
is to a boiler: we define the properties of nature by the impressions of 
our mind, as we indicate the conditions of the boiling water by the 
changes of the thermometer. Of both we know but conditions and 
changes ; we make up both of isolated and transient facts ; a thing is 
for us but an aggregate of phenomena. These are the sole elements of 
our knowledge : consequently the whole effort of science will be to add 
or to link facts to facts. 

III. 

This brief phrase is the abstract of the whole system. Let us 
master it, for it explains all JMili's theories. He has defined and inno- 
vated everything from this starting-point. In all forms and all degrees 
of knowledge, he has recognised only the knowledge of facts, and of 
their relatione. 

Now we kn-yw that logic has two corner-stones, the Theories of 
Definition and of Proof. From the days of Aristotle logicians hav 
spent their time in polishing them. They have only dared to touch 
them respectfully, as if they were sacred. At most, from time to time, 
some innovator ventured to turn them over cautiously, to put them in 
a better light. Mill shapes, cuts, turns them over, and replaces them 
both in a similar manner and by the same means. 

IV. 

I am quite aware that now-a-days men laugh at those who reason 
m definitions ; the laughers deserve to be laughed at. There is no 
theory more fertile in universal and important results ; it is the root by 
iivhich the wLole tree of human science grows and lives. For tc define 
things is to mark out their nature. To introduce a new idea of defini- 
tion is to introduce a new idea of the nature of things ; it is to tell ua 
what beings are, of what they are composed, into what elements they 
are capable of being resolved. In this lies the merit of these dry 
speculations ; the philosopher seems occupied with arranging mere 
formulas ; the fact is, that in them he encloses the universe. 

Take, say logicians, an animal, a plant, a feeling, a geometrical 

' Mill's Logic, i. 110. 



■486 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK Y 

figure, an object or group of objects of any kind. Doubtess the object 
has its properties, but it has also its essence. It is manifested to the 
outer world by an indefinite number of effects and qualities ; but aU 
these modes of being are the results or products of its inner nature. 
There is within it a certain hidden substratum which alone is primitive 
and important, without which it can neither exist nor be conceived^ 
and whi'jh constitutes its being and our notion of it.'^ They cali thff 
propositions which denote this essence definitions, and assert that th« 
best part of our knowledge consi&."'3 of such propositions. 

On the other hand, Mill says that these kinds of propositions teach 
us nothing ; they show the mere sense of a word, and are purely verbal.* 
What do I learn by being told that man is a rational animal, or that a 
triangle is a space contained by three lines ? The first part of such a 
phrase expresses by an abbreviative word what the second part expresses 
in a developed phrase. You tell me the same thing twice over ; you 
put the same fact into two different expressions ; you do not add one 
fact to another, but you go from one fact to its equivalent. Your pro- 
position is not instructive. You might collect a million such, my mind 
would remain entirely void ; I should have read a diclionary,butnot have 
acquired a single piece of knowledge. Instead of saying that essential 
propositions are important, and those relating to qualities merely acces- 
sory, you ought to say that the first are accessory, and the second 
important. I learn nothing by being told that a circle is a figure 
formed by the revolution of a straight line about one of its points as 
centre ; I do learn something when told that the chords which subtend 
equal arcs in the circle are themselves equal, or that three given points 
determine the circumference. What we call the nature of a being is 
the connected system of facts which constitute that being. The nature 
of a carnivorous mammal consists in the fact that the property of giving 
milk, and all its implied peculiarities of structure, are combined with 
the posseps.Ton of sharp teeth, instincts of prey, and the corresponding 
faculties. ►Such are the elements which compose its nature. They are 
fa its linked together as mesh to mesh in a net. We perceive a few o/ 

^ According to idealist logicians, this being is arrived at by examining om 
notion of it ; and the idea, on analysis, reveals the essence. According to I hi 
classifying school, we arrive at the being by placing the object in its group, and tlia 
notion is defined by stating the genus and the difference. Both agree in believing 
that we are capable of grasping the essence. 

* ' An essential proposition, then, is one which is purely verbal ; which assei'tu 
of a thing under a particular name, only what is asserted of it in the fact of calling 
it by that name ; and which therefore either giv'?s no information, or gives it 
respecting the name, not the thing. Non-essential or accidental proposition}?, on 
the contrary, may be called Real Propositions, in opposition to Verbal They pre* 
dicate of a thing, some fact not involved in the signification of the name by which- 

tlie proposition speaks &f it ; some attribute i»H connoted by that na»r»« ' M.'Ll's 

Uyic, i. 127. 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 48| 

them ; and we know that, beyond our present knowledge and our future 

experience, the network extends to infinitely its interwoven and raani - 
fold threads. The essence or nature of a being is the indefinite sum 
of its properties. Mill says : 

* The definition, they say, unfolds the nature of the thing : but no definition 
can unfold its whole nature ; and every proposition in which any quality whatevor 
\» predicated of the thing, unfolds some part of its nature. The true state of the 
vQ3e \re take to be this. All definitions are of names, and of names only ; but in 
some definitions it is clearly apparent, that nothing is intended except to explain 
the meaning of the word ; while in others, besides explaining the meaning of the 
word, it is intended to be implied that there exists a thing, corresponding to the 
word. ' * 

Abandon, then, the vain hope of eliminating from properties some primi- 
tive and mysterious being, the source and abstract of the whole ; leave 
entities to Dans Scotus; do not fancy that, bv probing your ideas in the 
German fashion, by classifying objects according to genera and species 
like the schoolmen, by reviving the nominalism of the Middle Ages or 
the riddles of Hegelian metaphysics, you will ever supply the want of 
experience. There are no definitions of things ; if there are definitions, 
they only define names. No phrase can tell me what a horse is ; but 
there are phrases which will inform me what is meant by these five letters. 
No phrase can exhaust the inexhaustible sum of qualities which make 
up a being ; but several phrases may point out the facts corresponding 
to a word. In this case definition is possible, because we can always 
make an analysis, which will enable us to pass from the abstract and 
Bumraary term to the attributes which it represents, and from these 
attributes to the inner or concrete feelings which constitute their foun- 
dation. From the term * dog ' it enables us to rise to the attributes 
* mammiferous,' ' carnivorous,' and others which it represents; and from 
these attributes to the sensations of sight, of touch, of the dissecting 
knife, on which they are founded. It reduces the compound to the 
simple, the derived to the primitive. It brings back our knowledge to 
its origin. It transforms words into facts. If some definitions, such 
Bs those of geometry, seem capable of giving rise to long sequences of 
^cw truths,^ it is because, in addition to the explanation of a word, 
liicjy contain the affirmation of a thing. In the definition of a triangle 

1 [Mill's Logic, 1. 162. 

2 * The definition above given of a triangle obviously comprises not one, but two 
p/opositions, perfectly distinguishable. The one is, ''There may exist a figure 
bounded by three straight lines ;" the other, "And this figure may be termed a 
triangle." The former of these propositions is not a definition at all ; the latter la 
a mere nominal definition, or explanation of the use and application of a term. 
The first is susceptible of truth or falsehood, and may therefore be made the 
foundation of a train of reasoning. The latter can neither be true nor false ; the 
only character it is susceptible of is that of conformity to the ordinary usage 
of laufi-uage.' — Mill's Logic,\. 10.2 



488 MODERN ALTHORS. [BOOK ^ 

there are two distinct propositions, — the one stating that ' there m&j 

exist a figure bounded by three straight lines ; ' the other, that ' such a 
figure may be termed a triangle.' The first is a postulate, the second a 
definition. The first is hidden, the second evident ; the first may be 
true or false, the second can be neither. The first is the source of all 
possible theorems as to triangles, the second only resumes in a word the 
facts contained in the other. The first is a truth, the second is a con" 
vention ; the first is a part of science, the second an expedient of lan- 
guage. The first expresses a possible relation between three straight 
lines, the second gives a name to this relation. The first alone is 
fruitful, because it alone conforms to the nature of every fruitful 
proposition, and connects two facts. Let us, then, understand exactly 
the nature of our knowledge : it relates either to words or to things, or 
to both at once. If it is a matter of words, as in the definition of 
names, it attempts to refer words to our primitive feelings, that is to 
say, to the facts which form their elements. If it relates to beings, as 
in propositions about things, its whole effort is to link fact to fact, in 
order to connect the finite number of known properties with the infinite 
number to be known. If both are involved, as in the definitions of 
names which conceal a proposition relating to things, it attempts to do 
both. Everywhere its operation is the same. The whole matter in 
any case is either to understand each other, — that is, to revert to facts, 
or to learn, — that is, to add facts to facts. 



The first rampart is destroyed ; our adversaries take refuge behind 
the second — the Theory of Proof. This theory has passed for two 
thousand years for an acquired, definite, unassailable truth. Many 
have deemed it useless, but no one has dared to call it false. On all 
sides it has been considered as an established theorem. Let us examine 
it closely and attentively. What is a proof? According to logicians, 
it is a syllogism. And what is a syllogism ? A group of three pro- 
positions of this kind : * All men are mortal ; Prince Albert is a man ; 
therefore Prince Albert is mortal.' Here we have the type of a proof, 
and every complete proof is conformable to this type. Now what is 
tlere, according to logicians, in this proof? A general proposition 
concerning all men, which gives rise to a particular proposition con- 
cerning a certain man. From the first we pass to the second, because 
the second is contained in the first ; from the general to the particular, 
because the particular is comprised in the general. The second is but 
an instance of the first ; its truth is contained beforehand in that of the 
first, and this is why it is a truth. In fact, as soon as the conclusion 
is no longer contained in the premises, the reasoning is false, and ail 
the complicated rules of the Middle Ages have been reduced by th« 



CHAP v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 489 

Port-Rovalists to this single rule, ' The conclasion mast be contained 
m the premises. Thus the whole process of the human mind in its 
reasonings consists in recognising in individuals what is known in the 
class ; in affirming in detail what has been established for the aggre- 
gate ; in laying down a second time, and instance by instance, what 
has been laid down once for all at first. 

By no means, replies Mill ; for if it were so, our reasoning would 
be good for nothing. It is not a progress, but a repetitiDn. When I 
have affirmed that all men are mortal, I have affirmed implicitly that 
Prince Albert is mortal. In speaking of the whole class, that is to say, 
of all the individuals of the class, I have spoken of each individual, and 
therefore of Prince Albert, who is one of them. I say nothing new, 
then, when I now mention him expressly. My conclusion teaches me 
nothing ; it adds nothing to my positive knowledge ; it only puts in 
another shape a knowledge which I already possessed. It is not fruitful, 
but purely verbal. If, then, reasoning be what logicians represent it, 
it is not instructive. I know as much of the subject at the beginning 
of my reasoning as at the end. I have transformed words into other 
words ; I have been moving without gaining ground. Now this cannot 
be the case ; for, in fact, reasoning does teach us new truths. I learn 
a new truth when I discover that Prince Albert is mortal, and I discover 
it by dint of reasoning ; for, since he is still alive, I cannot have learnt 
it by direct observation. Thus logicians are mistaken; and beyond 
the scholastic theory of syllogism, which reduces reasoning to sub- 
stitutions of words, we must look for a positive theory of proof, 
which shall explain how it is that, by the process of reasoning, we 
discover facts. 

For this purpose, it is sufficient to observe, that general proposi- 
tions are not the true proof of particular propositions. They seem so, 
but are not. It is not from the mortality of all men that I conclude 
Prince Albert to be mortal ; the premises are elsewhere, and in its 
background. The general proposition is but a memento, a sort of abbre- 
viative register, to which I have consigned the fruit of my experience. 
This memento may be regarded as a notebook to which we refer to 
refresh our memory ; but it is not from the book that we draw our 
knowledge, but from the objects which we have seen. My memento 
is valuable only for the facts which it recalls. My general proposition 
has no value except for the particular facts which it sums up. 

* The mortality of John, Thomas, and company is, after all, the whole evidence 
we have for the mortality of the Duke of Wellington. Not one iota is added to 
the proof hy interpolating a general proposition. Since the indi\idnal cases are 
all the evidence we can possess, evidence which no logical form, into whicli wfl 
choose to throw it can make greater than it is ; and since that evidence is I her 
Bufficient in itself, or, if insufficient for the one purpose, cannot be sufficient for 
the otlier • I am unable to see why we should be forbidden to take the shortest 



490 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

eut from these gnfficient premises to the conclusion, and constrained to travel tht 
" high priori road " by the arbitrary fiat of logicians. ' * 

* The true reason which makes us believe that Prince Albert will die 
is, that his ancestors, and our ancestors, and all the other persons who 
were their contemporaries, are dead. These facts are the true premisea 
of our reasoning.' It is from them that we have drawn the general 
proposition ; they have taught us its scope and truth ; it confines 
itself to mentioning them in a shorter form ; it receives its whole sub- 
stance from them ; they act by it and through it, to lead us to the 
conclusion to which it seems to give rise. It is only their representa- 
tive, and on occasion they do without it. Children, ignorant people, 
animals know that the sun will rise, that water will drown them, that 
fire will burn them, without employing this general proposition. They 
reason, and we reason, too, not from the general to the particular, but 
from particular to particular : . 

* All inference is from particulars to particulars : General propositions are 
merely registers of such inferences already made, and short formulae for making 
more : The major premiss of a syllogism, consequently, is a formula of this de- 
scription : and the conclusion is not an inference drawn from the formula, but an 
inference drawn according to the formula : the real logical antecedent, or premisses, 
being the particular facts from which the general proposition was collected by 
induction. Those facts, and the individual instances wliich supplied them, may 
have been forgotten ; but a record remains, not indeed descriptive of the facts 
themselves, but . showing how those cases may be distinguished respecting wliich 
the facts, when known, were considered to warrant a given inference. According 
to the indications of this record we draw our conclusion ; which is, to all intents 
and purposes.; a conclusion from the forgotten facts. For this it is essential that 
we should read the record correctly : and the rules of the syllogism are a set of 
precautions to ensure our doing so. ' * 

* If we had sufficiently capacious memories, and a sufficient power of maintain- 
ing order among a huge mass of details, the reasoning could go on without any 
general propositions ; they are mere formulse for inferring particulars from par 
ticulars.'^ 

Here, as before, logicians are mistaken ; they gave the highest place to 
verbal operations, and left the really fruitful operations in the back- 
ground. They gave the preference to words over facts. They carried 
on the nominalism of the Middle Ages. They mistook the explana- 
tion of names for the nature of things, and the transformation of ideas 
for the progress of the mind. It is for us to overturn this order in 
logic, as we have overturned it in science, to exalt particular and in- 
structive facts, and to give them in our theories that superiority and 
importance which our practice has conferred upon them for three 
centuries past. 

> Mill's Logic, 1. Sll. « Ibid, i. 218. » Ibid. i. 240. 



UHAP. V rHlLOSOPHi' -STUART MILL. 49I 

VI. 

There remains a kind of philosophical fortress in which the Idealist? 
have taken refuge. At the origin of all proof are Axioms, from which 
all proofs are derived. Two straight lines cannot enclose a space ; two 
things, equal to a third, are equal to one another ; if equals be added 
to equals, the wholes are equal. These are instructive propositions, foi 
they express, not the meanings of words, but the relations of things. 
And, moreover, they are fertile propositions; for arithmetic, algebra, 
and geojnetry are all the result of their truth. On the other hand, 
they are not the work of experience, for we need not actually see with 
our eyes two straight lines in order to know that they cannot enclose a 
space ; it is enough for us to refer to the inner mental conception which 
we have of them : the evidence of our senses is not needed for this 
purpose ; our belief arises wholly, with its full force, from the simple 
comparison of our ideas. Moreover, experience follows these two lines 
only to a limited distance, ten, a hundred, a thousand feet ; and the 
axiom is true for a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million miles, and 
for an unlimited distance. Thus, beyond the point at which experience 
ceases, it is no longer experience which establishes the axiom. Finally, 
the axiom is a necessary truth ; that is to say, the contrary is incon- 
ceivable. We cannot imagine a space enclosed by two straight lines : 
as soon as we imagine the space enclosed, the two lines cease to be 
straight ; and as soon as we imagine the two lines to be straight, the 
space ceases to be eaclosed. In the assertion of axioms, the constituent 
ideas are irresistibly drawn together. In the negation of axioms, the 
constituent ideas inevitably repel each other. Now this does not 
happen with truths of experience : they state an accidental relation, 
not a necessary connection ; they lay down that two facts are connected, 
and not that they must be connected ; they show us that bodies are 
heavy, not that they must be heavy. Thus, axioms are not, and cannot 
be, the results of experience. They are nc'» so, because we can form 
them mentally without the aid of experience ; they cannot be so, be- 
cause the nature and scope of their truths lie without the limits of 
igxperimental truths. They have another and a deeper source. They 
have a wider scope, and they come from elsewhere. 

Not so, answers Mill. Here again you reason like a schoolman ; you 
forget the facts concealed behind your conceptions ; for examine y^ur 
frrst argument. Doubtless you can discover, without making use of 
your eyes, and by purely mental contemplation, that two straight lines 
cannot enclose a space ; but this contemplation is but a displaced ex- 
periment. Imaginary lines here replace real lines : you construct the 
figure in your mind instead of on paper : your imagination fulfils the 
office of a diagram on paper: you trust to it as you trust to the 
diagram, and it is as good as the other ; for in regard to figures and 



492 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

lines the imagination exactly reproduces the sensation. What you have 

seen with your eyes open, you will see again exactly the same a minute 
afterwards with your eyes closed ; and you can study geometrical pro- 
perties transferred to the field of mental vision, as accurately as if 
they existed in the field of actual sight. There are, therefore, experi- 
ments of the brain as there are ocular ones; and it is after just such an 
experiment that you deny to two straight lines, indefinitely prolonged, 
the property of enclosing a space. You need not for this purpose 
pursue them to infinity, you need only transfer yourself in imagination 
to the point where they converge, and there you have the impression o( 
a bent line, that is, of one which ceases to be straight.* Your presence 
there in imagination takes the place of an actual presence ; you can affirm 
by it what you affirmed by your actual presence, and as positively. Tho 
first is only the second in a more commodious form, with greater flexi- 
bility and scope. It is like using a telescope instead of the naked eye; 
the revelations of the telescope are propositions of experience; so are those 
of the imagination. As to the argument which distinguishes axioms from 
propositions of experience under the pretext that the contraries of the 
latter are conceivable, while the contraries of axioms are inconceivable, it 
is nugatory, for this distinction does not exist. Nothing prevents the 
contraries of certain propositions of experience from being conceivable, 
and the contraries of others inconceivable. That depends on the consti- 
tution of our minds. It may be that in some cases the mind may con- 
tradict its experience, and in others not. It is possible that in certain 
cases our conceptions may difier from our perceptions, and sometimes 
not. It may be that, in certain cases, external sight is opposed to 
internal, and in certain others not. Now, we have already seen that in 
the case of figures, the internal sight exactly reproduces the external. 
Therefore, in axioms of figures, the mental sight cannot be opposed to 
the actual ; imagination cannot contradict sensation. In other words, 
the contraries of such axioms will be inconceivable. Thus axioms, 
although their contraries are inconceivable, are experiments of a certain 
class, and it is because they are so that their contraries are inconceiv- 

* * For though, in order actually to see that two given lines never meet, it wouW 
be necessary to follow them to infinity ; yet without doing so we may know {.b»t 
if they ever do meet, or if, after diverging from one another, they begin again t« 
approach, this must take place not at an info it e, but at a finite distance. Sup- 
posing, therefore, such to be the case, we can transport ourselves thither in ima' 
gination, and can frame a mental image of the appearance Avhich one or both of the 
lines must present at that point, which we may rely on as being precisely similar 
to the reality. Now, whether we fix our contemplation upon this imaginary pic- 
ture, or call to mind the generalizations we have had occasion to make from formej 
ocular observation, we Icnrn by the evidence of experience, that a liri.e which, aftel 
diverging fr/>m another straight line, begins to approach to it, produces the impies« 
p,ion on our senses v\hieh wh describe by tlie ex])ression " a br nt line," .^r^ 
i>v the exprcission "a straight line." ' — Mill's Logic, i. 387. 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL 495 

able. At every point there results this conclusion, which is the abstract 
of the system : every instructive or fruitful proposition is derived from 
experience, and is simply a connecting together of facts. 

VIL 

Hence it follows that Induction is the only key to nature. Thit 
tiheory is Mill's masterpiece. Only so thorough-going a partisan oi 
experience could have constructed the theory of Induction. 

What, then, is Induction ? 

* Induction is that operation of the mind by which we infer that what we 
knew to be true in a particular case or cases, will be true in all cases which 
resemble the former in certain assignable respects. In other words, Induction ia 
the process by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals of a 
class is true of the whole class, or that what is true at certain times will be true in 
similar cuxiunstances at all times.' * 

This is the reasoning by which, having observed that Peter, John, and 
a greater or less number of men have died, we conclude that all men 
will die. In short, induction connects ' mortality' with the quality of 
*man;' that is to say, connects two general facts ordinarily successive, 
and asserts that the first is the Cause of the second. 

This amounts to saying that the course of nature is uniform. Bui 
induction does not set out from this axiom, it leads up to it ; we do not 
find it at the beginning, but at the end, of our researches.* Funda- 
mentally, experience presupposes nothing beyond itself. No a prion 
principle conies to authorise or guide her. We observe that this stone 
has fiiUen, that this hot coal has burnt us, that this man has died, and 
we have no other means of induction except the addition and compari- 
son of these little isolated and transient facts. We learn by simple 
practical experience that the sun gives light, that bodies fall, that water 
quenches thirst, and v^e have no other means of extending or criticising 
these inductions than by other like inductions. Every observation and 
every induction draws its value from itself, and from similar ones. It is 
always experience which judges of experience, and induction of induc- 
t\i>n. The body of our truths has not, then, a soul distinct from it, and 

* Mill's Logic, i. 316. 

* 'We must first observe, that there is a principle implied in the wry statement 
of what Induction is ; an assumption with regard to the course of nature and the 
order of the universe : namely, that there are such things in nature as parallel 
cases ; that what happens once, wiU, under a sufficient degi'ce of similarity of odr- 
curastances, happen again, and not only again, but as often as the same circinn- 
stances recur. This, I say, is an assumption, involved in every case of induction. 
And, if we consult the actual course of nature, wo find that the assumption is war- 
ranted. The universe, so far as known to us, is so constituted, that whatever if 
true in any one case, is true in all cases of a certain description ; the only 
difficulty is, to find wliat description.* — Mill's Logic, i. 337. 



i94 MODERN AUTHORS. fBOOK V 

Tivifying it ; it subsists by the harmony of all its parts taken as a whole, 
and by the vitality of each part taken separately. 

* Why is it that, with exactly the same amount of evidence, both negative and 
positive, we did not reject the assertion that there are black swans, while we should 
refuse credence to any testimony which asserted that there were men wearing their 
heads underneath their shoulders ? The first assertion was more credible than if 
latter. But why more credible ? So long as neither phenomenon had been aclu 
ally witnessed, what reason was there for finding the one harder to be believed than 
the other ? Apparently because there is less constancy in the colours of animals, 
than in the general structure of their internal anatomy. But how do we know 
this? Doubtless from experience. It appears, then, that we need experience to 
inform us in'what degree, and in what cases, or sorts of cases, experience is to be 
relied on. Experience must be consulted in order to learn from it under what 
circumstances arguments from it will be valid. "We have no ulterior test to which 
we subject experience in general ; but we make experience its own test. Expe- 
rience testifies, that among the uniformities which it exhibits, or seems to exhibit, 
some are more to be relied on than others ; and uniformity, therefore, may be pre- 
sumed, from any given number of instances, with a greater degree of assm'ance, in 
proportion as the case belongs to a class in which the uniformities have hitherto 
been found more uniform. ' ^ 

Experience is the only test, and it is all we can have. 

Let us then consider how, without any help but that of expenence, 
we can form general propositions, especially the most numerous and 
important of all, those which connect two successive events, by saying 
that the first is the cause of the second. 

Cause is a great word ; let us examine it. It carries in itself a 
whole philosophy. From the idea we have of Cause depend all our 
notions of nature. To give a new idea of Causation is to transform 
human thought ; and we shall see how Mill, like Hume and Comte, 
but better than them, has put this idea into a new shape. 

What is a cause ? Wiien ^lill says that the contact of iron with 
moist air produces rust, or that heat dilates bodies, he does not speak 
of the mysterious bond by which metaphysicians connect cause and 
effect. He does not busy himself with the intimate force and generative 
virtue which certain philosophers insert between the thing producing 
and the product. Mill says : 

* The only notion of a cause, which the theory of induction requires, is such s 
notion fts can be gained from experience. The Law of Causation, the recognition 
of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but tht familiar truth, that 
invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fa.it in 
nature and some other fact which has preceded it ; independently of all considera- 
tion respecting the ulterior mode ot production of phenomena, and of eveiy other 
question regarding the nature of "Things in themselves." ' * 

No other foundation underlies these two expressions. We mean simply 
that everywhere, always, the contact of iron with the moist air will be 



' Miirs Looic, I. 351. ' Md. i. 359, 



c'HAP. V I rrilLOSOFHY— TTi'tJART MILL. t9tJ 

followed by the appearance of rust; the application of heat by th« 
dilatation of bodies ; 

* The real cause, is the whole of these antecedents. * * 

* There is no scientific foundation for distinguishing between the cause 
of a phenomenon and the conditions of its happening. . . . The dis- 
tinction drawn between the patient and the agent is purely verbal.' 

* The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, 
positive and negative, taken together ; the whole of the contingencies of evei-y 
description, which being reahsed, the consequent invariably follows. ' * 

Much argument has been expended on the word necessary: 

* If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is 
wnconditionalness. That which is necessaiy, that which must be, means that which 
will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things. ' * 

This is all we mean when we assert that the. notion of cause includes 
the notion of necessity. We mean that the antecedent is sufficient and 
complete, that there is no need to suppose any additional antecedent, 
that it contains all requisite conditions, and that no other condition 
need exist. To follow unconditionally, then, is the whole notion of 
cause and effect. We have none else. Philosophers are mistaken when 
they discover in our will a different type of sausation, and declare it 
an example of efficient cause in act and in exercise. We see nothing of 
the kind, but there, as elsewhere, we find only continuous successions. 
We do not see a fact engendering another fact, but a fact accompanying 
another. ' Our will,' says Mill, ' produces our bodily actions as cold 
produces ice, or as a spark produces an explosion of gunpowder.' There 
is here, as elsewhere, an antecedent, the resolution or state of mind, 
and a consequent, the effort or physical sensation. Experience con- 
nects them, and enables us to foresee that the effort will follow the 
resolution, as it enables us to foresee that the explosion of gunpowder 
will follow the contact of the spark. Let us then have done with all 
these psychological illusions, and seek only, under the names of cause 
»nd effect, for phenomena which form pairs without exception or 
condition. 

Now,' to establish these connections of phenomena. Mill discovers 
four methods, and only four, — namely, the Methods of Agreement,* of 

» Mill's Logic, i. 360. "" Ibid. i. 365. » Ibid. i. 372. 

* * If we take fifty crucibles of molten matter and let them cool, and fifty soIu» 
tions and let them evaporate, all will crystallize. Sulphur, sugar, alum, salt — 
Bubstances, temperatures, circumstances — all are as diff'erent as they can be. We 
find one, and only one, common fact — the change from the liquid to the solid stat« 
— and conclude, therefore, that this change is the invariable antecedent of cryatal* 
iization. Here we have an example of the Method of Agreement. Its canon is :— 

' " I. If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have 
only one circumstauce in common, the circumstance in which all the iiistances 
aii-ree ;» tU« cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon." ' — MiLii's Lo^iic. i. \?JZ. 



496 MODERN A.UTHORS. [BOOK V 

Difference,* of Residues,* and of Concomitant Variations.* These are the 
only ways by which we can penetrate into nature. There are no other, 
and these are everywhere. And they all employ the same artifice, 
that is to say, elimination ; for, in fact, induction is nothing else. You 
have two groups, one of antecedents, the other of consequents, each oi 
them containing more or less elements, ten, for example. To 'v.'hnt 
antecedent is each consequent joined? Is the first consequent joined 
to the first antecedent, or to the third, or sixth ? The whole difiiculty, 
and the only possible solution, lie there. To resolve the difficulty, anck 

' * A bird in the air breathes ; phmged into carbonic acid gas, it ceases to breathe* 
In other words, in the second case, suffocation ensues. In other respects the two 
cases are as similar as possible, since we have the same bird in both, and they take 
place in immediate succession. They differ only in the circumstance of immersion 
in carbonic acid gas being substituted for immersion in the atmosphere, and we 
conclude that this circumstance is invariably followed by suffocation. The Method 
of Difference is here employed. Its canon is : — 

* ** II. If an instance in which the phenomenon under inveistigation occurs, and 
an instance in which it does not occm-, have every circumstance in common save 
one, that one occurring only in the former ; the circumstance in which alone the 
two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or a necessary part of the cause, of 
the phenomenon. " ' — Mill's Logic, i. 423. 

2 [* A combination of these methods is sometimes employed, and is termed the 
Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference. 
It is, in fact, a double employment of the Method of Agreement, first applying 
that method to instances in which the phenomenon in question occurs, and then 
to instances in which it does not occur. The folloAving is its canon : — 

* '* III. If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have only one 
circumstance in common, while two or more instances in which it does not occur 
have nothing in common, save the absence of tliat circumstance ; the circumstance 
in which alone the two sets of instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or a 
necessary part of the cause, of the phenomenon.'"]— Mill's Logic, i. 429. 

* If we take two groups — one of antecedents and one of consequents— and can 
succeed in connecting by previous investigations aU the antecedents but one to 
their respective consequents, and all the consequents but one to their respective 
antecedents, we conclude that the remaining antecedent is connected to the re- 
maining consequent. For example, scientific men had calculated whatougtt to 
be the velocity of soimd according to the laws of the propagation of soiio'-ou* 
waves, but found that a sound actually travelled quicker than their calculatioDB 
had indicated. This surplus or residue of speed was a consequent for which an 
antecedent had to be found. Lajdace discovered the antecedent in the heat 
developed by the condensation of each sonorous wave, and this new element, 
when introduced into the calculation, rendered it perfectly accurate. This is an 
example of the Method of Residues, the canon of which is as follows : — 

* "IV. Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is knowTi by previous in- 
ductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenoa 
is the eflect of the remaining antecedents." ' — Mill's Logic, i. 431. 

3 * Let us take two facts — as the presence of the earth and the oscillation of the 
pendulum, or again the presence of the moon and the flow of the tide. To connect 

phenomena directly, we should have to suppress the first of them, and see 



CHAP. V.J PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. q,^^ 

to effect the solution, we must eliminate, that is, exclude those ante- 
cedents which are not connected with the consequent we are consider- 
ing.^ But as we cannot exclude them effectually, and as in nature the 
pair of phenomena we are seeking is always surrounded with circum- 
stancej, we collect various cases, which by their diversity enable the 
mind to lop off these circumstances, and to discover the pair of pheno* 
menn distinctly. In short, we can only perform induction by discover- 
ing ])airs of phenomena: we form these only by isolation; we isolate 
only by means ot comparisons. 

VIII. 

These are the rules ; an example will make them clearer. We 
will show you the methods in exercise ; here is an example which 
combines nearly the whole of them, najnely, Dr. Well's theory of dew. 
I will give it to you in Mill's own words, which are so clear that you 
must have the pleasure of pondering over them : 

* We must separate dew from rain and the moisture of fogs, and limit the 
application of the term to what is really meant, which is, the spontaneous appear- 
ance of moistiu-e on substances exposed in the open air when no rain or visible wet 
is falling. ' ^ 

What is the cause of the phenomena we have thus defined, and how 
was that cause discovered ? 

* **Now, here we have analogous phenomena in the moisture which bedews a 
cold metal or stone when we breathe upon it ; that which appears on a glass of 
water fresh from the well in hot weather ; that which appears on the inside of 
windows when sudden rain or hail chills the external air ; that which runs down 

if this suppression would occasion the stoppage of the second. Now, in both 
instances, such suppression is impossible. So we employ an indirect means of 
connecting the phenomena. We observe that all the variations of the one corre^ 
spond to certain variations of the other ; that all the oscillations of the pendulum 
con'cspond to certain different positions of the earth ; that all states of the tide 
cor;":-spond to positions of the moon. From this we conclude that the second fact 
is Cl: ante?edent of the first. These are examples of the Method of Concomitant 
Tdriatioos. Its canon is : — 

* '"'Y. WLatfver phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another pheno- 
mt-uon varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect if that 
^Jienomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of causation.'"— Mill's 
Ir.gic, i. 435. 

* * The Method of Agreement,' says Mill (Logic, i. 424), * stands on the ground 
tta^ 'srhate^-er can be eliminated, is not connected with the phenomenon by any law. 
Tlie Method of Difference has for its foundation, that whatever can 7iot be eliminated, 
M connected with the phenomenon by a law. ' The Method of Residues is a case 
of the Method of Differences. The Method of Concomitant Variations is another 
sase of the same method ; with this distinction, that it is applied, not to th« 
phenomena, but to their variations. 

* This quotation, and all the others in this paragraph, are taken from Mill's 
Logic, i. 451-9. Mr. Mill quotes from Sir John Herschel % Discourse on the Stvdt 
f^ Natural Philosophy 

?0L. XL 2 1 



i9b MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

our walls when, after a long frost, a warm moist thaw comes on.* Comparing 
these cases, we find that they all contain the phenomenon which was proposed a» 
the subject of investigation. Now ** all these instances agree in one point, the 
coldness of the object dewed in comparison with the air in contact with it. " But 
there still remains the most important case of all, that of nocturnal dew : does the 
game circumstance exist in this case? ** Is it a fact that the object dewed is colder 
than the air ? Certainly not, one would at first be inclined to say ; for what is U. 
make it so ? But . . . the experiment is easy ; we have only to lay a thermometei 
In contact with the dewed substance, and hang one at a little distance above it, out 
of reach of its influence. The experiment has been therefore made ; the question 
has been asked, and the answer has been invariably in the affirmative. "Whenevei 
an object contracts dew, it is colder than the air." 

' Here then is a complete application of the Method of Agreement, establishing 
the fact of an invariable connection between the deposition of dew on a surface, 
and the coldness of that surface compared with the external air. But which of 
these is cause, and which effect ? or are they both effects of something else ? On 
this subject the Method of Agreement can afTord us no light : we must call in a 
more potent method. *' We must collect more facts, or, which comes to the same 
thing, vary the circumstances ; since every instance in which the circumstances 
differ is a fresh fact : and especially, we must note the contrary or negative cases, 
i.e. where no dew is produced : " for a comparison between instances of dew and 
instances of no dew, is the condition necessary to bring the Method of Differenc« 
into play. 

* *' Now, first, no dew is produced on the surface of polished metals, but it ti 
very copiously on glass, both exposed with their faces upwards, and in some cases 
the under side of a horizontal plate of glass is also dewed." Here is an instance 
in which the effect is produced, and another instance in which it is not produced ; 
but we cannot yet pronounce, as the canon of the Method of Difference requires, 
that the latter instance agrees with the former in all its circumstances except 
one : for the differences between glass and polished metals are manifold, and the 
only thing we can as yet be sure of is, that the cause of dew will be found 
among the circumstances by which the former substance is distinguislied from the 
latter. ' 

To detect this particular circumstance of difference, we have but one 
practicable method, that of Concomitant Variations : 

* " In the cases of polished metal and polished glass, the contrast shows evidently 
thiit the substance has much to do with the phenomenon ] therefore let the sub- 
stance alone be diversified as much as possible, by exposing polished surfaces cf 
various kinds. This done, a scale of intensity becomes obvious. Those polish pq 
fciubrtances are found to be most strongly dewed which conduct heat worst, while 
those which conduct well resist dew most effectually. " . . . 

* The conclusion obtained is, that cceteris paribus the deposition of dew is in 
some proportion to the power which the body possesses of resisting the passage of 
heat ; and that this, therefore (or something connected with this), must be at least 
one of the causes which assist in producing the deposition of dew on the surface. 

' ** But if we expose rough surfaces instead of polished, we sometimes find this 
law interfered with. Thus, rougliened iron, especially if painted over or blackened, 
liecomes dewed sooner than varnished paper : the kind of surface, therefore, has a 
gi'eat influence. Expose, then, the same material in very diversified states as U 
surface " (that is, employ the Method of Difference to ascertain concomitance of 
variations), " and another scale of intensity becomes at once apparent ; thoe* 



OHAP. V.J miLOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 499 

mi^faces which pari with tJieir heat most readily by radiation, are found to contract 
dew most copiously. "... 

* The conclusion obtained by this new application of the method is, that teterU 
paribus the deposition of dew is also in some proportion to the power of radiating 
heat ; and that the quality of doing this abundantly (or some cause on which ±at 
quality depends) is another of the causes which promote the deposition of dew on 
the substance. 

* "Again, the influence ascerta'ued to exist of substance and surface leads us to 
consi ^°r that of texture ; and here, again, we are presented on trial with remark- 
able differences, and with a third scale of intensity, pointing out substances of a 
close firm texture, such as stones, metals, etc., as unfavourable, but those of a 
loose one, as cloth, velvet, wool, eiderdown, cotton, etc., as eminently favourable 
to the contraction of dew. " The Method of Concomitant Variations is here, for the 
third time, had recourse to ; and, as before, from necessity, since the texture of no 
substance is absolutely firm or absolutely loose. Looseness of texture, therefore, 
or something which is the cause of that quality, is another circumstance which 
promotes the deposition of dew ; but this third cause resolves itself into the first, 
viz. the quality of resisting the passage of heat : for substances of loose texture 
"are precisely those which are best adapted for clothing, or for impeding the free 
passage of heat from the skin into the air, so as to allow their outer surfaces to be 
very cold, while they remain warm within. "... 

* It thus appears that the instances in which much dew is depositea, which ar« 
very various, agree in this, and, so far as we are able to observe, in this only, that 
they either radiate heat rapidly or conduct it slowly : qualities between which 
there is no other circumstance of agreement than that by virtue of either, the 
body tends to lose heat from the surface more rapidly than it can be restored from 
within. The instances, on the contrary, in which no dew, or but a small quantity 
of it, is formed, and which are also extremely various, agree (so far as we can 
observe) in nothing except in not having this same property. . . . 

* This doubt we are now able to resolve. We have found that, in every such 
instance, the substance must be one which, by its own properties or laws, would, 
if exposed in the night, become colder than the surrounding air. The coldness, 
therefore, being accounted for independently of the dew, while it is proved that 
there is a connection between the two, it must be the dew which depends on the 
coldness ; or, in other v/ords, the coldness is the cause of the dew. 

* This law of causation, already so amply established, admits, however, of 
efficient additional conoboration in no less than three ways. First, by deduction 
from the known laws of aqueous vapour when diffused through air or any other 
gas ; and though we have not yet come to the Deductive Method, we will not omit 
what Is necessary to render this speculation complete. It is known by direct 
experiment that only a limited quantity of water can remain suspended in the state 
of vapour at each degree of temperature, and that this maximum grows less and 
less as the temperature diminishes. From this it follows deductively, that if 
there is akeady as much vapour suspended as the air will contain at its existing 
temperature, any lowering of that temperature will cause a portion of the vapour 
to be condensed, and become water. But, again, we know deductivel ', from the 
laws of heat, that the contact of the air with a body colder than itself, will neces- 
Barily lower the temperature of the stratum of air immediately applied to its 
surface ; and will therefore cause it to part with a portion of its water, which 
accordingly will, by the ordinary laws of gravitation or cohesion, attach itself to th« 
•urfaee of th« body, thereby constituting dew. This deductive" proof, it will hftTt 



500 MODERN AUTHORS [BOOK 

been seen, has the advantage of proving at once cansation as well as co-existence { 
and it has the additional advantage that it also accounts for the excejit'wns to tht 
occurrence of the phenomenon, the cases in which, although the body is coldei 
than the air, yet no dew is deposited, by showing that this will necessarily he the 
case when the lir is so under-supplied with aqueous vapour, comparatively to it* 
temperature, that even when somewhat coded by the contact of the ccldei body, 
it can still continue to hold in suspension all tke vapour which was previously 
suspended in it : thus in a very dry summer there are no dews, in a very dry 
winter no hoar frost. . . . 

* The second corroboration of the theory is by direct experiment, according to 
the canon of the Method of Difference. We can, by cooling the surface of any 
body, find in all cases some temperature (more or less inferior to that of the 
surrounding air, according to its hygi'ometric condition) at which dew will begin 
to be deposited. Here, too, therefore, the causation is directly proved. "We can, 
it is true, accomplish this only on a small scale ; but we have ample reason to 
conclude that the same operation, if conducted in Nature's great laboratory, would 
equally produce the effect. 

* And, finally, even on that great scale we are able to verify the result. The 
case is one of those rare cases, as we have shown them to be, in which nature 
works the experiment for us in the same manner in which we ourselves perform it ; 
introducing into the previous state of things a single and perfectly definite new 
circumstance, and manifesting the effect so rapidly that there is not time for any 
other material change in the pre-existing circumstances. ** It is observed that dew 
is never copiously deposited in situations much screened from the open sky, and 
not at all in a cloudy night ; but if the clouds witJidraw even for a few minutes^ 
and leave a clear opening, a deposition of dew presently begins, and goes on 
increasing. . . . Dew formed in clear intervals will often even evaporate again 
when the sky becomes thickly overcast." The proof, therefore, is complete, that 
the presence or absence of an uninterrupted communication with the sky causes 
the deposition or non-deposition of dew. Now, since a clear sky is nothing but 
the absence of clouds, and it is a known property of clouds, as of all other bodies 
between which and any given object nothing intervenes but an elastic fluid, that 
they tend to raise or keep up the superficial temperature of the object by radiating 
heat to it, we see at once that the disappearance of clouds will cause the surface to 
cool ; so that Nature in this case produces a change in the antecedent by definite 
and known means, and the consequent follows accordingly : a natural experin^ it 
whi;h satisfies the requisitions of the Method of Difierence.* 

IX 

These four are net all the scientific methods, but they lead up W 
the rest. They are all linked together, and no one has shown thoir 
connection better than MilL In many cases these processes of isola- 
tion are powerless ; namely, in those in which the effect, being pro- 
duced by a concourse of causes, cannot be reduced into its elements 
Methods of isolation are then impracticable. We cannot eliminate, and 
consequently we cannot perform induction. This serious difHcuhy 
presents itself in almost all cases of motion, for almost every movement 
is the effect of a concurrence of forces ; and the respective effects of the 
various forces are found so mixed up in it that we cannot separate them 
without destroying it» so that it seems impossible to tell what part each 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 501 

force has in the production of this movement. Take a body acted upon 
by two forces whose directions form an angle : it moves along tha 
diagonal; each part, each moment, each position, each element of its 
movement, is the combined effect of the two impelling forces. The twa 
effects are so commingled, that we cannot isolate either of them and 
refer it to its source. In order to perceive each effect separately, we 
snould have to consider the movements apart, that is, to suppress the 
sw'tual movement, and to replace it by others. Neither the Method of 
Agreement, nor of Difference, nor of Residues, nor of Conconiitai\t 
Variations, which are all decomposing and eliminative, can avail against 
a phenomenon which by its nature excludes all elimination and decom- 
position. We must therefore evade the obstacle ; and it is here that 
the last key of nature appears, the Method of Deduction. We quit 
the study of the actual phenomenon, we pass beside it, we observe other 
and simpler cases; we establish their laws, and we connect each to its 
cause by the ordinary methods of induction. Then, assuming the con- 
currence of two or of several of these causes, we conclude from their 
known laws what will be their total effect. We next satisfy ourselves 
as to whether the actual movement exactly coincides with the move- 
ment foretold ; and if this is so, we attribute it to the causes from 
which we have deduced it. Thus, in order to discover the causes of the 
planetary motions, we seek by simple induction the laws of two causes : 
first, the force of primitive impulsion in the direction of the tangent ; 
next, an accelerative attracting force. From these inductive laws we 
deduce by calculation the motion of a body submitted to their combined 
influence ; and satisfying ourselves that the planetary motions observed 
coincide exactly with the predicted movements, we conclude that th« 
two forces in question are actually the causes of the planetary motions. 
* To the Deductive Method,' says Mill, 'the human mind is indebted fol 
its most conspicuous triumphs in the investigation of nature. To it we 
owe all the theories by which vast and complicated phenomena are 
embraced under a few simple laws.' Our deviations have led us further 
than the direct path ; we have derived efficiency from imperfection. 

X. 

If we now compare the two methods, their aptness, function, and 
provinces, we shall find, as in an abstract, the history, divisions, hopes, 
and limits of human science. The first appears at the beginning, the 
second at the end. The first necessarily gained ascendency in Bacon's 
time,^ and now begins to lose it ; the second necessarily lost ascendency 
in Bacon's time, and now begins to regain it. So that science, after 
having passed from the deductive to the experimental state, is now 
passing from the experimental to the deductive. Induction has for its 
province phenomena which are capable of being decomposed, and on 
which we can experiment. Deduction has for its province indecom- 

* Mill's Logic, i. 526 



502 MODERN AUTHORS. ^ [BOOK V 

posable phenomena, or such on which we cannot experiment. The first 
is efficacious in physics, chemistry, zoology, and botany, in the earliei 
stages of every science, and also whenever phenomena are but slightly 
complicated, within our reach, capable of being modified by means 
at our disposal. The second is efficacious in astronomy, in the higher 
branches of physics, in physiology, history, in the higher grades of every 
science,, whenever phenomena are very complicated, as in animal and 
social liio, or lie beyond our reach, as the motions of the heavenly 
bodies and the changes of the atmosphere. When the proper met hod 
is not employed, science is at a stand-still : when it is employed, science 
progresscis. Here lies the whole secret of its past and its present. If 
the physical sciences remained stationary till the time of Bacon, it was 
because men used deduction when they should have used induction. 
If physiology and the moral sciences are now making slow progress, it 
is because we employ induction when deduction should be used. It 
is by deduction, and according to physical and chemical laws, that 
we shall be enabled to explain physiological phenomena. It is by 
deduction, and according to mental laws, that we shall be enabled 
to explain historical phenomena/ And that which has become the 
instrument of these two .sciences, it is the object of all the others to 
employ. All tend to become deductive, and aim at being summed up 
in certain general propositions, from which the rest may be deducei 
The less numerous these propositions are, the more science advances. 
The fewer suppositions and postulates a science requires, the more per- 
fect it has become. Such a reduction is its final condition. Astro- 
nomy, acoustics, optics, present us models. We shall know nature when 
we shall have deduced her millions of facts from two or three laws. 
I venture to say that the theory which you have just heard is perfect. 
I have omitted several of its characteristics, but you have seen enough 
to recognise that induction has nowhere been explained in so complete 
and precise a manner, with such an abundance of fine and just distinc- 
tions, with such extensive and exact applications, with such a know- 
ledge of effectual practice and acquired discoveries, with so complete an 
exclusion of metaphysical principles and arbitrary suppositions, and 
in a spirit more in conformity with the rigorous procedure of modern 
experimental science. You asked me just now what Englishmen have 
e£[(!Cted in philosophy ; I answer, the theory of Induction. Mill is the 
last of that great line of philosophers, which begins at Bacon, and which, 
through Ilobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Herschell, is continued down 
to our own times. They have carried our national spirit into philo- 
sophy ; they have been positive and practical ; they have not soared 
above facts ; they have not attempted out-of-the-way paths ; they hav^ 

» See Chapter 9, book vi. v. 2, 478, on The Physical or Concrete Deductive 
Method as applied to Sociology ; and chapter 13, book iii.. for explanatione 
h.fter Liebig, of Decomposition, Respiration, the Action of Poisons, etc. A 
whole book is devoted to the logic of the moral sciences ; I know no bettor 
treatise on the iiibioct. 



CHAP. V.J f»HILOSOPHr— STUART MILL. 503 

cleared the human mind of its illusions, presumptions, and fancies. 
They have employed it in the only direction in which it can act ; they 
only wished to mark out and lit up the already well-trodden ways of the 
progressive sciences. They have not been willing to spend their hibour 
vainly in other than explored and verified paths ; they have aided in 
the great modern work, the discovery of applicable laws ; they have 
contributed, as men of special attainments do, to the increase of man's 
power. Can you find many philosophers who have done as mud ? 

XL 

Yon will tell me that our philosopher has clipped his wings iu ordei 
to strengthen his legs. Certainly ; and he has acted wisely. Expe- 
rience limits the career which it opens to us ; it has given us our goal, 
but also our boundaries. We have only to observe the elements of 
which our experience is composed, and the facts from which it sets 
out, to understand that its range is' limited. Its nature and its method 
confine its progress to a few steps. And, in the first place,^ the ulti- 
mate laws of nature cannot be less numerous than the several distinct 
species of our sensations. We can easily reduce a movement to another 
movement, but not the sensation of heat to that of smell, or of colour, 
or of sound, nor either of these to a movement. We can easily con- 
nect together phenomena of different degrees, but not phenomena 
differing in species. We find distinct sensations at the bottom of all 
our knowledge, as simple indecomposable elements, separated absolutely 
one from another, absolutely incapable of being reduced one to another. 
Let experience do what she will, she cannot suppress these diversities 
which constitute her foundation. On the other hand, experience, do 
what she will, cannot escape from the conditions under which she acts. 
Whatever be her province, it is bounded by time and space ; the fact 
which she observes, is limited and influenced by an infinite number of 
other facts to which she cannot attain. She is obliged to suppose oi re- 
cognise some primordial condition from whence she starts, and which she 
does not explain.* Every problem has its accidental or arbitrary data : 
we deduce the rest fi'om these, but there is nothing from which these 
Z&n be deduced. The sun, the earth, the planets, the initial impulse 
^f the heavenly bodies, the primitive chemical properties of substances, 



* Mill's Logic, ii. 4. 

* * There exists in nature a number of Permanent Causes, which have subsisted 
ever since the huinun race has been in existence, and for an indefinite and probably 
an enormous length of time previous. The sun, the earth, aud planets, with theii 
various constituents, air, water, and the other distinguishable substances, whethel 
Bimple or compound, of which nature is made up, are sucii permanent Causes. 
They havetf-rJsted, and the eifects or consequences which they were fitted to 
produce have taken place (as often as the other conditions of the production 
met), from the very beginning of our experience. But we can give no 
account of the origin of the Permanent Causes themselves.' — MiLj/s Zy'.^t'c 
i. "47^ 



504: MODERN AUTHORS. [B30K V 

are such data.^ If we possessed them aU, we could explain ererything 
by them, but we could not explain these themselves. Mill says : 

* "Why these particular natural agents existed originally and no others, or wty 
they are commingled in such and such proportions, and distributed in such and 
such a manner throughout space, is a question we cannot answer. Mor* than thifl , 
we can discover nothing regular in the distribution itself ; we can rediice it tft nc 
uniformity, to no law. There are no means by which, from the distribution iA 
theire causes or agents in one part of space, we could conjecture whether a simiiai 
diatribution prevails in another. ' ^ 

And astronomy, which, just now, afforded us the model J a perffjct 
science, now affords us an example of a limited science. We can pre- 
dict the numberless positions of all the planetary bodies ; but we *ire 
obliged to assume, beside the primitive impulse and its amount, not 
only the force of attraction and its law, but also the masses and dis- 
tances of all the bodies in question. We understand millions of facts, 
but it is by means of a hundred facts which we do not comprehend ; 
we arrive at necessary results, but it is only by means of accidental 
antecedents ; so that, if the theory of our universe were completed, there 
would still remain two great voids : one at the commencement of the 
physical world, the other at the beginning of the moral world ; the one 
comprising the elements of being, the other embracing the elements 
of experience ; one containing primary sensations, the other primitive 
agents. * Our knowledge,' says Royer-Collard, * consists in tracing 
ignorance as far back as possible.' 

Can we at least affirm that these irreducible data are so only in 
appearance, and in comparison with our mind? Can we say that they 
have causes, like the derived facts of which they are the causes ? Can 
we conclude that every event, always and everywhere, happens accord- 
ing to laws, and that this little world of ours, so well regulated, is a 
sort of epitome of the universe ? Can we, by the aid of axioms, quit 
car narrow confines, and affirm anything of the universe ? In no wise; 

1 * The resolution of the laws of the heavenly motions established the pre"viouslj 
unknown ultimate property of a mutual attraction between all bodies : the reso« 
lution, so far as it has yet proceeded, of the laws of crystallization, or chemical 
composition, electricity, magnetism, etc., points to various polarities, ultimatelj 
inherent in the particles of which bodies are composed ; the comparative atoEiic 
weights of different kinds of bodies were ascertained by resolving, into more general 
laws, the uniformities observed in the prcportions in which substances combina 
with one another ; and so forth. Thus, although every resolution of a coniplex 
uniformity into simpler and more elementary laws has an apparent tendency to 
diminish the number of the ultimate properties, and really does remove many pro- 
perties from the list ; yet, (since the result of this simplifying process is to trace 
up an ever greater variety of different effects to the same agents), the further we 
advance in this direction, the greater number of distinct properties we are forced 
to recognise in one and the same object ; the co-existences of which properties mast 
accordingly be ranked among the ultimate generalities of nature.' — INtiCL's 
LoQ'ic, ii. 108. 2 jiifi^ I 378. 



CHAP. V.J PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 50a 

and it is here that Mill pushes his principles to its fmthest conse- 
quences : for the law which attributes a cause to every event, has to 
him no other foundation, worth, or scope, than what it derives from 
experience. It has no inherent necessity ; it draws its whole authority 
from the great number of cases in which we have recognised it to bf 
true : it only sums up a mass of observations ; it unites two data, which, 
CJmsidered in themselves, have no intimate connection ; it joins ante 
cedents generally to consequents generally, just as the law of gravi- 
tation joins a particular antecedent to a particular consequent ; it 
determines a couple, as do all experimental laws, and shares in theii 
uncertainty and in their restrictions. Listen to this bold assertion : 

' I am convinced that any one accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who ^vill 
fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, wlieu his imagination has once 
learnt to entertain the notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for 
instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the 
universe, events m»ay succeed one another at random, without any fixed law ; nor 
can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or 
indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case. The grounds, 
therefore, which warrant us in rejecting such a supposition with respect to any oi 
the phenomena of which we have experience, must be sought elsewhere than in 
any supposed necessity of oui* intellectual faculties. ' ^ 
Practically, we may trust in so well-established a law ; but 

* In distant parts of the stellar regions, where the phenomena may be entirely 
unlike those with which we are acquainted, it would be folly to aflirm confidently 
that this general law prevails, any more than those special ones which we have 
found to hold universally on our own planet. The uniformity in the succession of 
events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be receiJved not as a law of the 
universe, but of that portion of it only which is within the range of our means of 
sure observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases. To 
extend it fm-ther is to make a supposition without evidence, and to which, in the 
absence of any ground from experience for estimating its degree of probability, it 
would be idle to attempt to assign any.' ^ 

We are, then, irrevocably driven back from the infinite ; our faculties 
and our assertions cannot attain to it ; we remain confined in a small 
ciro.le ; our mind reaches not beyond its experience ; we can establish 
no universal and necessary connection between facts ; such a connection 
probably does not even exist. Mill stops here ; but certainly, by carry- 
ing out his idea to its full extent, we should arrive at the conception of 
the woild as a mere collection of facts ; no internal necessity would 
induce their connection or their existence ; they would be simple arbi- 
trary, accidentally-existing facts. Sometimes, as in our system, they 
would be found assembled in such a manner as to give rise to regular 
recurrences ; sometimes they would be so assembled that nothing of the 
Bort would occur. Chance, as Democritus taught, would be at the 
foundation of all things. Laws would be the result of chance, and 
•ometimes we should find them, sometimes not. It would be with 

*"" 1 Mill's Logic, ii. 95. '■* Ibid, ii, 104. 



606 MODERN ATJTHORS. [BOOK V 

existences as with mimbers — decimal fractions, for instance, which, 
according to the chance of their two primitive factors, sometimes recui 
regularly, and sometimes not. This is certainly an original and lofty 
conception. It is the final consequence of the primitive and dominant 
idea, which we have discovered at the beginning of the system, whfch 
has transformed the theories of Definition, of Propositions, and of the 
Syllogism ; which has reduced axioms to experimental truths ; which 
has developed and perfected the theory of induction ; which has estab- 
lished the goal, the limits, the province, and the methods of science j 
which everywhere, in nature and in science, has suppressed interior 
connections; which has replaced the necessary by the accidental; cause 
by antecedent ; and which consists in affirming that every assertion 
which is not merely verbal forms in effect a couple, that is to say, 
joins together two facts which were separate by their nature. 

§ 2. — Abstraction, 

I 
An abyss of chance and an abyss of ignorance. The prospect if 

gloomy : no matter, if it be true. At all events, this theory of science 
is a theory of English science. Rarely, I grant you, has a thinker 
better summed up in his teaching the practice of his country ; seldom 
has a man better represented by his negations and his discoveries the 
limits and scope of his race. The operations, of which he composes 
science, are those in which you excel all others, and those which he 
excludes from science are the ones in which you are deficient more 
than any other nation. He has des(?ribed the English mind whilst he 
thought to describe the human mind. That is his glory, but it is also 
his weakness. There is in your idea of knowledge a flaw of which the 
incessant repetition ends by creating the gulf of chance, from which, 
according to him, all things arise, and the gulf of ignorance, at whose 
brink, according to him, our knowledge ends. And see what comes of 
it. By cutting away from science the knowledge of first causes, that is, of 
divine things, you reduce men to become sceptical, positive, utilitarian, 
if they are cool-headed ; or mystical, enthusiastic, method is tical, if they 
have lively imaginations. In this huge unknown void which you place 
beyond our little world, hot-headed men and uneasy consciences find room 
for all their dreams ; and men of cold judgment, despairing of arriving at 
any certain knowledge, have nothing left but to sink down to the sejirch 
for practical means which may serve for the amelioration of our condi- 
tion. It seems to me, that these two dispositions are most frequently met 
with in an English mind. The religious and the positive spirit dwell there 
side by side, but separate. This produces an odd medley, and I confess 
that I prefer the way in which the Germans have reconciled science with 
faith. — But their philosophy is but badly written poetry. — Perhaps 
to.— But what they call reason, or intuition of principles, is only tht 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 507 

faculty of building up hypotheses. — Perhaps so. — But the systems which 
they have constructed have not held their ground before experience.— 
I do not defend what they have done. — But their absolute, their sub- 
ject, their object, and the rest, are but big words. — I do not defend 
their style. — What, then, do you defend ?— Their idea of Causation. — 
You believe with them that causes are discovered by a revelation c4 
th? reason! — By no means. — You believe with us that our knowledge 
of causes is based on simple experience ? — Still less. — You think, then, 
ihat there is a faculty, other than experience and reason, capable o! 
discovering causes ? — Yes. — You think there is an intermediate course 
between illumination and observation, capable of arriving at principles, 
as it is affirmed that the first is, capable of arriving at truths, as we find 
that the second is ? — Yes. — What is it? — Abstraction. Let us return 
to your original idea; I will endeavour to show in what I think it in- 
complete, and how you seem to me to mutilate the human mind. But 
you must give me space ; it will be a regular argument of an advocate. 

II. 

Your starting-point is good : man, in fact, does not know anything 
of substances ; he knows neither minds nor bodies ; he perceives only 
transient, isolated, internal conditions ; he makes use of these to affirm 
and name exterior states, positions, movements, changes, and av;iils 
himself of them for nothing else. He can only attain to facts, whether 
within or without, sometimes transient, when his impression is not 
repeated ; sometimes permanent, when his impression many times 
repeated, makes him suppose that it will be repeated, as often as he 
wishes to experience it. He only grasps colours, sounds, resistances, 
movements, sometimes momentary and variable, sometimes like one 
another, and renewed. To group these facts more advantageously, he 
supposes, by an artifice of language, qualities and properties. We go 
even further than you: we think that there are neither minds nor 
bodies, but simply groups of present or possible movements or thoughts. 
We believe that there are no substances, but only systems of facts. 
We regard the idea of substance as a psychological illusion. We con- 
sider substance, force, and all the modern metaphysical existences, as 
the remains of scholastic entities. We think that there exists nothing 
but facts and laws, that is, events and the relations between them; and 
we recognise, Avith you, that all knowledge consists first of all in con- 
necting or adding fact to fact. But when this is done, a new opera- 
tion begins, the most fertile of all, which consists, in reducing thesi 
complex into simple facts. A splendid faculty appears, the source oi 
language, the inter^^reter of nature, the parent of religions and philo- 
sophies, the only genuine distinction, which, according to its degree, 
separates man from the brute, and great from little men. I mean 
Abstraction, which is the power of isolating the elements of facts, and 
of considering them one by one. My eyes follow the outline of a square 



508 MODERN AUTHORS. /BOOK V. 

and abstraction isolates its two constituent properties, the equality 

of its sides and angles. My fingers touch the surface of a cylinder, 
and abstraction isolates its two generative elements, the idea of a 
rectangle, and of the revolution of this rectangle about one of its sides 
&s an axis. A hundred thousand experiments develop for me, by an 
infinite number of details, the series of physiological operations which 
constitute life ; and abstraction derives the law of this series, which is a 
i ound of constant loss and continual reparation. Twelve hundred pages 
teach me Llill's opinion on the various facts of science, and abstraction 
isolates his fundamental idea, namely, that the only fertile propositions 
are those which connect a fact to another not contained in the first. 
Everywhere the case is the same. A fact, or a series of facts, can always 
be resolved into its components. It is this resolution which forms ouf 
problem, when we ask what is the nature of an object. It is these com- 
ponents we look for when we wish to penetrate into the inner nature of 
a being. These we designate under the names of forces, causes, laws, 
essences, primitive properties. They are not new facts added to the 
f rst, but a portion or extract from them ; they are contained in the first, 
they have no existence apart from the facts themselves. When we 
discover them, we do not pass from one fact to another, but from one 
to another aspect of the same fact ; from the whole to a part, from the 
compound to the components. We only see the same thing under two 
forms ; first, as a whole, then as divided : we only translate the same 
idea from one language into another, from the language of the senses 
into abstract language, just as we express a curve by an equation, or a 
cube as a function of its side. It signifies little whether this trans- 
lation be difl[icult or not ; or that we generally need the accumulation 
or comparison of a vast number of facts to arrive at it, and whether our 
mind may not often succumb before accomplishing it. However this 
may be, in this operation, which is evidently fertile, instead of proceed- 
ing from one fact to another, we go from the same to the same ; instead 
of adding experiment to experiment, we set aside some portion of the 
Erst; instead of advancing, we pause to examine the ground we stand 
0/1. There are, thus, instructive judgments, which, however, are not the 
n^sults of experience : there are essential propositions, which, however, 
ai e not merely verbal : there is, thus, an operation, diftering from experi- 
ence, which acts by cutting down instead of by addition ; which, instead 
of acquiring, devotes itself to acquired data ; and which, going farther 
than observation, opening a new field to the sciences, defines their 
nature, determines their progress, completes their resources, and marks 
out their end. 

This is the great omission of your system. Abstraction is left in the 
background, barely mentioned, concealed by the other operations of the 
mind, treatnd as an appendage of Experience ; we have but to re-estab- 
lish it in the general theory, in order to reform the particular theories 
in which it is absent 



iJHAP. V. PHILOSOPHY— tSTUART MILL. 



509 



m. 

To begin with Definitions. Mill teaches that there is no definition 
of things, and that when you define a sphere as the solid generated by 
the revolution of a semi-circle about its diameter, you only define a 
Diime. Doubtless jou tell me by this the meaning of a name, but you 
«iso teach me a good deal more. You state that all the properties of 
every sphere are derived from this generating formula ; you reduce an 
infi/utely complex system of facts to two elements; you transform sensible 
into abstract data ; you express the essence of the sphere, that is to 
say, the inner and primordial cause of all its properties. Such is the 
nalui s of every true definition ; it is not content with explaining a 
name, it is not a mere description ; it does not simply indicate a dis- 
tinctive property ; it does not limit itself to ticketing an object which 
will cause it to be distinguished from all others. There are, besides its 
definition, several other ways of causing the object to be recognised ; 
there are other properties belonging to it exclusively : we might de- 
scribe a sphere by saying that, of all bodies having an equal surface, 
it occupies the most space ; or in many other ways. But such descrip- 
tions are not definitions ; they lay down a characteristic and derived 
property, not a generating and primitive one ; they do not reduce the 
thing to its factors, and reconstruct it before our eyes ; they do not 
show its inner nature and its irreducible elements. A definition is a 
proposition which marks in an object that quality from which its others 
are derived, but which is not derived from others. Such a proposition 
is not verbal, for it teaches the quanty of a thing. It is not the affir- 
mation of an ordinary quality, for it reveals to us the quality which is 
the source of the rest. It is an assertion of an extraordinary kind, the 
most fertile and valuable of all, which sums up a whole science, and 
in which it is the aim of every science to be summed up. There is 
a definition in every science, and one for each object. We do not in 
every case possess it, but we search for it everywhere. We have 
arrived at defining the planetary motion by the tangential force and 
attraction which compose it ; we can already partially define a chemical 
bodj by the notion of equivalent, and a living body by the notion of 
type. We are striving to transform every group of phenomena into 
certain laws, forces, or abstract notions. We endeavour to attain in 
every object to the generating elements, as we do attain them in the 
sphere, the cylinder, the circle, the cone, and in all mathematical loci. 
We reduce natural bodies to two or three kinds of movement — 
attraction, vibration, polarisation — as we reduce geometrical bodies to 
two or three kinds of elements — the point, the movement, the line ; 
and we consider our science partial or complete, provisional or definite, 
according as this reduction is approximate or absolute, imperfect ol 
complete. 



510 MODERN AUTHOfiS. [BOOK ? 



IV. 

The same alteration is required in the Theory of Proof. According 

to Mill, we do not prove that Prince Albert will die by premising that 
all men are mortal, for that would be asserting the same thing twi^e 
over; but from the facts that John, Peter, and otliers, in short, ajj 
men of whom we have ever heard, have died. — I reply that the real 
source of our inference lies neither in the mortality of John, Peter, 
and company, nor in the mortality of all men, but elsewhere. Wfi 
prove a fact, says Aristotle,^ by showing its cause. We shall therefor* 
prove the mortality of Prince Albert by showing the cause which pro- 
duces his death. And why will he die ? Because the human body, 
being an unstable chemical compound, must in time be resolved ; in 
other words, because mortality is added to the quality of man. Here 
is the cause and the proof. It is this abstract law which, present in 
nature, will cause the death of the prince, and which, being present to 
my mind, shows me that he will die. It is this abstract proposition 
which is demonstrative ; it is neither the particular nor the general 
propositions. In fact, the abstract proposition proves the others. If 
John, Peter, and others are dead, it is because mortality is added to 
the quality of man. If all men are dead, or will die, it is still because 
mortality is added to the quality of man. Here, again, the part played 
by Abstraction has been overlooked. Mill has confounded it with 
Experience : he has not distinguished the proof from the materials of 
the proof, the abstract law from the finite or indefinite number of its 
applications. The applications contain the law and the proof, but are 
themselves neither law nor proof. The examples of Peter, John, and 
others, contain the cause, but they are not the cause. It is not suffi- 
cient to add up the cases, we must extract from them the law. It is 
not enough to experimentalise, we must abstract. This is the great 
scientific operation. Syllogism does not proceed from the particular to 
the particular, as Mill says, nor from the general to the particular, aa 
the ordinary logicians teach, but from the abstract to the concrete ; that 
is to say, from cause to effect. It is on this ground that it forms part 
of science, the links of which it makes and marks out; it connects 
principles with effects ; it brings together definitions and phenomena. 
It diffuses through the whole range of science that Abstraction which 
definition has carried to its summit. 

V. 

Abstraction explains also axioms. According to Mill, if we know 
that when equal magnitudes are added to equal magnitudes the wholes 
are equal, or that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, it is by 

^ See the Posterior Analytics, which are much superior to the Piior— 

'fil clriLn.' KCLl TTpOTiflUV. 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 511 

external ocular experiment, or by an internal experiment by the aid 
of imagination. Doubtless we may thus arrive at tlie conclusion that 
two straight lines cannot enclose a space, but we might recognise it also 
in another manner. We might represent a straight line in imagination, 
and we may also form a conception of it by reason. We may either study 
its form or its definition. We can observe it in itself, or in its generating 
dements. I can represent to myself a line ready drawn, but I can also 
iesoho it into its elements. I can go back to its formation, and dis- 
cover the abstract elements which produce it, as I have watched the 
formation of the cylinder and discover the revolution of the rectangle 
which generated it. It will not do to say that a straight line is the 
shortest from one point to another, for that is a derived property ; but 
I may say that it is the line described by a point, tending to approach 
towards another point, and towards that point only : which amounts to 
saying that two points suffice to determine a straight line ; in other 
words, that two straight lines, having two points in common, coincide 
in their entire length ; from which we see that if two straight lines 
approach to enclose a space, they would form but one straight line, and 
enclose nothing at all. Here is a second method of arriving at a know- 
ledge of the axiom, and it is clear that it differs much from the first. 
In the first we verify ; in the second we deduce it. In the first we 
find by experience that it is true ; in the second we prove it to be true. 
In the first we admit the truth ; in the second we explain it. In the 
first we merely remark that the contrary of the axiom is inconceivable ; 
in the second we discover in addition that the contrary of the axiom is 
contradictory. Having given the definition of the straight line, we find 
that the axiom that two straight lines cannot enclose a space is comprised 
in it, and may be derived from it, as a consequent from a principle. In 
fact, it is nothing more than an identical proposition, which means that 
the subject contains its attribute ; it does not connect two separate 
terms, irreducible one to the other ; it unites two terms, of which the 
second is a part of the first. It is a simple analysis, and so are all 
axioms. We have only to decompose them, in order to see that they 
do not proceed from one object to a different one, but are concerned 
with one object only. We have but to resolve the notions of equality, 
cause, substance, time, and space into their abstracts, in order to de- 
monstrate the axioms of equality, substance, cause, time, and space. 
There is but one axiom, that of identity. The others are only its ap- 
plications or its consequences. When this is admitted, we at once sec 
that the range of our mind is altered. We are no longer merely capable 
of relative and limited knowledge, but also of absolute and infinite 
knowledge ; we possess in axioms facts which not only accompany one 
another, but one of which includes the other. If, as Mill says, they 
merely accompanied one another, we should be obliged to conclude 
with him, that perhaps this might not always be the case. We shoidd 
Aot see the inner necessity for their coanection, and should only admil 



612 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK \ 

ie as far as our experience went ; we should say that, the two faoti 
bxiing isolated in their nature, circumstances might arise in which they 
would be separate ; we should affirm the truth • of axioms only in 
reference to our world and mind. If, on the contrary, the two facts are 
such that the first contains the second, we should establish on this very 
ground the necessity of their connection ; wheresoever the first may be 
found, it will carry the second with it, since the second is a part of it, 
and cannot be separated from it. No circumstance can exist between 
them and divide them, for they are but one thing under different 
aipects. Their connection is therefore absolute and universal ; and we 
possess truths which admit neither doubt, nor limitation, nor condition, 
nor restriction. Abstraction restores to axioms their value, whilst it 
shows their origin ; and we restore to science her dispossessed dominion, 
by restoring to the mind the faculty of which it had been deprived. 

VI. 

Induction remains to be considered, which seems to be the triumph 
of pure experience, while it is, in reality, the triumph of abstraction. 
When I discover by induction that cold produces dew, or that the 
passage frpm the liquid to the solid state produces crystallisation, I 
establish a connection between two abstract facts. Neither cold, nor 
dew, nor the passage from the liquid to the solid state, nor crystallisa- 
tion, exist in themselves. They are parts of phenomena, extracts from 
complex cases, simple elements included in compound aggregates. I 
withdraw and isolate them ; I isolate dew in general from all local, 
temporary, special dews which I observe ; I isolate cold in general from 
all special, various distinct colds which may be produced by all varieties 
of texture, all diversities of substance, all inequalities of temperature, 
all complications of circumstances. I join an abstract antecedent to an 
abstract consequent, and I connect them, as Mill himself shows, bv 
subtractions, suppressions, eliminations ; I expel from the two groups, 
containing them, all the proximate circumstances ; I discover the couple 
under the surroundings which obscure it ; I detach, by a series of com- 
parisons and experiments, all the subsidiary accidental circumstances 
\Nhich have clung to it, and thus I end by laying it bare. I seem to 
ba considering twenty different cases, and in reality I only consider one; 
I appear to proceed by addition, and in fact I am performing subtraction. 
All the methods of Induction, therefore, are methods of Abstiftction, 
and all the work of Induction is the connection of abstract facts. 

VII. 
We see now the two great moving powers of science, and the two 
great manifestations of nature. There are two operations, experieuca 
and abstraction ; there are two kingdoms, that of complex facts, and that 
of simple elements. The first is the effect, the second the cause. The 
first is contained in the second, and is deduced from it, as a consequeni 



CHAP. V.l PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 515 

from its principle. Both are equivalent ; they are one and the samt 
thing considered under two aspects. This magnificent mctving universe, 
this tumultuous chaos of mutually dependent events, this incessant life, 
infinitely varied and multiplied, may be all reduced to a few elemenli 
and their relations. Our whole efforts amount in passing from one to 
the other, from the complex to the simple, from facts to laws, from 
experiences to formulae. And the reason of this is evident ; for this 
fact which I perceive by the senses or the consciousness is but a 
fragment arbitrarily severed by my senses or my consciousness from 
the infinite and continuous woof of existence. If they were differently 
constituted, they would intercept other fragments ; it is the chance of 
their structure which determines what is actually perceived. They are 
like open compasses, which might be more or less extended ; and the 
area of the circle which they describe is not natural, but artificial. It 
is so in two ways, both externally and internally. For, when I con- 
sider an event, I isolate it artificially from its natural surroundings, and 
I compose it artificially of elements which do not form a natural group. 
When I see a falling stone, I separate the fall from the anterior circum- 
stances which are really connected with it ; and I put together the fall, 
the form, the structure, the colour, the sound, and twenty other circum- 
stances which are really not connected with it. A fact, then, is an 
arbitrary aggregate, and at the same time an arbitrary severing ; ^ that 
is to say, a factitious group, which separates things connected, and 
connects things that are separate. Thus, so long as we only regard 
nature by observation, we do not see it as it is : we have only a pro- 
visional and illusory idea of it. Nature is, in reality, a tapestry, of which 
we only see the reverse ; this is why we try to turn it. We strive 
to discover laws ; that is, the natural groups which are really distinct 
from their surroundings, and composed of elements really connected. 
We discover couples ; that is to say, real compounds and real con- 
nections. We pass from the accidental to the necessary, from the 
relative to the absolute, from the appearance to the reality ; and having 
found these first couples, we practise upon them the same operation as 
we did upon facts, for, though in a less degree, they are of the same 
nature. Though more abstract, they are still complex. They may be 
decomposed and explamed. There is some ulterior reason for their 
existence. There is some cause or other which constructs and unites 
them. In their case, as well as for facts, we can search for gimerating 
elements into which they may be resolved, and from which they may 
be deduced. And this operation may be continued until we have 
arrived at ele nents wholly simple ; that is to say, such that their 
decomposition would involve a contradiction. Whether we can find 
them or not, they exist ; the axiom of causation would be falsified if 

1 An eminent student of physical science said to me ; * A fact is a supef 
position of laws.' 
VOL. n. 2 K 



514 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK 1 

they were absent. There are, then, indecomposable elements, from 
which are derived more general laws ; and from these, again, more 
Bpecial laws ; and from these the facts which we observe ; just as in 
geometry there are two or three primitive notions, from which are 
dedticed the properties of lines, and from these the properties of sur- 
faces, solids, and the numberless forms which nature can produce or the 
mind imagine. We can now comprehend the value and meaning of 
that axiom of causation which governs all things, and which Mill has 
mutilated. There is an inner constraining force which gives rise to 
eveiy event, which unites every compound, which engenders every 
actual fact. This signifies, on the one hand, that there is a reason for 
everything ; that every fact has its law ; that evtry compound can be 
reduced to simple elements ; that every product implies factors ; that 
every quality and every being must be reducible from some superior 
and anterior term. And it signifies, on the other hand, that the pro- 
duct is equivalent to the factors, that both are but the same thing under 
diflferent aspects; that the cause does not differ in nature from the 
effect ; that the generating powers are but elementary properties ; that 
the active force by which we represent Nature to our minds is but 
the logical necessity which mutually transforms the compound and 
the simple, the fact and the law. Thus we determine beforehand the 
limits of every science ; and we possess the potent formula, which, 
establishing the invincible connection and the spontaneous production 
of existences, places in Nature the moving spring of Nature, whilst it 
drives home and fixes in the heart of every living thing the.iron fangs 
of necessity. 

vnL 

Can we arrive at a knowledge of these primary elements ? For my 
part, I think we can ; and the reason is, that, being abstractions, they 
are not beyond the region of facts, but are comprised in them, so that 
we have only to extract them from the facts. Besides, being the most 
abstract, that is, the most general of all things, there are no facts which 
do not comprise them, and from which we cannot extract them. How- 
ever limited our experience may be, we can arrive at these primary 
notions ; and it is from this observation that the modern German meta- 
physicians have started in attempting their vast constructions. They 
understood that there are simple motions, that is to say, indecomposable 
abstract facts, that the combinations of these engender all others, and 
that the laws for their mutual union or contrarieties, are the primary 
laws of the universe. They tried to attain to these ideas, and to 
evolve by pure reason the world as observation shows it to us. They 
have failed ; and their gigantic edifice, factitious and fragile, hangs in 
ruins, reminding one of those temporary scaffoldings which only serve 
to mark out the plan of a future building. The reason is, that with a 
high notion of our powers, they had no exact view of their limits. For 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 515 

we are outflanked on all sides by the infinity of time and 8pac(>, ; w« 
find ourselves thrown in the midst of this monstrous universe like a 
shell on the beach, or an ant at the foot of a steep slope. Here Mill is 
right. Chance is at the end of all our knowledge, as on the threshold 
of all our postulates : we vainly try to rise, and that by conjecture, to 
an initial state; but this state depends on the preceding one, which 
depends on another, and so on ; and thus we are forced to accept it aa 
a pure postulate, and to give up the hope of deducing it, though w« 
know that it ought to be deduced. It is so in all sciences, in geology, 
natural history, physics, chemistry, psychology, history ; and the primi- 
tive accidental fact extends its effects into all parts of the sphere in 
which it is comprised. If it had been otherwise, we should have neither 
the same planets, nor the same chemical compounds, nor the same 
vegetables, nor the same animals, nor the same races of men, nor, per- 
haps, any of these kinds of beings. If an ant were taken into another 
country, it would see neither the same trees, nor insects, nor disposi- 
tions of the soil, nor changes of the atmosphere, nor perhaps any of 
these forms of existence. There is, then, in every fact and in every 
object, an accidental and local part, a vast portion, which, like the 
rest, depends on primitive laws, but not directly, only through an 
infinite circuit of consequences, in such a way that between it and the 
primitive laws there is an infinite hiatus, which can only be bridged 
over by an infinite series of deductions. 

Such is the inexplicable part of phenomena, and this is what the 
German metaphysicians tried to explain. They wished to deduce from 
their elementary theorems the form of the planetary system, the various 
laws of physics and chemistry, the main types of life, the progress 
of human civihsations and thought. They contorted their universal 
formula with the view of deriving from them particular cases ; they 
took indirect and remote consequences as direct and proximate ones ; 
they omitted or suppressed the great work which is interposed between 
the first laws and the final consequences ; they discarded Chance from 
their construction, as a basis unworthy of science ; and the void so 
left, all but filled up by deceptive materials, caused the whole edifice to 
fall to ruins. 

Does this amount to saying, that in the facts with which this little 
corner of the universe furnishes us, everything is local ? By no means. 
If an ant were capable of making experiments, it might attain to the 
idea of a physical law, a living form, a representative sensation, an 
abstract thought ; for a foot of ground, on which there is a thinking 
brain, includes all these. Therefore, however limited be the field of the 
mind, it contains general facts ; that is, facts spread over very vast 
external territories, into which its limitation prevents it from entering. 
If the ant were capable of reasoning, it might construct arithiiieti<\ 
algebra, geometry, mechanics ; for a movement of half an inch containi 
in abstract time, space, number, and force, all the materials of mathe* 



516 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

matics : therefore, however limited the field of a mind's researches be, 
it includes universal data ; tj^at is, facts spread over the whole region 
of time and space. Again, if the ant were a philosopher, it might 
evolve the ideas of existence, of nothingness, and all the materials ol 
metaphysics ; for any phenomenon, interior or exterior, suffices to pie- 
sent these materials : therefore, however limited the field of a mind 
be, it contains absolute truths ; that is, such that there is no object 
from which they could be absent. And this must necessarily be so ; for 
the more general a fact is, the fewer objects need we examine to meet 
with it. If it is universal, we meet with it everywhere ; if it is absolute, 
we cannot escape meeting it. This is why, in spite of the narrowness 
of our experience, metaphysics, I mean the search for first causes, is 
possible, but on condition that we remain at a great height, that we do 
not descend into details, that we consider only the most simple ele- 
ments of existence, and the most general tendencies of nature. If any 
one were to collect the three or four great ideas in which our sciences 
result, and the three or four kinds of existence which make up our 
universe ; if he were to compare those two strange quantities which we 
call duration and extension, those principal forms or determinations of 
quantity which we call physical laws, chemical types, and living species, 
and that marvellous representative power, the Mind, which, without 
falling into quantity, reproduces the other two and itself; if he dis- 
covered among these three terms — the pure quantity, the determined 
quantity, and the suppressed quantity ^ — such an order that the 
first must require the second, and the second the third ; if he thus 
established that the pure quantity is the necessary commencement of 
Nature, and that Thought is the extreme term at which Nature is 
wholly suspended ; it, again, isolating the elements of these data, he 
showed that they must be combined just as they are combined, and 
not otherwise ; if he proved, moreover, that there are no other elements, 
and that there can be no other, he would have sketched out a system 
of metaphysics without encroaching on the positive sciences, and have 
attained the source without being obliged to descend to trace the 
various streams. 

In my opinion, these two great operations. Experience as you have 
described it, and Abstraction, as I have tried to define it, comprise 
in themselves all the resources of the human mind, the one in ita 
practical, the other in its speculative direction. The first leads us to 
consider nature as an assemblage of facts, the second as a systen. of 
laws: the exclusive employment of the first is English; that of the 
second, German. If there is a place between these two nations, it is 
ours. We have extended the English ideas in the eighteenth century; 
and now we can, in the nineteenth, add precision to German ideas. Our 
business is to restrain, to correct, to complete the two types of mind, 

* Die aiifgehobene Quantitat. 



CHAP, v.] PHILOSOPHY— STUART MILL. 511 

oiic by the other, to combine them together to express theii ideas in a 
style generally understood, and thus to produce from them the univer- 
sal mind. 

IX. 

We went out. As it ever happens in similar circumstances, each 
had caused the other to reflect, and neither had convinced the other. 
But our reflections were short; in the presence of a lovely August 
morning, all arguments fall to the ground. The old walls, the rain- 
worn stones, smiled in the rising sun. A fresh light rested on theit 
embrasures, ou the keystones of the cloisters, on the glossy ivy leaves. 
Roses and honeysuckles climbed the walls, and their flowers quivered 
and sparkled in the light breeze. The fountains murmured in the large 
lonely courts. The beautiful town stood out from the morning's mist, 
as adorned and tranquil as a fairy palace, and its robe of soft rosy 
vapour was indented, as an embroidery of the Renaissance, by a border 
of towers, cloisters, and palaces, each enclosed in verdure and decked 
with flowers. The architecture of all ages had mingled their ogives, 
trefoils, statues, and columns ; time had softened their tints ; the sun 
united them in its light, and the old city seemed a shrine to which every 
age and every genius had successively added a jewel. Beyond this, 
the river rolled its broad sheets of silver ; the mowers stood up to the 
knee in the high grass of the meadows. Myriads of buttercups and 
meadow-sweet grasses, bending under the weight of their grey heads, 
plants sated with the dew of the night, swarmed in the rich soil. Words 
cannot express this freshness of tints, and their luxuriance of vegetation. 
The more the long line of shade receded, the more brilliant and full of 
life the flowers appeared. On seeing them, virgin and timid in their 
gilded veil, I thought of the blushing cheeks and modest eyes of a 
young girl Avho puts on for the first time her necklace of jewels. 
Around, as though to guard them, enormous trees, four centuries old, 
extended in regular lines ; and I found in them a new trace of that 
practical good sense which has effected revolutions without committing 
ravages ; which, while reforming in all directions, has destroyed 
nothing ; which has preserved both its trees and its constitution, which 
has lopped off" the dead branches without levelling the trunk; whi;h 
alone, in our df\ys, among all nations, is in the enjoyment not only of 
(he preeent, but of the past 



518 MODERN AUTHORS. rBOOK V 



CHAPTER VI 

Poetry. — Tennyson. - 

I. Talent and work — First attempts — Wherein he was fppo^d to preceding 

poets — Wherein he carried ou their spirit. 
II. First period — Female characters — ^Delicacy and refiner ent of sentiment and 
style — Variety of his emotions and of his subjects — Literary curiosity and 
poetic dilettantism — Tlie Dying Swan — The Lotos-Eaters. 

III. Second period — Popularity, good fortune, and life — Permanent sensibility and 

virgin freshness of the poetic temperament — Wherein he is at one with 
nature — Locksley Hall — Change of subject and style — Violent outbreak and 
personal feeling — Maud. 

IV. Return of Tennyson to his first style — In Memoriam — Elegance, coldness, 

and lengthiness of this poem — The subject and the talent must harmonise — 
What subjects agree with the dilettante artist — TJie Princess — Comparison 
with As You Like It — Fanciful and picturesque world — How Tennyson 
repeats the dreams and the style of the Renaissance. 
V. How Tennyson repeats the freshness and simplicity of the old epic — The 
Idylls of the King — Why he has restored the epic of the Round Table- 
Purity and elevation of his models and his poetry — Elaine — Morte d' Arthur 
—Want of individual and absorbing passion — Flexibility and disinterested- 
ness of his mind — Talent for metamorphosis, embellishment, and refine- 
ment. 
VI. His public — Society in England — Country comfort — ^Elegance — ^Educatioa— 
Habits— Wherein Tennyson suits such a society — Society in France — 
Parisian life — Pleasures— Representation — Conversation — Boldness of mind 
— ^Wherein Alfred de Musset suits such a society — Comparison of the two 
societies and ^f the tw? poets. 



WHEN lennyson published his first poems, the critics found fault 
with them. He held his peace ; for ten years no one saw his 
name in a review, nor even in a publisher's catalogue. But when he 
appeared again before the public, his books had made their way alone 
aud under the surface, and he passed at once for the greatest poet of 
his countrj' and his time. 

Men were surprised, and with a pleasmg surprise. The potent 
gen( ration of poets who had just died out, had passed like a whirlwind. 
Like their forerunners of the sixteenth century, they had carried awaj 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY— TENNYSON. 

and hurried everything to its extremes. Some had culled the gigan« 
tic legends, piled up dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, th^ 
Middle Ages, and overloaded the human imagination with tones and 
fancies from every clime. Others had buried themselves in meta- 
physics and morality, had mused indefatigably on the human condi- 
tion, and spent their lives in the sublime and the monotonous. Others, 
making a medley of crime and heroism, had conducted, through dark- 
ness and flashes of lightning, a train of contorted and terrible figures, 
desperate with remorse, relieved by their grandeur. Men wanted to 
rest after so many eiForts and so much excess. Quitting the imaginative 
sentimental and Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All the 
forms and ideas which had pleased them were found in him, but puri- 
fied, modulated, set in a splendid style. He completed an age ; he 
enjoyed that which had agitated others ; his poetry was like the lovely 
evenings in summer : the outlines of the landscape are then the same 
as in the day-time ; but the splendour of the dazzling dome is dulled ; 
the re-invigorated flowers lift themselves up, and the calm sun, on the 
horizon, harmoniously blends in a network of crimson rays the woods 
and meadows which it just before burned by its brightness. 

II. 

What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of women. 
Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, the May Queen, were keepsake characters, 
from the hand of a lover and an artist. The keepsake is gilt-edged, 
embossed with flowers and decorations, richly got up, soft, full of deli- 
cate figures, always elegant and always correct, which we might take to 
be sketched at random, and which are yet drawn carefully, on white 
vellum, slightly touched by their outline, all selected to rest and occupy 
the tender, white hands of a young bride or a girl. I have translated 
many ideas and many styles, but I shall not attempt to translate one of 
these portraits. Each word of them is like a tint, curiously deepened or 
shaded by the neighbouring tint, with all the boldness and success of 
the happiest refinement. The least alteration would obscure all. And 
there could not be too much of an art so just, so consummate, in 
painting the charming prettinesses, the sudden hauteurs, the half 
blushes, the imperceptible and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty 
He opposes, harmonises them, makes them, as it were, into a gallery- 
Here is the frolicsome child, the little flirting fairy, who claps hel 
liny hands, who, 

• So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple. 

From beneath her gather'd wimple 

Glancing with black-beaded eyes, 

Till the lightning laughters dimple 

The baby -roses in her cheeks ; 

Then away she flies.'* 



Poems by A. Teuuvsoii, Uh ed. ISol ; Lilian, 5. 



520 MODERN AUTHORS. BOOii ? 

Then the thoughtful fair, who thinks, with staring large blue eyet : 

* Whence that aery bloom of thine. 
Like a lily which the sun 
Looks thro' in his sad decline. 
And a rose-bush leans upon, 
Thou that faintly smilest still. 
As a Naiad in a well, 

Looking at the set of day.' * 

Anew * the ever varying Madeline,' now smiling, then Crowning, thet 
joyful again, then angry, then uncertain between the t^^o: 

* Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow 
Light-glooming over eyes divine, 
Like little clouds sun-fringed. ' ' 

The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. Ha 
caressed them so carefully, that his verses appeared at times far-fetched, 
affected, almost euphuistic. He gave them too much adornment and 
polishing ; he seemed like an epicurean in style, as well as in beauty. 
He looked for pretty rustic scenes, touching remembrances, curious or 
pure sentiments. He made them into elegies, pastorals, and idyls. He 
wrote in every accent, and delighted in entering into the feelings of all 
ages. He wrote of St. Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses, (Enone, Sir 
Galahad, Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He imitated alter- 
nately Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, the old English poets 
and the old Arabian poets. He gave life successively to the little real 
events of English life, and the great fantastic adventures of extinguished 
chivalry. He was like those musicians who use their bow in the ser- 
vice of all masters. He strayed through nature and history, with no 
preoccupation, without fierce passion, bent on feeling, relishing, culling 
from all parts, in the fiower-stand of the drawing-room and in the 
rustic hedgerows, the rare or wild ilowers whose scent or beauty could 
charm or amuse him. Men entered into his pleasure ; smelt the 
graceful bouquets which he knew so well how to put together; pre- 
ferred those which he took from the country ; found that his talent 
was nowhere more easy. They admired the minute observation and 
refined sentiment which knew how to grasp and interpret the fleeting 
Jispects. In the Dying Swan they forgot that the subject was almost 
threadbare, and the interest somewhat slight, that they might appre- 
ciate such verses as this : 

'Some blue peaks in the distance rose, 
And white against the cold-white sky, 
Shone out their crowuing snows. 

One willow over the river wept. 
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh ; 
Above in the wind was the swallow, 

» PoemB by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851 ; Adelines 33. ^ Ibid, Madeline 15- 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY— TENNYSOJS. 521 

Chasing itself at its own wild will, 
And far thro' the marish green and still 

The tangled water-courses slept. 
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.'' 

But these melancholy pictures did not display him entirely; men 

accoinpanied him to the land of the sun, toward the soft voluptuousnesi 
of southern seas ; they returned, with an involuntary fascination, to the 
verses in which he depicts the companions of Ulysses, who, slumbering 
in the land of the Lotos-eaters, happy dreamers like himself, forgot 
fcheir countr'-, and renounced action ; 

* A land of streams ! some, like a downward smoke, 
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; 
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke^ 
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below 
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow 
From the inner land : far off, three mountain-tops, 
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, 
Stood sunset-flush'd : and^ dew'd with showery drops, 
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. . • • 

There is sweet music here that softer falls 

Than petal from blown roses on the grass, 

Or night-dews on still waters between walls 

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ; 

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies. 

Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes ; 

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skifit. 

Here are cool mosses deep, 

And tliro' the moss the ivies creep, 

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, 

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. . • • 

Lo ! in the middle of the wood. 

The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud 

"With winds upon the branch, and there 

Grows green and broad, and takes no caie^ 

Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon 

Nightly dew-fed ; and turning yellow 

Falls, and floats adown the air. 

L) ! sweeten'd with the summer light. 

The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow. 

Drops in a silent autumn night. 

All its allotted length of days. 

The flower ripens in its place. 

Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil. 

Fast-rooted in the fruitful soiL . . . 

But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly. 

How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)^ 

» Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed, 1851 ; The Dying Swa7i, 45. 



522 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK » 

With half-dropt eyelids still, 
Beneath a heaven dark and holy. 
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly 
His waters from the purple hill- 
To hear the dewy echoes calling 
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine — 
To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling 
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine ! 
Only to hear and see the far-oflf sparkling brine, 
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine." 

IIL 

Was this charming dreamer simply a dilettante ? Men liked to 

consider him so ; he seemed too happy to admit violent passions. Fame 
came to him easily and quickly, at the age of thirty. The Queen had 
justified the public favour by creating him Poet Laureate. A great 
writer had declared him a more genuine poet than Lord Byron, and 
maintained that nothing so perfect had been seen since Shakspeare. 
The student^ at Oxford, put Tennyson's works between an annotated 
Euripides and a manual of scholastic philosophy. Young ladies found 
him amongst their marriage presents. He was called rich, venerated 
by his family, admired by his friends, amiable, without affectation, 
even unsophisticated. He lived in the country, chiefly in the Isle of 
Wight, amongst books and flowers, free from the annoyances, rivalries, 
and burdens of society, and his life was easily imagined to be a beauti- 
ful dream, as sweet as those which he had pictured. 

Yet the men who looked closer saw that there was a fire of passion 
under this smooth surface. A genuine poetic temperament never fails 
him. He feels too acutely to be at peace. When we quiver at the least 
touch, we shake and tremble under great shocks. Already here and 
there, in his pictures of country and love, a brilliant verse broke 
with its glowing colour through the calm and correct outline. He had 
felt that strange growth of unknown powers which suddenly arrest a 
man with fixed gaze before revealed beauty. The specialty of the 
poet is to be ever young, for ever virgin. For us, the vulgar, things 
Ere threadbare ; sixty centuries of civilisation have worn out their 
primitive freshness ; we perceive them only through a veil of ready-made 
phrases; we employ them, we no longer comprehend them; we see in 
them no more magnificent flowers, but good vegetables ; the luxuriant 
primeval forest is to us nothing but a well-planned, over-known, 
kitchen garden. On the other hand, the poet, in presence of this 
world, is as the first man on the first day. In a moment our phrases, 
our reasonings, all the trappings of memory and prejudice, vanish 
from his mind ; things seem new to him ; he is astonished and ravished ; 
ft headleng stream of sensations oppresses him ; it is the all-poten(- 

__ — — — ■ i' ^. 

» Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th od. 1851 ; Uie Lotos-EateUi 140. 



CHAP. VI.J POETRY— TENMYSON. 533 

tap of human invention, which, checked in us, begins to flow in 
him. Fools call him mad, the truth being that he is a seer : for we 
may indeed be sluggish, but nature is always full of life ; the rising sun 
is as beautiful as on the first dawn ; the streaming floods, the multiply- 
ing flowers, the trembling passions, the forces which hurl onward the 
stormy whirlwind of existence, aspire and strive with the same energy 
8S at their birth ; the immortal heart of nature beats yet, heaving its 
coarse trappings, and its beatings work in the poet's heart when they 
no longer echo in our own. Tennyson felt this, not indeed always j 
but twice or thrice at least he has dared to make it heard. We have 
found the free action of full emotion, and recognised the voice of a man 
in these verses of Locksley Hall : 

* Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so yonng^ 
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. 

And I said, ** My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me^ 
Trust me, cousin, all the cuiTent of my being sets to thee." 

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light. 
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. 

And she turn'd — her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs — 
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes — 

Saying, ** I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong ;** 
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin ?" weeping, " 1 have loved thee long/ 

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands ; 
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might j 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. 

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring. 
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Springi 

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, 
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips. 

my cousin, shallow-hearted ! my Amy, mine no more I 
O the dreary, dreary moorland ! the barren, barren shore ! 

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have simg, 
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue I 

Is it well to wish thee happy ? — having known me— to decline 
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine 1 

Yet it shall be : thou shalt lower to his level day by day, 
"What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay. 

As the husband is, the wife is : thou art mated with a clown, 

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to diag thee down. 

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel foroe^ 
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. 

"What is this ? his eyes are heavy : think not they are glazed with wine. 
Ck to him : it is thy duty : kiss him ; take his hand in thine. 



524 MODEKN AUTHORS. [BOOK ^ 

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwronght : 

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought. 

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand — 

Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand ! *' 

lliis is very frank and strong. Maud appeared still more so. In it 
the rapture broke forth with all its inequalities, familiarities, freedom, 
violence. The correct, measured poet gave himself up, seemed to think 
and weep aloud. This book is the secret diary of a gloomy young man, 
Boured by great family misfortunes, by long solitary meditations, who 
gradually became enamoured, dared to speak, found himself loved. He 
does not sing, but speaks ; they are the hazarded, reckless words of 
ordinary conversation ; details of everyday life ; the description of a 
toilet, a political dinner, a service and sermon in a village church. The 
prose of Dickens and Thackeray did not more firmly grasp real and 
actual manners. And by its side, most splendid poetry abounded and 
blossomed, as in fact it blossoms and abounds in the midst of our 
commonplaces. The smile of a richly dressed girl, a sunbeam on a 
stormy sea, or on a spray of roses, throws these sudden illuminations 
into impassioned souls. What verses are these, in which he represents 
himself in his dark little garden : 

* A million emeralds break from the ruhy-hudded lime 
In the little grove where I sit — ah, wherefore cannot I be 
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland, 
"When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, 
Half lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea. 
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land ? ' * 

What a holiday in bis heart when he is loved ! What madness in these 
cries, that intoxication, that tenderness which would pour itself on all, 
and summon all to the spectacle and the participation of his happiness 1 
How all is transfigured in his eyes ; and how constantly he is himself 
transfigured 1 Gaiety, then ecstasy, then childish fun, then satire, then 
outpourings, all ready movements, all sudden changes, like a crackling 
and flaming fire, renewing every moment its shape and colour : how 
rich is the soul, and how it can live a hundred years in a day 1 Sur- 
prised and insulted by the brother, he kills him in a duel, and loses heJ 
whom he loved. He flees ; he is seen wandering in London. What a 
gloomy contrast is that of the great busy careless town, and a solitary 
man haunted by true grief ! We follow him down the noisy streets, 
through the yellow fog, under the wan sun which rises above the river 
like a * dull red ball,' and we hear the heart full of anguish, deep sobs, 
insensate agitation of a soul which would but cannot tear itself from its 
memories. Despair grows, and in the end the reverie becomes a vision : 

* Dead, long dead. 
Long dead ! 

Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851 \ Locksley Hall, 266. 
- Mnudi 1856) iv. 1, p. 15 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY— TENNYSON. 



525 



And my heart is a handful of dust, 

And the wheels go over my head. 

And my bones are shaken with pain, 

For into a shallow grave they are thrust, 

Only a yard beneath the street, 

And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat, 

The hoofs of the horses beat, 

Beat into my scalp and my brain. 

With never an end to the stream of passing feet, 

Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying. 

Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter.* . . . 

me 1 why have they not buried me deep enough ? 
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough. 

Me, that was never a quiet sleeper ? 
Maybe still I am but half-dead ; 
Then I cannot be wholly dumb ; 

1 will cry to the steps above my head. 

And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come 
To bury me, bury me 
Deeper, ever so little deeper. ' * 

However, he revives, and gradually rises again. War breaks out, a 
liberal and generous war, the war against Russia ; and the big, manlj 
heart is healed by action and courage of the deep wound of love ; 
* And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath 
"With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry. . . . 
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar ; 
And many a darkness into the light shall leap, 
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, 
And noble thought be freer under the sun, 
And the heart of a people beat with one desire *, 
For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done^ 
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep. 
And deathful -grinning mouths of the fortress, flames 
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. ' ^ 

This explosion of feeling was the only one ; Tennyson has not again 
encountered it. In spite of the moral close, men said that he was 
imitating Byron ; they oried out against these bitter declamations ; 
they thought that they perceived the rebellious accent of the Satanio 
school ; they blamed this uneven, obscure, excessive style ; they were 
shocked at these crudities and incongruities ; they called en the poet 
to return to his first well-proportioned style. He was discouraged, left 
the storm-clouds, and returned to the azure sky. He was right ; he is 
there better than anywhere else. A fine soul may be transported, attain 
at times to the fire of the most violent and the strongest beings : personal 
memories, they say, had furnished the matter of Maud and of Locksley 
HaU; with a woman's delicacy, he had the nerves of a woman. The 

1 Tennyson's Maud,l^hQ, xxvii. 1, p. 99. * Ibid, xxvii. 11, p. 105. 

» Ibid, xxviii. 3 and 4, p. 108. 



526 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

fit over, he fell again into his * golden languors,' into his calm reverie. 
After Locksley Hall he had written the Princess ; after Maud he wrot« 
the Idylls of the King. 

IV. 

The great task of an artist is to find subjects which suit his talent 
Tennyson has not always succeeded in this. His long poem, In MemO' 
rtam, written in praise and memory of a friend who died young, is cold, 
monotonous, and often too prettily arranged. He goes into mourning ; 
but, like a correct gentleman, with bran new gloves, wipes away his 
tears with a cambric handkerchief, and displays throughout the reli- 
gious service, which ends the ceremony, all the compunction of a 
respectful and well-trained layman. He was to find his subjects else- 
where. To be poetically happy is the object of a dilettante-artist. 
For this many things are necessary. First of all, that the place, the 
events, and the characters shall not exist. Realities are coarse, and 
always, in some sense, ugly ; at least they are heavy : we do not tieat 
them at our pleasure, they oppress the fancy ; at bottom there is no- 
thing truly sweet and beautiful in our life but our dreams. We are ill 
at ease whilst we remain glued to earth, hobbling along on our two feet, 
which drag us wretchedly here and there in the place which impounds us. 
We need to live in another world, to hover in the wide-air kingdom, 
to build palaces in the clouds, to see them rise and crumble, to follow in 
a hazy distance the whims of their moving architecture, and the turns 
of their golden volutes. In this fantastic world, again, all must be 
pleasant and beautiful, the heart and senses must enjoy it, objects must 
be smiling or picturesque, sentiments delicate or lofty ; no crudity, 
incongruity, brutality, savageness must come to sully with its excess the 
modulated harmony of this ideal perfection. This leads the poet to the 
legends of chivalry. Here is the fantastic world, splendid to the sight, 
noble and specially pure, in which love, war, adventures, generosity, 
courtesy, all spectacles and all virtues which suit the instincts of our 
European races, are assembled, to furnish them with the epic which they 
love, and the model which suits them. 

The Princess is a fairy tale as sentimental as those of Shakspcare. 
Tennyson here thought and felt like a young knight of the Renaissance. 
The mark of this kind of mind is a superabundance, as it were, a 
superfluity of sap. In the characters of the Princess, as in those of 
As Yon Like It, there is an over-fulness of fancy and emotions. They 
have recourse, to express their thought, to all ages and lands ; they 
carry speech to the most reckless rashness ; they clothe and burden 
every idea with a sparkling image, which drags and glitters upon it 
like a brocade clustered with jewels. Their nature is over-rich ; at 
every shock there is in them a sort of rustle of joy, anger, desire ; they 
live more than we, more warmly and more quickly. They are exces' 
live, refined, ready to weep, laugh, adore, jest, inclined to mingl« 



CEAP VI.] POETRY— TENNYSON. 527 

adoration and jests, urged by a nervous rapture to contrasts, and even 
extremes. They sally in the poetic field with impetuous and changing 
caprice and joy. To satisfy the subtlety and superabundance of their 
originality, they need fairy-tales and masquerades. In fact, the Princess 
is both. The beautiful Ida, daughter of King Gama, who is monarch of 
the South (this country is not to be found on the map), was affianced 
in her childhood to a beautiful prince of the North. When the time 
appointed has arrived, she is claimed. She, proud and bred on learned 
arguments, has become irritated against the rule of men, and in order to 
liberate women has founded a university on the frontiers, which is to 
raise her sex, and to be the colony of future equality. The prince sets 
out with CyrU and Florian, two friends, obtains permission from ^ood 
King Gama, and, disguised as a girl, enters the maiden precincts, where 
no man may enter in on pain of death. There is a charming and rally- 
ing grace in this picture of a university for girls. The poet sports with 
beauty ; no badinage could be more romantic or tender. We smile 
to hear long learned words come from these rosy lips : 

* There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils. ' ^ 

They listen to the historic dissertations and promises of the social 
revolution, in * Academic silks, in hue the lilac, with a silken hood to 
each, and zoned with gold, ... as rich as moth from dusk cocoons.' 
Amongst these girls was Melissa, a child — 

* A rosy blonde, and in a college gown 
That clad her like an April daffodilly 
(Her mother's colour) with her lips apart, 
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes^ 
As bottom agates seem to wave and float 

In crystal currents of clear morning seas.'* 

Be sure that the place assists in the magic. That plain title of College 
and Faculty recalls in Frenchmen only scant and dirty buildings, which 
we might mistake for barracks or furnished lodgings. Here, as in 
an English university, flowers creep up the porches, vines cling round 
the bases of the monuments, roses strew the alleys with their petals ; 
the laurel thickets grow around the gates, the courts pile up their 
jnarble architecture, bossed with sculptured friezes, varied with urns 
fiom which droops the green pendage of the plants. * The Muses and 
the Graces, group'd in threes, enring'd a billowing fountain in the 
midst.' After the lecture, some girls, in the deep meadow glass, 
* imoothed a petted peacock down ; ' others, 

* Leaning there on those balusters, high 

Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That blown about the foliage underneath, 



Tfie Princess a Medley, 12th ed. 1864. ii. 34. » Ihid, ii 46 



628 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

And sated with the innumerable rose 
Beat balm upon our eyelids. ' ^ 

At every gesture, every attitude, we recognise young English girls ; it 
is their brightness, their freshness, their innocence. And here and 
there, too, we perceive the deep expression of their large dreamy eyea i 

* Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more, • • • 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.'* 

This is an exquisite and strange voluptuousness, a reverie full of delight, 
and full, too, of anguish, the shudder of delicate and melancholy pas- 
sion which we have already found in Winter's Tale or in Twelfth 
Night. 

The three friends have gone forth with the princess and her train, 
all on horseback, and pause ' near a coppice-feather'd chasm,* 

* tiU the Sun 
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.' 

Cyril, heated by wine, begins to troll a careless tavern-catch, and betrayal 
the secret. Ida, indignant, turns to leave ; her foot slips, and she fallj 
into the river ; the prince saves her, and wishes to flee. But he if 
seized by the Proctors and brought before the throne, where the haughty 
maiden stands ready to pronounce sentence. At this moment 

* . . . There rose 
4 hubbub in the court of half the maids 
Gather'd together : from the illumined hall 
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press 
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes. 
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes. 
And gold and golden heads ; they to and fro 
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pftli^ 
All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light, 
Some crying there was an army in the land, 
And some that men were in the very walls. 
And some they cared not ; till a clamour grew 
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built. 
And worse-confounded : high above them stood 
The placid marble Muses, looking peace. ' * 



• The Princess, a Medley, 13th ed. 1864, iii. 80. 

• lUd. iv. 70. 3 llJl^l^ j^^ 99^ 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY— TENNYSON. 



529 



The father of the prince has come with his army to deliver hin., and 
has seized King Garaa as a hostage. The princess is obliged to release 
the young man ; she comes to him with distended nostrils, waving hair, 
a tempest raging in her heart, and thanks him with bitter irony .° She 
trembles with wounded pride; she stammers, hesitates; she 'tries to 
constrain herself in order the better to insult him, and suddenly breaks 
out: 

* " You have done well and like a gentleman, 
And like a prince : you have our thanks for all : 
And you look well too in your woman's dress : 
Well have you done and like a gentleman. 
You have saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks : 
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — 
Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ? — 
Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive, 
You would-be quenchers of the light to be, 
Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 

would I had his sceptre for one hour ! 

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd 
Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — 
/ wed with thee ! / bound by precontract 
Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho' all the gold 
That veins the world were pack'd to make your crown. 
And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to U8 : 

1 trample on your offers and on you : 
Begone : we will not look upon you more. 
Here, push them out at gates." ' ^ 

How is this fierce heart to be softened, fevered with feminine anger, 
embittered by disappointment and insult, excited by long dreams of 
power and ascendency, and rendered more savage by its virginity ! 
But how anger becomes her, and how lovely she is ! And how this 
fire of sentiment, this lofty declaration of independence, this chimerical 
ambition for reforming the future, reveal the generosity and pride of 
a young heart, enamoured of the beautiful! It is agreed that the 
quarrel shall be settled by a combat of fifty men against fifty other 
men. The prince is conquered, and Ida sees him bleeding on the sand. 
Slowly, gradually, in spite of herself, she yields, receives the wounded 
in her palace, and comes to the bedside of the dying prince. Before his 
Weakness and his wild delirium pity expands, then tenderness, then love j 
* From all a closer interest flourish'd up 

Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, 

Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at fii'st 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself. 

But such as gather'd colour day by day. ' ' 

» The Princess, a Medley, iv. 102. » Ibid. v. 163 

VOL. II. 2 L 



630 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK. V 

One evening he returns to consciousness, exhausted, his eyes still 
troubled by gloomy visions ; he sees Ida before him, hovering like a 
dream, painfully opens his pale lips, and ' utter'd whisperingly :* 

* '* If you be, what 1 think you, some sweet dream, 
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself : 
But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 
I ask you nothing : only, if a dream, 
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die. " 
. . . She turned ; she paused ; 
She stoop'd ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; 
Leapt fiery Passion from the brink of death ; 
And I believe that m the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips ; 
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 
Glowing all over noble shame ; and all 
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe. 
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 
Than in her mould that other, when she came 
From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 
And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 
Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides. 
Naked, a double light in air and wave. ' * 

This is the accent of the Renaissance, as it left the heart of Spenser and 
Shakspeare ; they had this voluptuous adoration of form and soul, and 
this divine sentiment of beauty. 

V. 

There is another chivalry, which inaugurates the Middle Age, as 
this closes it ; sung by children, as this by youths ; and restored in the 
Idylls of the King, as this in the Princess. It is the legend of Arthur, 
Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. With admirable art, 
Tennyson has renewed the feelings and the language ; this pliant ?oul 
takes all tones, in order to give itself all pleasures. This time ht ^as 
become epic, antique, and ingenuous, like Homer, and like the old 
trouveres of the chansons de Geste. It is pleasant to quit ow learr-ed 
civilisation, to rise again to the primitive age and manners, to listen to 
the peaceful discourse Mhich flows copiously and slowly, as a river on 
a smooth slope. The mark of the ancient epic is clearness and caira. 
The ideas were new-born ; man was happy and in his infancy. He 
had not had time to refine, to cut down and adorn his thoughts ; he 
showed them bare. He was not yet pricked by manifold lusts ; he 
thought at leisure. Every idea interested him ; he unfolded it curiously, 
and explained it. His speech never jerks ; he goes step by step, from 
one object to another, and every object seems lovely to him ; he pausea. 



The Princess, a Medley, v. 165. 



CHAP. VI.] POETRY— TENNYSON 533 

observes, and takes pleasure in observing. This simplicity and peace 
are strange and charming ; we abandon ourselves, it is well with us ; 
we do not desire to go more quickly ; we fancy we would gladly remain 
thus, and for ever. For primitive thought is wholesome thought ; we 
have but marred it by grafting and cidtivation; we return to it at 
our familiar element, to find contentment and repose. 

But of all epics, this of the Round Table is distinguished by purity 
Arthur, itje irreproachable king, has assembled 

* A glorious company, the flower of men, 
To serve as model for the mighty world. 
And be the fair beginning of a time. 
I made them lay their hands in mine and swear 
To reverence the King, as if he were 
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, . , , 
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it. 
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
And worship her by years of noble deeds.'* 

There ii a sort of refined pleasure in having to do with such a world ; 
for there is none in which purer or more touching fruits could grow. 
I will show one — ' Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat ' — who, having seen 
Lancelot once, loves him when he has departed, and for her whole life. 
She keeps the shield, which he has left, in a tower, and every day goes 
up to contemplate it, counting * every dint a sword had beaten in it, 
and every scratch a lance had made upon it,' and living on her dreama. 
He is wounded * she goes to tend and heal him : 

* She murmur'd, ** vain, in vain : it cannot be. 
He wiU not love me : how then ? must I die ? ** 
Then as a little helpless innocent bird, 

That has but one plain passage of few notes, 

WiU sing the simple passage o'er and o'er 

For all an April morning, till the ear 

"Wearies to hear it, so the simple maid 

Went half the night repeating, ' ' must I die f " ' * 

At last sh e confesses her secret ; but with what modesty and spirit ! 
lie cannot marry her; he is tied to another. She droops and fades ; 
nor father and brothers try to console her, but she will not be consoled. 
She is told that Lancelot has sinned with the queen ; she does not 
believe it ; 

* At last she said, '* Sweet brothers, yester night 
I seem'd a curious little maid again. 

As happy as when we dwelt among the woods, 
And when you used to take me with the flood 
Up the great river ia the boatman's boat. 
Only you would not pass beyond the cape 

» Idylls cf the King, 18G4 ; Ouinevere 249. '^ Ibid. ; Elaine, 19a 



532 MOx>ERN AUTHOKS. | BOOK f 

That has the poplar on it ; there you fixt 
Your limit, oft returning with the tide. 
And yet I cried because you would not pass 
Beyond it, and far up tlie shining flood 
Until we found the palace of the king. 
. . . Now shall I have my will. " ' * 

Bk« dies, and her father and brothers did what she had asked ; 

* But when the next sun hrake from underground. 
Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows 
Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier 

Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone 
Full summer, to that stream whereon the barg«^ 
Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay. 
There sat the lifelong creature of the house. 
Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck, 
Winking his eyes, and twisted all his face. 
So those two brethren from the chariot took 
And on the black decks laid her in her bed, 
Set in her band a lily, o'er her hung 
The silken case with braided blazonings 
And kiss'd her quiet brows, and saying to her : 
** Sister, farewell for ever," and again 
** Farewell, sweet sister," parted all in tears. 
Then rose the dumb old servitor, and tlie dead 
Steer'd by the dumb went upward with the flood- 
In her right hand the lily, in her left 
The letter — all her bright hair streaming down— 
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold 
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white 
All but her face, and that clear-featured face 
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead 
But fast asleep, and lay as tho' she smiled. ' " 

Hius they arrive at Court in great silence, and King Arthur read *h3 
letter before all his knights and weeping ladies : 

* Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, 
I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat, 
Come, for you left me taking no farewell, 
Hither, to take my last farewell of you. 

I loved you, and my love had no return, 

And therefore my true love has been my death. 

And therefore to our lady Guinevere, 

And to all other ladies, I make moan. 

Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. 

Pray for my soul thou too. Sir Lancelot, 

As thou art a knight peerless. ' ^ 

Nothing more : she ends with this word, full of so sad a regret and ft 
» IdyUs of tJie King; Elaine, 20L * Ibid. 206. ' Ibid. 313. 



POETRY— TENNYSON. 533 

tender an admiration: we could hardly find anything more simple 01 
more delicate. 

It seems as if an archaeologist might reproduce all styles except th« 
grand, and Tennyson has leproduced all, even the grand. It is the 
night of the final battle ; all day the tumult of the mighty fray *roird 
among the mountains by the winter sea ; ' Arthur's knights had fallen 
man by man ;' he himself had fallen, 'deeply smitten through the helm/ 
and Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, bore him to a place hard by, 

' A cliapel nigh the field, 
A broken chancel with a ])ioken cross, 
That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one 
Lay a gi-eat water, and the moon was full.** 

Arthur, feeling himself about to die, bids him take his sword Excalibur 
*and fling him far into the middle meer ;' for he had received it from 
the sea-nymphs, and after him no mortal must handle it. Twice Sir 
Bedivere went to obey the king : twice he paused, and came back pre- 
tending that he had flung away the sword ; for his eyes were dazzled 
by the wondrous diamond setting which clustered and shone about the 
haft. The third time he throws it : 

* The great brand 
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, 
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in aa arch, 
Shot Uke a streamer of the northern morn, 
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock 
♦ By night, with noises of the northern sea. 

So flash'd and fell the brand Excahhur : 
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm 
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, 
And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him 
Three times, and drew him under in the meer. ' ^ 

Then Arthur, rising painfully, and scarce able to breathe, bids Sir 
Bedivere take him on his shoulders and ' bear me to the margin.' 
* Quick, quick ! I fear it is too late, and I shall die.' They arrive thui, 
through ' icy caves and barren chasms,' to the shores of a lake, where 
tliey saw ' the long glories of the winter moon :' 

* They saw then how there hove a dusky barge 
-. Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, 

Beneath them ; and descending they were ware 
Tb-at aU the decks were dense with stately formg 
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by theee 
Three Queens with crowns of gold — and from them ros« 
A cry that shiver'd to the tingling stars, 
And, as it were one voice, an agony 
Of lamentation, like a wind, that shi-ills 

« Po(^ms by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851 ; Morte d' Arthur, 18:i. ' Ihid. 104 



534 MODERN AUTHOES. [BOOK ^ 

All night in a waste land, where no one comes. 
Or hath come, since the making of the world. 

Then mnrmxir'd Arthur: " Place me in the barge,** 

And to the barge they came. There those three Qneens 

Put forth their hands, and took the King and weft 

But she, that rose the tallest of them all 

And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, 

And loosed the shatter'd casque, and chafed his hands 

And call'd him by his name, complaining loud. . . .' * 

Before the barge drifts away, King Arthur, raising his slow voice, con 
soles Sir Bedivere, standing in sorrow on the shore, and prono;moes 
this heroic and solemn farewell : 

* The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways. 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. . . . 
If thou shouldst never see my face again, 
Pray for my souL More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. . . . 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 
But now farewell. I am going a long way 
"With these thou seest, — if indeed I go — 
(For all my mind is clouded witli a doubt) 
To the island-valley of Avilion ; 
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
' Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 

Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawna * 

And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound. ' ■ 

Nothing, I think, calmer and more imposing has been seen since Goethe. 
How, in a few words, shall we asseml)le all the features of so mani- 
fold a talent ? Tennyson is a born poet, that is, a builder of airy palaces 
and imaginary castles. But the individual passion and absorbing pre- 
occupations which generally guide the hands of such men are wanting 
to him ; he found in himself no plan of a new edifice ; he has built 
after all the rest; he has shnply chosen amongst all forms the most 
elegant, ornate, exquisite. Of their beauties he has taken but the 
flower. At most, now and then, he has here and there amused himself 
by designing some genuinely English and modern cottage. If in this 
choice of architecture, adopted or restored, we look for a trace of him, 
we shall find it, here and there, in some more finely sculptured frieze, 
in some more delicate nnd graceful sculptured rose-work ; but we shall 
only find it marked and sensible in the purity and elevation of the moral 
emotion which we shall carry away with us when we quit his gallery 
of art. 

» Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851 ; Morte d' Arthur, 196. « Md. 197 



CHAl'. Vl.j POETUY— TENNYSON. 535 



VL 

The favourite poet of a nation, it seems, is he whose works a man, 
Retting out on a journey, prefers to put into his pocket. Now-a-days it 
would be Tennyson in England, and Alfred de Musset in France. The 
two publics differ: so do their modes of life, their reading, and their 
tolsasures, Lyt us try to describe them ; we shall better understand 
the flowers if we see them in the garden. 

Here we are at Newhaven or at Dover, and we glide over the 
rails looking on either side. On both sides fly past country-houses ; 
they exist everywhere in England, on the margin of lakes, on the edge 
of the bays, on the summit of the hill, in every picturesque point of 
view. They are the chosen abodes ; London is but a busitiess-place ; 
men of the world live, amuse themselves, visit each other, in the 
country. How well ordered and pretty is this house I If near it there 
was some old edifice, abbey, or castle, it has been preserved. The new 
building has been suited to the old; even if detached and modern, 
it does not lack style ; gable-ends, muUions, broad-windows, turrets 
perched at every corner, have a Gothic air in their newness. Even this 
cottage, modest as it is, suited to people, with a very good income, is 
pleasant to see with its pointed roofs, its porch, its bright brown bricks, 
all covered with ivy. Doubtless grandeur is generally wanting ; in 
these days the men v/ho mould opinion are no longer great lords, 
but rich gentlemen, well brought up, and landholders ; it is pleasantness 
which appeals to them. But how they understand the word ! All 
round the house is a lawn fresh and smooth as velvet, rolled every 
niorning. In front, great rhododendrons form a bright thicket in which 
murmur swarms of bees ; festoons of exotics creep and curve over the 
short grass ; honeysuckles clamber up the trees ; hundreds of roses, 
drooping over the Avindows, shed their rain of petals on the paths. Fine 
elms, yew-trees, great oaks, jealously tended, everywhere combine their 
leafage or rear their heads. Trees have been brought from Australia 
and China to adorn the thickets with the eleg;mce or the singularity 
of their foreign shapes ; the copper-beech stretches over the delicate 
verdure the shadow of its dark metaliic-hued foliage. How delicious is 
the freshness of this verdure ! How it glistens, and how it abounds in 
wild flowers brightened by the sun I What care, what cleanliness, how 
everything is arranged, kept up, refined, for the comfort of the senses 
and the pleasure of the eyes ! If there is a slope, streams have been 
devised with little islets in the glen, peopled with tufts of roses ; ducks 
of select breed swim in the pools, where the water-lilies display their 
satin stars. Fat oxen lie in the grass, sheep as white as if fresh from 
the washing, all kinds of happy and model animals, fit to delight the 
eyes of an amateur and a master. We return to the house, and before 
entering I look upon the view ; decidedly the love of Englishmen for 
the country is innate ; how comfortable it will be from that parloui 



536 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK V 

window to look upon the setting sun, and the broad network of sunlight 
spread across the woods I And how cunningly they have disposed the 
house, so that the landscape may be seen at distance between the hills, 
and at hand between the trees 1 We enter. How nicely everything 
is got up, and how commodious ! The least wants have been foreseen, 
provided for ; there is nothing wliich is not correct and perfect ; we 
imagine that all tlie objects have received a prize, or at least honour- 
able mention, at some industrial exhibition. And the attendance of the 
servants is as good as the objects ; cleanliness is not more scrupulous in 
Holland ; Englishmen have, in proportion, three times as many servants 
as Frenchmen ; not too many for the minute details of the service. 
The domestic machine acts without interruption, without shock, with- 
out hindrance ; every wheel has its movement and its place, and the 
comfort which it dispenses falls on the mouth like honeydew, as true 
and as exquisite as the sugar of a model refinery when quite purified. 

We converse with our host. We very soon find that his mind and 
80ul have always been well balanced. When he left college he found 
his career shaped out for him ; no need for him to revolt against the 
Church, which is half rational ; nor against the Constitution, which is 
nobly liberal : the faith and law presented to him are good, useful, 
moral, liberal enough to maintain and employ all diversities of sincere 
minds. He became attached to them, he loves them, he has received 
from them the whole system of his practical and speculative ideas ; he 
does not waver, he no longer doubts, he knows what he ought to believe 
and to do. He is not carried away by theories, dulled by sloth, checked 
by contradictions. Elsewhere youth is like a stagnant or scattering 
water ; here there is a fine old channel which receives and directs to 
a useful and sure end the stream of its activities and passions. He 
acts, works, rules. He is married, has tenants, is a magistrate, become.! 
a politician. He improves and rules his parish, his estate, and his 
family. He founds societies, speaks at meetings, superintends schools, 
dispenses justice, introduces improvements ; he employs his reading, 
his travels, his connections, his fortune, and his rank, to lead his neigh- 
bours and dependants amicably to some work which profits themselves 
and the public. He is influential and respected. He has the pleasures 
of self-esteem and the satisfaction of conscience. He knows that he 
has authority, and that he uses it loyally, for the good of others. And 
this healthy state of mind is supported by a wholesome life. His mind 
is beyond doubt cultivated and occupied ; he is well-informed, knows 
several languages, has travelled, is fond of all precise information ; he 
is kept by his newspaper conversant with all new ideas and disco- 
veries. But, at the same time, he loves and practises all bodily exer- 
cises. He rides, takes long walks, hunts, yachts, follows closely and hj 
himself all the d-etails of breeding and agriculture ; he lives in the opei 
air, he withstands the encroachments of a sedentary life, which alway 
elsewhere leads the modern m.an to agitation of the brain, weaknesii 



;rHAP. VI. \ POETRY— TENNYSON. 



537 



of the muscles, and excitement of the nerv(}a. Such is this elegant 

and common-sense society, refined :i comfort, regular in conduct, 
whose dilettante tastes and moral principles confine it within a sort 
of flowery border, and prevent it from having its attention diverted. 

Does any poet suit such a society better than Tennyson ? Without 
being a pedant, he is moral; he may be read in the family circle by 
night ; he does not rebel against society and life ; he speaks of (lod 
ftnd the soul, nobly, tenderly, without ecclesiastical prejudice; there 
is no need to reproach him like Lord Byron ; he has no violent and 
abrupt words, excessive and scandalous sentiments; he will pervert 
nobody. We shall not be troubled when we close the book ; we may 
listen when we quit him, without contr'^st, to the grave voice of the 
master of the house, who repeats the evening prayers before the 
kneeling servants. And yet, when we quit him, wo keep a smile of 
pleasure on our lips. The traveller, the lover of arcliseolog)', has been 
pleased by the imitations of foreign and antique senti]nent3. The 
sportsman, the lover of the country, has relished the little country scenes 
and the rich rural pictures. The ladies have been charmed by his 
portraits of women ; they are so exquisite and pure 1 He has laid 
such delicate blushes on those lovely ciieeks ! He has depicted so well 
the changing expression of those proud or candid eyes ! They like 
him because they feel that he likes them. More, he honours them, 
and rises in his nobility to the height of their purity. Young girls 
weep in listening to him ; certainly when, a while ago, we heard the 
legend of Elaine or JEnid read, we saw the fair heads drooping under tlie 
flowers which adorned them, and white shoulders heaving with furtive 
emotion. And how delicate was this emotion I He has not rudely 
trenched upon truth and passion. He has risen to the height of noble 
and tender sentiments. He has gleaned from all nature ano all history 
what was most lofty and amiable. He has chosen his ideas, chiselled 
his words, equalled by his artilices, successes, and diversity of his sljle, 
the pleasantness and perfection of social elegance in the midst of which 
we read him. His poetry is like one of those gilt and painted stands 
in which flowers of the country and exotics mingle in artful harmony 
their stalks and foliage, their clusters and cups, their scents and hues, 
It seoms made expressly for these wealthy, cultivated, free business 
men, heirs of the ancient nobi'lty, new leaders of a new England. It 
is part of their luxury as of their morality ; it is an eloquent confirma- 
tion of their principles, and a precious article of their drawing-room 
furniture. 

We return to Calais, and travel towards Paris, without pausing 
on the road. There are on the way plenty of noblemen's casties, and 
houses of rich men of business. But we do not find amongst them, ag 
in England, the thinking elegant world, which, by the refinement of its 
tastes and the superiority of its mind, becomes the guide of the nation 
and the arbiter of the beautiful. There are two peoples in France : the 



538 MODERN AUTHORS. BOOK f , 

provinces and Paris ; the one dining, sleeping, yawning, listening ; thcs 
other thinking, daring, watching, and speaking : the first drawn by th« 
second, as a snail by a butterfly, alternately amused and disturbed by 
the whims and the audacity of its guide. It is this guide we must look 
upon ! Let us enter Paris ! What a strange spectacle ! It is evening, 
the streets are aflame, a luminous dust covers the busy noisy crowd, 
which jostles, elbows, crushes, and swarms in front of the theatres, 
behind the windows of the cafes. . Have you remarked how all these 
faces are wrinkled, frowning, or pale ; how anxious are their looks, how 
nervDus their gestures ? A violent brightness falls on these shining 
heads ; most are bald before thirty. To find pleasure here, they must 
have plenty of excitement : the dust of the boulevard settles on the 
ice which they are eating; the smell of the gas and the steam of the 
pavement, the perspiration left on the walls dried up by the fever of a 
Parisian day, 'the human air full of impure rattle' — this is what they 
cheerfully breathe. They are crammed round their little marble 
tables, persecuted by the glaring light, the shouts of the waiters, the 
jumble of mixed talk, the monotonous motion of gloomy walkers, the 
flutter of loitering courtesans moving anxiously in the shadow. Doubt 
less their homes are unpleasing, or they would not change them foi 
these bagmen's delights. We climb four flights, and find ourselves in a 
polished, gilded room, adorned with stuccoed ornaments, plaster stntu- 
ettes, new furniture of old oak, with every kind of pretty knick-knack 
on the mantlepieces and the whatnots. ' It makes a good show;' you 
can give a good reception to envious friends and people of standnig. 
It is an advertisement, nothing more; we pass half an hour there 
agreeably, and that is all. You will never make more than a house of 
call out of it ; it is low in the ceiling, close, inconvenient, rented by the 
year, dirty in six months, serving to display a fictitious luxury. All 
the enjoym^'nts of these people are factitious, and, as it were, snatched 
hurriedly , they have in them something unhealthy and irritating. They 
are like the cookery of their restaurants, the splendour of their caf^a, 
the gaiety of their theatres. They want them too quick, too lively, too 
manifold. They have not cultivated them patiently, and culled them 
moderately ; they have forced them on an artificial and heating soil , 
they grasp them in haste. They are refined and greedy ; they need 
every day a stock of coloured words, broad anecdotes, biting railleries, 
new truths, varied ideas. They soon get bored, and cannot endure 
tedium. They amuse themselves with all their might, and find that 
they are hardly amused. They exaggerate their work and their expense, 
their wants and their efforts. The accumulation of sensations and 
fatigue stretches their nervous machine to excess, and their polish of 
social gaiety chips off twenty times a day, displaying a basis of suffering 
and ardour. 

But how fine they are, and how free is their mind I How thia 
incessant rubbing has sharpened them 1 How ready they are to grasp 



CHAP V'l.] POETRr— TENNYSON. 533 

and comprehend eyerythingl How apt this studied and manifold 
culture has made them to feel and relish tendernesses and sadnesses, 
unknown to their fathers, deep feelings, strange and subJime, which 
hitherto seemed foreign to their race ! This great city is cosmopolitan; 
here all ideas may be born ; no barrier checks the mind ; the vast field 
of thought opens before them without a beaten or prescribed track. Use 
neither hinders nor guides them ; an official Government and Clmrch 
rid them of the care of leading the nation : the two powers are sub- 
mitted to, as we submit to the beadle or the policeman, patiently and 
with chaft"; they are looked upon as a play. In short, the world here 
seems but a melodrama, a subject of criticism and arguraeDt. And be 
sure that criticism and argument have fall scope. An Enghshman 
entering on life, finds to all great questions an answer ready made. A 
Frenchman entering on life finds to all great questions simply suggested 
doubts. In this conflict of opinions he must create a faith for himself, 
and, being mostly unable to do it, he remains open to every uncertainty, 
and therefore to every curiosity and to every pain. In this gulf, which 
is like a vast sea, dreams, theories, fancies, intemperate, poetic and 
sickly desires, collect and chase each other like clouds. If in this 
tumult of moving forms we seek some solid work to prepare a founda- 
tion for future opinions, we find only the slowly-rising edifices of the 
sciences, which here and there obscurely, like submarine polypes, con- 
struct of imperceptible coral the basis on which the belief of the human 
race is to rest. 

Such is the world for which Alfred de Musset wrote : in Paris he 
must be read. Read ? "We all know him by heart. He is dead, and it 
seems as if we daily hear him speak. A conversation among artists, aa 
they jest in a studio, a beautiful young girl leaning over her box at 
the theatre, a street washed by the rain, making the black pavement 
shine, a fresh smiling morning in the woods of Fontainebleau, everything 
brings him before us, as if he were alive again. Was there ever a more 
vibrating and genuine accent ? This man, at least, has never lied. He 
has only said what he felt, and he has said it, as he felt it. He thought 
aloud. He made the confession of every man. He was not admired, 
but loved ; he was more than a poet, he was a man. Every one found 
in him his own feelings, the most transient, the most familiar ; he did 
not restrain himself, he gave himself to all ; he had the last virtues 
which remain to us, generosity and sincerity. And he had the most 
precious gift which can seduce an old civilisation, youth. As he said, 
* that hot youth, a tree with a rough bark, which covers all with its 
shadow, prospect and path.* With what fire did he hurl onward love, 
jealousy, the thirst of pleasure, all the impetuous passions which rise 
with virgin blood from the depths of a young heart, and how did he 
make them clash together I Has any one felt them mor6 deeply ? He 
was too full of them, he gave himself up to them, was intoxicated 
with them. He rushed through life, like an eager racehorse in th« 



41 



5^0 MODERN AUTHORS. [BOOK ^ 

country, whom the scent of plants and the splendid noveltv of th« 
vast heavens urgo, breast foremost, in its mad career, which shatter* 
all before him, and himself as well. lie desired too much ; he wished 
strongly and greedily to taste life in one draught, thoroughly ; ho 
did not glean or taste it ; he tore it off like a bunch of grapes, 
pressed it, crushed it, twisted it ; and he remains with stained hands, 
as thirsty as before.^ Then broke forth sobs which found an echo 
in all hearts. What I so young, and already so Avearied I So many 
precious gifts, so fine a mind, so delicate a tact, so rich and mobile 
a fancy, so precocious a glory, such a sudden blossom of beauty and 
genius, and yet anguish, disgust, tears, and cries! What a mixture 1 
With the same attitude he adores and curses. Eternal illusion, in- 
vincible experience, keep side by side in him to fight and tear him. 
He became old, and remained young ; he is a poet, and he is a sceptic 
The Muse and her peaceful beauty. Nature and her immortal freshness, 
Love and his happy smile, all the swarm of divine visions barely passed 
before his eyes, when we see approaching, with curses and sarcasms, 
all the spectres of debauchery and death. He is as a man in a festive 
scene, who drinks from a carven cup, standing up, in front, amidst 
applause and triumphal music, his eyes laugliing, his heart full of joy, 
heated and excited by the generous wine descending in his breast, whom 
suddenly we see growing pale ; there was poison in the cup ; he falls, 
and the death-rattle is in his throat ; his convulsed feet beat upon 
the silken carpet, and all the terrified guests look on. This is what 
we felt on the day when the most beloved, the most brilliant amongst 
us, suddenly quivered from an unseen attack, and was struck down, 
with the death-rattle in his throat, amid the lying splendours and 
gaieties of our banquet. 

Well ! such as he was, we love him for ever : we cannot listen to 
another ; beside him, all seem cold or false. We leave at midnight 
the theatre in which he had heard Malibran, and we enter the gloomy 
rue des Moulins, where, on a hired bed, his Eolla ^ came to sleep and 
die. The lamps cast flickering rays on the slippery pavement. Rest- 
less shadows march past the doors, and trail along their dress of 
draggled silk to meet the passers-by. The windows are fastened ; here 
and there a light pierces through a half-closed shutter, and shows a 
dead dahlia on the edge of a window-sill. To-morrow an jrgan will 
grind before these panes, and the wan clouds will leave their droppings 
on these dirty walls. From this wretched place came the most im- 
passioned of his poems I These vilenesses and vulgarities of the stews 
and the lodging-house caused this divine eloquence to flow I it wai 



' * O mediocrite ! celui qui pour tout bien 
T'apporte k ce tripot degoutant de la vie 
Est bien poltron au jeu s'il ne dit : Tout on riein.* 

» See vol. i. p. 237, n. 1. 



CHAP VI. J POETRY —TENNYSON. 54^ 

these which at such a moment gathered in this bruised heart all the 
splendours of nature and history, to make them spring up in sparkling 
jets, and shine under the most glowing poetic sun that ever rose ! 
We feel pity ; we think of that other poet, away there in tlie Isle of 
Wight, who amuses himself by dressing up lost epics. How happy he 
is amongst his fine books, his friends, his honeysuckles and roses 1 No 
matter. De Musset, in this very spot, in this filth and misery, rose 
higher. From the heights of his doubt and despair, he saw the infinite, 
as we see the sea from a storm-beaten promontory. Religions, their 
glory and their decay, the human race, its pangs and its destiny, all that 
is sublime in the world, appeared there to him in a flash of lightning. He 
felt, at least this once in his life, the inner tempest of deep sensation*, 
giaut-dreams, and intense voluptuousness, whose desire enabled him to 
live, and whose lack forced him to die. He was no mere dilettante ; he 
was not content to taste and enjoy ; he left his mark on human thought; 
be told the w^orld what was man, love, truth, happiness. He sutFered, 
but he invented ; he fainted, but he produced. He tore from his entrails 
with despair the idea which he had conceived, and showed it to the eyei 
of all, bloody but alive. That is harder and lovelier than to go fondling 
and gazing upon the ideas of others. There is in the world but one 
work worthy of a man, the production of a truth, to which we devote 
ourselves, and in which we believe. The people who have listened 
to Tennyson are better than our aristocracy of townsfolk '♦•^d boh«v 
miABs; but I prefer Alfred de Musset to Tenrysoo. 



INDEX- 



Abeiard, I 133, 135. 

Addison, Joseph, ii. 39, 60, 67, 76 ; 
his life and writings, 89-115, 256, 
265, 396, 40(3, 412 seq., 433. 

Adbelm, i. 50, 54, 156. 

Agiiculture, improvement in, in 8uc- 
teenth century, i. 146 ; in the nine- 
teenth, ii. 224, 326 seq. 

Akenside, Mark, ii. 220. 

Alcuin, i. 50, 65. 

Alexander vi., Pope, i. 354. 

Alexandrian philosophy, i. 16. 

Alfred the Great, i. 50, 54. 

Alison, Sir Archibald, ii. 224. 

Amory, Thomas, ii. 180. 

Angelo, Michael, i. 155, 306 ; ii. 213. 

Anglo-Saxon poetry, i. 41 seq. 

Ann of Cleves, L 167. 

Anselm, i 61. 

Anthology, the, i 176, 202. 

Arbuthnot, Dr. John, ii. 133. 

Architecture, Norman, i. 60, 61, 107 ; 
the Tudor style, 147. 

Ariosto, i. 156, 187 ; ii. 14. 

Aristocracy, British, in the nin«t«enth 
century, ii. 328 seq. 

Arkwright, Sir Richard, ii. 84. 

Armada, the, L 146, 235. 

Arnold, Dr. Thomas, ii. 270, 334. 

Arthur and Merlin, romance of, u 62. 

Ascham, Roger, i. 153, 207, 353. 

Athelstan, i. 28,42. 

Augier, Emile, ii. 355. 

Austen, Jane, ii 258. 

Baoon, Francis, Lord, i. 207, 215-221, 
378, 382 ; ii. 403 seq., 416. 

Bacon, Roger, i. 135. 

Bain, Alexander, ii. 337. 

Bakewell, Robert, ii. 84. 

Bale, Jolm, i 156. 

Balzac, Honor^ de, i. 3 ; iu 361, 392. 

Barclay, Alexander, i. 138. 

Barclay, John, ii. 60. 

Barclay, Robert, i. 398. 

Barrow, Isaac, ii. 60, 63 seq. 

Baxter, Richard, L 225, 396 ; il 60. 

Bayly's (Lewis) Practice of Piety, i 
401. 



Beattie, James, ii, 182, 220. 

Beauclerk, Henry, i. 61. 

Beaumont, Francis, i. 245, 258-266, 

384, 387, 433. 
Becket, Thomas k, i. 80. 
Beckford, W., ii. 251. 
Bede, the Venerable, i. 50. 
Bedford, Duke of (John Russell), iL 

75. 
Beethoven, Lewis van, ii. 259. 
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, i. 479 ; ii. 29. 
Bell, Currer. See Bronte, Charlotte. 
B^noit de Sainte-Maure, i. 61. 
Bentham, Jeremy, ii, 84, 406. 
Bentley, Richard, ii. 69, 70. 
Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem. 

i. 38-41. 
B^ranger, i. 359 ; ii 418. 
Berkeley, Bishop, ii. 69. 
Berkley, Sir Charles, l 466. 
Berners, Lord, i. 157. 
Best, Paul, i. 391. 

Bible, English. See Wiclif, Tyndals; 
Blackmore, Sir Richard, ii 4. 
Blouut, Edward, i. 162. 
Boccaccio, i. 106, 110 ; ii, 39. 
Bod ley, Sir Thomas, i. 208. 
Boethius, i, 50-53. 
Boileau, i. 469, 501 ; ii. 3, 36, 54^ 196. 

202, 466. 
Boleyn, Ann, i. 232. 
Bolingbroke, Lord (Henry St John)^ 

ii. 46 seq., 69, 197, 396. 
Bonner, Edmund, i. 377. 
Borde, Andrew, i. 156. 
Borgia, Caesar, 1. 354, 356. 
Borgia, Lucretia, i. 154, 364. 
Bossu (or Lebossu), ii. 3, 106, 110. 
Bossuet, i. 14 ; ii. 11, 211, 433. 
Boswell, James, ii. 185 seq. 
Bourchier. See Berners. 
Boyle, the Hon. Robert, iL 69. 
Bridaine, Father, ii. 65. 
Britons, ancient, i. 29. 
Bronte, Charlotte (Currer Bell), ii 

258, 270, 337. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, I 207, 208, 213- 

215, 378, 382. 
Brownii^g, Mrs., iL 270, 337. 



544 



INDEX. 



Brunanburh, Athelstan's victory at, 

celebrated ia Saixon song, i. 42. 
Buckir!^lulm, Dukeof (Jolm Sheffield), 

i. 476, 4;98, 501. 
Buckle, Henry Thomas, ii. 316 »«g., 

333. 
Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton, ii. 258, 337. 
Bunyan, John, i. 398-408, 460. 
Burke, Edmund, ii. 69, 81-88, 185,417, 

433. 
Burleigh, Lord (William Cecil), i. 230; 

ii. 419. 
Burnet, Bishop, ii. 60. 
Barney, Francisca (Madame D'Ar- 

blay), ii. 53, 84, 185, 409. 
Burns, Robert, ii. 27 ; sketch of his 

life and works, 228-241. 
Burton, Robert, i. 148, 209-212, 378, 

433. 
Busby, Dr. Richard, ii. 31. 
Bute, Lord, ii. 46 seq., 75. 
Butler, Bishop, ii. 84. 
Butler, Samuel, i. 463-466 ; iL 70. 
Byng, Admiral, ii. 75. 
Byron, Lord, ii. 200. 242 j his life and 

works, 271-312. 

CM)M0N, hymns of, i. 45, 48 ; his 
metrical paraphrase of parts of the 
Bible, 48-50, 156 

Calamy, Edmund, i. 3Q$, 

Calderon, i. 135, 234, 478. 

Calvin, John, i. 359, 388 ; ii 68. 

Camden, William, i. 207. 

Campbell, Thomas, ii. 250, 280. 

Carew, Thomas, i. 201. 

Carlyte, Thomas, i. 5 ; ii. 270, 333 ; 
style and mind, 437 seq.; vocation, 
452 seg.; philosophy, morality, and 
criticism, 458 seq.; conception of 
history, 467. 

Cai-teret, John (Earl Granville), it 76. 

Castlereagh, Lord, i. 268. 

Catherine, St., play of, i. 61. 

Cellini, Benvenuto, i. 20, 95, 155. 

Cervantes, i. 83, 126, 187 ; ii 158. 

Chalmers, George, i. 66. 

Chandos, Duke of (John Brydges), ii. 
197. 

Chapman, George, i. 269. 

Charles of Orleans, i. 69, 132. 

Charles i. of England, ii. 409. 

Charles ii. and his court, i. 466 aeq. 

Chateaubriaxid, i. 4 ; ii 105. 

Chatham. See Pitt. 

Chaucer, i. 86, 87, 105, 1.32 ; ii. 39. 

Chesterfield, Lord, ii 49 seq.y 185, 
203. 

Chevy Chase, ballad of, i 104, 

ChilliDgvvorth, William, i 207, 379, 
381 ; ii 67. 



Christianity, Introduction of, int« 

Britain, i 44, 50. 
Chroniclers, French, i. 68. 
Chronicles, Saxon, i. 63. 
Gibber, Colley, ii. 198, 205. 
Cimbrians, the, i. 31. 
Clarendon, Lord Chancellor (Edwa'u 

Hyde), i 207, 466. 
Clarke, Dr. John, ii. 58, 68. 
Classic spirit in Europe, its origin RDii 

nature, i. 490-492. 
Classical authors translated, i U'i 

160. 
Clive, Lord, ii. 406. 
Coleriilge, Hartley, ii. 235. 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ii. 248. 
Collier, Jeremy, ii 4, 31. 
Collins, William, ii. 221. 
Colman, George, i. 530. 
Comedy-writers, English, i. 504 seq. 
Comines, Philippe de, i. 104. 
Commerce in sixteenth century, i, 

145 ; ii. 324 seq. 
Comte, Auguste, ii. 480. 
Condillac, Stephen-Bonnot de, ii 456, 

480. 
Congreve, William, i. 504-522 ; ii. Sa 
Conybeare, J. J. , i. 42 seq. 
Corbet, Bishop, i. 379. 
Corneille, i 10 ; ii. 3, 13. 
Cotton, Sir Robert, i 207, 208. 
Court pageantries in the sixteenth 

century, i. 148, 149. 
Coventry, Sir John, i. 467. 
Coverdale, Miles, i. 367. 
Cowley, Abraham, i. 204-206, S78k 

409. 
Cowper, William, ii. 243-247. 
Crabbe, George, ii. 246, 280. 
Cranmer, Archbishop, i. 362, 369. 
Crash aw, Richard, i 378. 
Criticism and History, ii. 402 seq. 
Cromwell, Oliver, i. 5, 379, 391 ; ii 

410, 445, 470. 
Crowne, John, i. 479. 
Curll, Edmund, ii 205. 

Daniel, Samuel, i 207. 

Dante, i 113, 132, 135, 442; Ii 

457. 
Darwin, Charles, i. 10. 
Davie, Adam, i. 77. 
Daries, Sir John, i. 378. 
Day, John, i 389. 
Decker, Th Dm as, i. 236. 
De Fon, ii. 73, 151-158, 328. 
Delille, James, ii. 208. 
Denham, Sir John, i. 601-504. 
Denmark, i. 24, 
Dennis, John, ii 93. 
Descaites, i. 473 ; ii. U, 456. 



INDEX. 



545 



Dickens, €harles, ii. 258, 270; his 

novels, 339-366. 
Domesday Book, i. 55, 63, 86. 
Donne, John, i. 203, 204, 379. 
Dorat, C. J., ii. 204, 303. 
Dorset, Earl of (Oharlea Sackville), i. 

497, 498. 
Drake, Admiral, i. 146. 
Drake, Dr. Nathan, i. 146, 228. 
Drama, formation of the, i. 245 seq 
Drayton, Michael, i. 173, 179, 378. 
Drammond, William, i. 433. 
Drvden, JohD,i. 14,433 ; his comedies, 

476-479, 501 ; his life and writings, 

ii. 1-44, 94, 195, 453. 
Dudevant, Madame (George Sand), ii 

355. 
Dunstan, St., i. 28 seq. 
Durer, Albert, i. 357, 358. 
Dyer, Sir Edward, i 171. 

Earle, John, i. 208. 

Eddas, the Scaud inarian, i. 32-36; 

ii. 289. 
Edge worth, Maria, ii. 391. 
Edward VI., i. 373. 
Edwy and Elgiva, story of, i. 29, 30. 
Eliot, George. See Evans, Mary A. 
England, climate of, i. 25. 
English Constitution, formation cf 

the, i. 87. 
Elizabeth, Queen, i 148-150, 207, 228. 
El win, Whit well, ii. 195 seq. 
Erigena, John Scotus, i. 50, 54. 
Esm^nard, Joseph Alphonse, i. 137. 
Essex, Robert, Earl of, i. 228, 230. 
Etheredge, Sir George, i. 479. 
Evans, Mary A. (George Eliot), ii 

258, 335, 337. 
Eyck, Van, i. 126. 

Falkland, Lord, i. 207. 

Farnese, Pietro Luigi, i. 354. 

Farquhar, George, L 504-522. 

Faust, ii. 227. 

Fcltham, Owen, i. 208. 

Fenn, Sir John, i. 145. 

Ferguson, Dr. Adam, ii. 71, 406. 

Fermor, Mrs. Arabella, ii. 2U3, 204. 

Feudalism, the protection and charac- 
ter of, i. 58, 59. 

Fichte, ii. 457. 

Fielding, Henry, i 268, 462 ; ii. 
170-176, 190. 

Filmore, Sir Ilobert, ii. 72. 

Finsborough, Battle of, an Anglo- 
Saxon poem, i. 42. 

Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, i 
232, 371. 

Flemish artists, i. 144, 150. 

Fletcher, Giles, i. 378. 



Fletcher, John, i 245, 258-265, 384, 

387 433. 
Ford,' John, L 245, 250 seq., 262, 

2G3 ; ii. 24. 
Fortescue, Sir John, i. 94 seq. 
Fox, Charles James, ii. 48, 76, 80 

seq. 
Fox, George, i. 393, 398, 460. 
Fox, John, i. 361 seq. 
Francis of Assisi, i. 135. 
Freeman, Edward A., i. 69. 
Frisians, the, i. 24, 25. 
Frnissart, i. 68, 85, 106, 107- 110. 
Fronde, J. A., i. 86, 362 seg. 
Fuller, Thomas, i. 2G8. 

Gaimar, Geoffroy, i. 61, 75. 
Gainsborough, Thomas, laud&oape 

painter, i. 530. 
Ganick, David, ii. 185, 188. 
GaskeU, Mrs. Elizabeth C, ii. 258, 337. 
Gay, John, i. 523; ii. 50, 194, 215-217. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, i. 112. 
German ideas, intioduction of, in 

Europe and England, ii. 452 seq. 
Germany, drinking habits in, i. 356. 
Gibbon, Edward, ii. 185. 
Gladstone, William Ewart, ii. 408. 
Glencoe, massacre of, ii. 430 seq. 
Glover, Richard, ii. 221. 
Godwin, William, ii. 265. 
Goethe, i. 5, 14, 4^12, 448; ii. 174^ 227, 

249, 291-296, 452 seq. 
Go' smith, Oliver, L 523; ii. 73, 182- 

185. 
Goltzius, i. 165. 
Gower, John, i. 73, 136. 
Grammont, Count de, L 462, 489, 

490. 
Gray, Thomas, ii. 220. 
Greene, Robert, i. 173, 176, 177, 236, 

237, 305. 
Grenville, George, ii. 75. 
Gresset, J. B. Lewis, ii. 204. 
Grey, Lady Jane, i. 152, 228. 
Grostfite, Robert, i. 73, 77. 
Grote, George, ii. 337. 
Guicciardini, Ludovic, L 146. 
Guido, i. 13. 

Guizot, i. 89; ii. 409, 414, 433. 
Guy of Warwick, i. 62. 

Habington, William, i. 203. 

Hackluyt, Richard, i. 207. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, i. 363. 

Hales, John, i. 207, 379, 381; ii. 68. 

Halifax, Charles Montague, Earl ol» 

ii. 91, 95, 117, 121. 
Hall, Bishop Joseph, i. 208, 379. 
Hallam, Heury, i. 98; ii. 410. 
Hamilton, Anthony, i. 462 aeq. 



546 



INDEX. 



Hamilton, Sir William, il 337. 

Hampden, John, ii. 409. 

Hampole, i. 77. 

Hardyiig, John, i. 227. 

Harrington, Sir John, i. 200. 

Harrison, William, i. 146 seq. 

Hastings, Warren, iL 81, 406, 417 seq., 
421. 

Hawes, Stephen, i. 138. 

Hegel, i. 14, 17, 133; ii. 406, 455 seq. 

Heine, I 2, 24, 302; ii. 222, 227, 249, 
259. 

Hemling, Hans, L 143. 

Henry Beau clerk, i. 61. 

Henry of Huntingdon, i 30, 61. 

Henry viii. and his Court, L 227, 362. 

Herbert, George, i. 203. 

Herbert, Lord, i 207. 

Herder, John Godfrey von, L 5. 

Herrick, Robert, i. 201, 202. 

Hertford, Earl of, i. 227. 

Hervey, Lord, ii. 212, 

Heywood, Mrs. Eliza, ii. 206. 

Heywood, John, i. 156, 235. 

Hill, Aaron, ii. 197. 

History, philosophy of. See tlie Intro- 
duction, passim. 

flobbes, Thomas, i. 472-475; ii. 26, 

Hogarth, William, ii. 190-192, 206. 

Holinshed's Chronicles, i. 148, 207, 
231. 

Holland, i. 23 seq. 

Homer and Spenser, i. 183. 

Hooker, Richard, i. 207, 379 seq. 

Horn, King, romance of, i 62, isS. 

Hoveden, John, i. 73. 

Howard, John, ii. 84. 

Howard, Sir Robert, iL 17. 

Howe, John, ii. 427. 

Hugo, Victor, L 2, 139; ii 42, 248, 

259. 
Hume, David, u. 70, 182, 424, 471. 
Hunter, William, martyrdom of, L 

376, 377. 
Hutcheson, Francis, ii. 71, 84, 406. 

Iceland and its legends, L 27, 32. 

Independency in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, i. 391 seq., 425. 

Industry, British, in the nineteenth 
century, ii. 324 seq. 

Irish, the ancient, i. 29. 

Italian writings and ideas, taste for, 
in sixteenth century, i. 153 ; vices 
of the Italian Renaissance, 352-356. 

James i and his Court, L 200 seq, 
James ii., ii. 415. 
Jewell, Bishop, L 233. 
Johnson, Samuel, i 268 ; iL 69, 84, 
185-lfl2, 199, 222, 466. 



Joinville, Sire de, i. 68. 

Jones, Inigo, i. 147, 270. 

Jones, Sir William, ii. 185. 

Jonson, Ben, i. 175, 223, 235, 433, it 
316 ; sketch of his life, i. 267-270 j 
his learning, style, etc., 270-274; 
his dramas, 275-279 ; his comedies, 
279-288 ; compared with Moliere, 
288 ; fanciful comedies and smallef 
poems, 289-293. 

Jordaens, Jacob, L 150. 

Jowett, Benjamin, ii. 270, 457. 

Judith, poem of, L 47, 48. 

Junius, Francis, L 49. 

Junius, Letters of, ii. 76 seq. , 275. 

Jutes, the, and their country, 24 m^. 

Keats, John, ii. 295. 

Kemble, John M., i. 28, 38 aeq. 

Knighton, Henry, L 102. 

Knolles, Richard, i. 207. 

Knox, John, i. 356, 373 ; iL 472. 

Kyd, Thomas, L 236. 

Lackland, John, i. 84. 

La Harpe, ii. 466. 

Lamartine, i. 2 ; ii. 249, 259. 

Lamb, Charles, ii. 248, 250. 

Languet, Hubert, i. 164. 

Latimer, Bishop, i. 90, 364, 372 seq. 

Lan franc, first Norman Archbishop 

of Canterbury, i. 61. 
Langtoft, Peter, i. 73. 
Laud, Archbishop, i. 382 ; iL 418. 
Lavergne, L^once de, L 25. 
Law, William, ii. 70. 
Layamon, i. 76. 
Lebrun, Ponce Denis Ecouchard, L 

137. 
Lee, Nathaniel, iL 18. 
Leibnitz, ii. 210. 

Leighton, Dr. Alexander, L 391, 424. 
Lely, Sir Peter, iL 83. 
Leo X. , Pope, i. 353. 
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, L 4. 
Lingard, Dr. John, i. 26, 27. 
Locke, John, L 409 ; iL 67, 70 seq., 

84, 416. 
Lockhart, John Gibson, ii. 252 seq. 
Lodge, Thomas, L 172, 235. 
Lombard, Peter, L 132, 134. 
Loni(5nie de Brienne, Cardinal, ii. 439. 
London in Henry viil's time, i. 146 j 

in the present day, ii. 324 seq. 
Longchamps, William, L 80. 
Longus, Greek romance-writer, i, 176. 
Lorris, Guillaume de, i. 69, 79. 
Loyola, L 135, 144 ; ii. 407. 
Ludlow, Edmund, L 392. 
LuUi, a renowned Italian composWi 

iL n. 



INDEX- 



547 



Lully, Eaymond, i. 135. 

Lutlier, Martin, i. 20, 144, 352-355, 

Lydgate, John, 137, 138. 

Lyly, John, i. 162. 

Lyly, Waiiam, i. 152 

IklACAULAT, Thomas Babington (Lord), 

ii. 270 ; his works, 402-434. 
Machiavelli, i. 154. 
Mackenzie, Henry, ii. 219, 230. 
Mackintosh, Sir James, ii. 410. 
Macpherson, James, ii. 220. 
Malcolm, Sir John, ii. 251. 
Malherbe, Francis de, ii. 453. 
Malte-Brun, Conrad, i. 24. 
Mandeville, Bernard, ii. 69. 
Manners of the people in the sixteenth 

century, i. 150 seq. 
Marguerite of Navarre, i. 110. 
Marlborough, Duchess of, ii. 212. 
Marlborough, Duke of, ii. 47, 73, 396. 
Marlowe, Christopher, i. 177, 178, 235, 

ii. 248 ; his dramas, i. 237-244. 
Marston, John, i. 269. 
Martyr, Peter, i. 369. 
Martyrs in the reign of Mary, i. 

375-378. 
Mar veil, Andrew, ii. 29. 
Masques, under James I., i. 149, 291. 
Massillon, i. 373. 
Massinger, Philip, ii. 235, 236, 249 

seq. 
Maundeville, Sir John, i. 75, 85. 
May, Thomas, i. 398. 
Medici, Lorenzo de, i. 153. 
Melanchthon, Philip, i. 361, 369. 
Merlin, i. 62. 

Meung, Jean de, i. 76, 136. 
Michelet, Jules, i. 4, 45 ; ii. 450. 
Middleton, Thomas, i. 245. 
Mill, John Stuart, ii. 270, 333, 477-517. 
Milton, John, i. 49, ISl, 207, 409-419; 

his prose writings, 419-433 ; his 

poetry, 433-456 ; ii. 106, 107, 406. 
Moliere, i. 179, 300, 302, 604 stq. ; 

ii. 164, 359. 
Mommseu, Theodor, i. 15. 
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, ii. 

170, 197, 203. 
Montesquieu, Ch., i. 16, 19. 
Moore, Thomas, ii. 182, 250 seq., 301. 
More, Sir Thomas, i. 207, 232. 
Muller, Max, ii. 479. 
Muller, Ottfried, i. 5. 
Murray, John, ii. 252, 301, 303= 
Musset, Alfred de, i. 2, 168, 237, 

272, 300 ; u. 40, 222, 249, 259, 535 

seq. 

Nash, Thomas, i. 236. 
Nayler, James, L 391, 394, 397. 



Keal's History of the Puritans^ L S94. 
424. 

Newcastle, Duchess of (Margarei Lu' 
cas), 503. 

Newspaper, jSrst daily, ii. 224. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, ii. 58, 68. 

Nicole, Peter, ii. 54. 

Norman Conquest, the, i. 56, 57, 59 j 
its eHects on the national lansuage 
and literature, 72 seq.^ 102-104. ii 
314. 

Normans, the, character of, i. 60 
how they became French, 60 
their taste and architecture, 61 
their literature, chivalry, and suc- 
cess, 61-64 ; their position and 
tyranny in England, 71-73, ii 314. 

Nott, Dr. John, i 161. 

Novel, the English — its characteristics, 
i 151 seq.;^ the modern school oi 
novelists, ii. 337 seq. 

Nut-brown Maid, the, — an ancient 
ballad, 160. 

Gates, Titus, ii. 32. 
Occam, William, i 135. 
Occleve, Thomas, i. 137. 
Ochin, Bernard, i. 369. 
Oliphant, Mrs., ii. 169. 
Olivers, Thomas, ii. 60. 
Orlay, Richard van, i 144. 
Orrery, Earl of, ii. 197. 
Otway, Thomas, ii. 18, 24. 
Ouseley, Sir William, ii. 251. 
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 208. 
Owen, John, 398. 

Paganism of poetry and painting in 

Italy in the sixteenth century, L 

153 seq. 
Paley, William, ii. 67.^ 
Pal grave, Sir Francis, i 25. 
Parnell, Dr. Thomas, ii 194, 
Pascal, ii. 67, 149, 212, 433. 
Pastoral poetry, i. 172. 
Peele, George, i. 235. 
Penn, William, ii. 58, 427. 
Pepys, Samuel, i 467, 468, 471. 
Percy, Thomas, ii. 248. 
Petrarch, i 106, 156, 160. 
Philips, Ambrose, ii. 194. 
Philosophy and history, ii. 437 seq. 
Philosophy and poetry, connection o£, 

i 132. 
Picts, i. 29. 

Pickering, Dr. Gilbert, ii. 3. 
Piers Plowman's Crede, i. 102. 
Piers Ploughman, Vision of, i 100 

seq., 156. 
Pitt, William, first Earl of Chatham, 

ii 48, 75 seq., 409. 



548 



INDEX. 



Pitt, William (second son of tfeo pre- 
ceding), ii. 76, 81 seq., 242. 

Pleiad, the, i. 14. 

Pluche, Abb6, ii. 101. 

Poe, Edgar Allen, ii. 154. 

Pope, Alexander, ii. 27, 90, 93, 133, 
195-213, 279, 280, 284, 412 a-^q. 

Prayer-book, English, i. 369-371. _ 

Preaching at the Reformation period, 
i. 372. 

Presbyterians and Independents in 
the sixteenth century, i. 391, 425. 

Price, Dr. Richard, ii. 71, 84, 406. 

Priestley, Dr., ii. 242. 

Prior, Matthew, ii. 194, 213. 

Proclus, i. 133. 

Prynne, William, i. 398. ^ 

Pulci, an Italian painter, i. 154 

Pultock, Robert, ii. ISO. 

Purchas, Samuel, i. 207. 

Puritans, the, i. 388 seq., 459 seq. 

Puttenham, George, i. 156, 207. 

Pym, John, ii. 409. 

QuARLES, Francis, I 203, 378. 

Rabelais, i. 125, 187, 223, 306, 469 ; 

ii. 140, 180. 
Racine, i. 311 ; ii. 3, 54, 363, 433. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, i 180, 207, 230, 

378. ^_ 
Rapin, ii. 3. 
Ray, John, u. 69, 70. 
Reformation in England made way for 

by the Saxon character and the 

situation of the Norman Church, i. 

102-104, 139, 356 ?.eq. 
Reid, Thomas, ii. 71, 84, 182. 
Renaissance, the English ; manners of 

the time, i. 143-156 ; the theatre its 

original product, 222 seq. 
Renan, Emeat, i. 15, 107. 
Restoration, period of the, in Eng- 
land, i. 457 seq., 521. 
Revolution, period of the, in England, 

ii. 45 seq. 
Reynolds, Sir Josjbua, i. 530 ; ii. 83, 

185. 
Richard CoBur de Lion, i. 84. 
Richardson, Samuel, i. 462 ; ii. 69, 

159-169, 185, 198, 219. 
Ridley, Nicholas, i. 375. 
Ritson, Joseph, i. 90 seq. 
Robert of Brunne, i. 76, 77. 
Robert of Gloucester, i. 76. 
Robertson, Dr. William, ii. 182, 193, 

222, 471. 
Robespierre, ii. 54. 
Robin Hood ballada, i 90 «ey,, 150, 

156. 



Rochester, Earl of (John Wilmot), I 

469 seq., 501 ; ii. 98, 214, ,303. 
Rogers, John, martyidom of, i. 37S. 
Rogers, Samuel, ii. 280. 
Roland, Song of, i. 62, 66 seq, 
Rollo, a Norse leader, i. 60. 
Ronsard, Peter de, L 14. 
Roscelin, i. 135. 
Roscommon, Earl of, i. 501. 
Roses, wars of the, L 95, 104^ 145( 

242. 
Rotheland, Hogh de, i. 73 
Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, ii. 200, 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, ii. 188, 204i 

218. 
Royer-CoUard, Pierre-Paul, ii. 504. 
Fvubens, i. 127, 149, 150, 195, 306, 

ii. 213. 
Ruckert, ii. 249. 
Russell, Lord William, L 467. 

Sacheverell, Dr., ii. 46, 72. 

Sacy, Lemaistre de, i. 368. 

Sadeler, i. 165. 

Sainte-Beuve, i. 5. 

Saintr4 Jehan de, i. 85. 

St. John. See Bolingbroke, Lord. 

Saint-Simon, i. 2; ii. 362. 

St. Theresa, i. 135. 

Sand, George. See Dudevant, Madama 

Savage, Richard, ii. 206. 

Sawtr6, William, i. 103. 

Saxons, the, i. 23 seq.; characteristicB 
of the race, 56; contrast with the 
Normans, 60; their endiirance, 86 
seq.; their invasion of England^ ii 
313, 314. 

Scaliger, ii. 466. 

Schelling, i. 17. 

Schiller, ii. 227, 249, 259. 

Scotland in the seventeentli century, 
i. 461. 

Scott, Sir Walter, i. 4, 209, ii. 2 seq., 
117 seq., 182, 249, 274, 276, 396; hie 
novels and poems, ii. 252-268. 

Scotus, Duns, i. 133 seq. 

Scud^ry, Mademoiselle de, i. 164. 

Sedley, Sir Charles, i. 202, 497, 498. 

Selden, John, i. 207. 

Seres, William, i. 389. 

Settle, Elkanah, ii. 4, 17. 

S^vign^, Madame de, ii. 203, 433. 

Shadwell, Thomas, i. 479; ii. 17, 35. 

Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, third 
Earl of, ii. 71. 

Shakspeare, William, i. 157, 173, 207, 
235, ii. 8, 15 seq., 316; general idea 
of, i. 293-295; his life a,nd character, 
297-306; his style, 307-311, and man- 
ners, 311-316; his, dramatis personot, 
316-320; his men of wit, 320-323; and 



INDEX. 



54S 



women, 323 327; his villains, 327, 
828 ; the principal characters in his 
plays, 328-340; fancy, imagination 
— ideas of existence — love; harmony 
between the artist and his work, 
340-351. 

Sheffield, Lord, i. 157. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, ii. 249, 265- 
269, 295. 

Shenstone, William, ii. 221. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, i. 524 aeq.; 
ii. 76, 182. 

Sherlock, Bishop, ii. 60, 68, 159. 

Shirley, James, i. 236, 476. 

Sidney, Algernon, i. 207, 409, 467. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, i. 157, 164-172, 
207, 224,382; ii. 316. 

Skelton, John, i. 139. 

Smart, Christopher, ii. 221. 

Smith, Adam, ii. 71, 84. 

Smith, Sidney, ii. 53, 270. 

Smollett, Tobias, ii. 74, 176-179, 182. 

Society in Great Britain in the present 
day, ii. 328 seq.; in England aud in 
France, 535 seq. 

South, Dr. Robert, ii. 60, 63, 65-67. 

Southern, Thomas, ii. 18. 

Southey, Robert, ii. 180, 247, 250, 
299, 418. 

Speed, John, i. 207. 

Spelman, Sir Henry, i. 207. 

Spencer, Herbert, ii. 337. 

Spenser, Edmund, i. 157, 174, 179, 
207, 409, 442; his life, character, 
and poetry, 180-200; ii. 14, 310, 
530. 

Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, ii. 270, 457. 

Steele, Sir Richard, ii. 76, 90, 390. 

Stendhal, Count de, i. 19, 60, 119. 

Sterliog, John, ii. 438 seq. 

Sterne, Laurence, ii. 179-182, 219. 

Ste«rart, Dugald, ii. 84, 182, 238. 

Stillingfleet, Bishop, ii. 60, 63. 

Stowe, John, i. 207. 

Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl 
of, ii. 409 seq. 

Stralford, William, i. 145. 

Strype, John, i. 225, 

Stubbes, John, i. 143, 151. 

Suckling, Sir John, i. 201, 498. 

Sue, Eugene, ii. 364. 

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, i. 
156-161, 363. 

Swift, Jonathan, i. 462; ii. 4, 69, 70, 
76, 89 seq., 396, 419; sketch of his 
life, 117-123; his wit, 123-126; his 
patnphleta, 128-132; his poetry, 
132-140; his philosophy, etc., 140- 
150. 

Taillefeb, i 63, 78, 



Tassn, i. 187, 19.3. 

Taylor, Jeremy, i. 208, 379, 382 387. 

Temple, Sir William, i. 492; ii. 121, 

140, 193, 406. 
Teniers, David, ii. 256. 
Tennyson, Alfred, ii. 270. 337, 518- 

541. 
Thackeray, William M., ii. 258, 270; 

his novels, 387-401. 
Theatre, the, in the sixteenth century, 

i. 22.3 ; after the Restoration, 476, 

477, 504 seq., ii. 6 seq. 
Theresa, St., i. 135. 
Thibaut of Champagne, i. 69. 
Thierry, Augustin, i. 4, 26, 44, 72 ; 

ii. 433. 
Thiers, Louis Adolplie, ii. 414, 433. 
Thomson, James, ii. 217-219. 
Thorpe, John, i. 37, 43. 
Tickell, Thomas, ii. 194. 
Tillotson, Archbishop, ii 60 seq. 
Tindal, Matthew, ii. 69. 
Titian, i. 199, 306. 
Tocqueville, Alexis de, i. 16. 
Toland, John, ii. 69. 
Toleration Act, the, ii. 427, 428. 
Tomkins, Thomas, L 377. 
Townley, James, i. 530. 
Turner, Sharon, i. 37, 42 seq. 
Tutcbin, John, ii. 200. 
Tyndaie, William, i. ZGQseq., 373, 389. 

.Urf«, Honors d', i. 166, 264. 

Usher, James, i. 207. 

Vanbrugh, Sir John, i. 503-522. 
Vane, Sir Harry, i. 46S. 
Vega, Lope de, i. 135, 234, 478. 
Village feasts of sixteenth century 

described, i. 150, 151. 
Villehardouin, a French chronicler, i. 

68, 85. 
Vinci, Lsonardo da, 1. 13. 
Voltaire, i. 11 ; ii. 188, 209, 300, 466 
Vos, Martin de, i. 165. 

Wace, Robert, i. 61, 63 sea., 73. 
Waller, Edmund, i. 202,^409, 476, 

493-501 ; ii. 193. 
Walpole, Horace, ii. 203. 
Walpole, Sir Robert, ii. 46, 51. 
Walton, Isaac, i. 208. 
Warburton, Bishop, ii. 69. 
Warner, William, i. 178. 
Warton, Thomas, i. 67, 72, 78, 135 j 

ii. 248. 
Watt, James, ii. 84. 
Watteau, Anthony, ii. 203. 
Watts, Isaac, ii. 221. 
We!)ster, John, 245, 250 seq. ; ii 24 
Wesley, John, ii. 68-60. 



& ^ 



mm.yL 



Wethereil, Elizabeth, ii. 335. 
Wharton, Lord, ii. 212. 
Wliiilield, George, ii. 58-60. 
V/iclif, John, i. 102, 103, 241, 3G2. 
Wilkes, John, ii. 75. 
William III., i. 493 ; ii. 315. 
Wither, George, i. 379. 
William of Malmesbury, i. 61. 
William the Conqueror, i. 63 seq. 
Windham, William, ii. 76. 
Witenagemcte, the, i. 36. 
WailmUm, WiUiun Hyde, iL i06. 



Wolsey, Cardinal, i. 139, 8ff3. 
Wordsworth, William, ii. 248, 260- 

265. 
Wortley, Lady Mary. See Montagu 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, i. 156, 157. 
Wycherley, William, i. 14, 480-48& 

496, 503, 504^ 515 ; ii. 26, 98. 

YoNGE, Charlotte Mary, ii SQ&, 
Young, Arthur, ii. 84. 
Young, Edward, ii 231. 



THE END 



I 



